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..to my one year blog party. Hope you like cake. Wow! 365 days of blogging has gone by really really fast. Is it too obvious for me to give something away? Hmmm. Nahhh. Let's do it pals! I made a bunch of fabric cake domes in the spring. Don't ask. It was really fun tinkering till I got a good pattern figured out which required using the pi formula. But back to cake. I wanna give you this little cake dome. Well, at least one of you! Mmmm, don't eat it! Cover up a pin cushion with it or let your little ones practice birthday parties with it. Somehow one little cake doesn't seem like enough... So how about a 10-layer cake of of rich autumn goodness made from the finest Bohemian and Chocolate Lollipop ingredients?? Sound good? Now you can have your cake and sew one too. Just leave a comment and I will pick a winner at random to announce on Monday morning. I do think that I will employ my husband's statistical computer know-how to arrive at the rand

We're looking at the back of summer here as she's walking away from us. Or maybe she's just rolling over in bed for a long nap. This is the back of Isabela flitting around her room cleaning up yesterday, still in her Sunday morning dress well after 4. I made this dress in the spring and I wanted the edge ruffles to look like the edge frosting on a cake. Sweet. The girls are so proud of their newly independent bed-making. They share a room with matching twin beds. We got both the spindle beds for 80$ at an estate sale and I painted them cherry red. I got their coverlets on sale for only 35$ each from Anthropologie when I was pregnant with Eleni and presumed (before I knew for sure) she was a girl and that they would share some day. They only had queen size but I cut them both down and have used the fabric for other stuff in their room. I loved making my bed when I was little - it was the only part of picking up I looked forward to. It was an empty canvas where I pl

No attempt at making sense between the photo and the content of this long overdue post is one of the main reasons I'm tackling it, so be nice, its been a long week. Juliana and I were quite intrigued by the baby pepper we delivered by cesarean section recently and it seemed like something that could take a prize at a produce fair. I should probably just stick to the not making sense thing. But speaking of prizes, you guys are the best, and I have some thanks to catch up on to some of my fellow bloggerdooodles. I appear to be thought of as either rockin', nice or inspiring by Meg (who cannot stop making beautiful things), Natalie (who seems to think shes only allowed to put gorgeous photos on her site), Linda (who insists on only sharing the darling things in life), Allegra (I am flipping out over the cuteness of her baby) and Hayley (who even dreamed up her own award!). I love little blog awards and I really do appreciate them though I am almost always either t

Boy I really did it this time. I cannot deny you the story no matter how humiliating since I had to bring it up . But the whole theme of this story is speaking too soon , with just a dash of having weird stuff on your shoulders. On with it. One afternoon in August as I was preparing for company, I heard a knock at the front door. Before I could even set my sights into the hallway, the kids had answered it and were well into their usual four-headed interrogation process of the poor soul on the porch. Peering through the 8-armed beast I managed a "hello there, can I help you?" as I had never seen this presumably hip guy at my door or anywhere else. Nicely enough he says something like 'yea, I was hoping I could talk to you a minute regarding Joseph '. (Uh-oh.) "Sure", I say and usher the little investigative team back into the house with not a small verbal struggle, and step out for a chat. He introduces himself as Steve Bowman , which sounded vaguel

I've thought of a only a few different reasons why I might do this shoulder thing all the time. Maybe I miss burping babies. Maybe I'm cold sometimes. Or maybe I really do have my hands full like everyone says I must so I start using my shoulders. I very, very often am seen with a fold of fabric, a dishcloth, or a lonely sock waiting to be matched on my shoulder. I will leave it there forever, waiting until I'm in the right spot of the house or studio to unload it without making a special trip. And just like pushing your glasses up your nose once your contacts are already in, only to find there are no glasses there so you poke yourself between the eyes, I often reach to unload my shoulder once the whatever is already gone. All seems normal enough, right? Last night Juliana and I did our bi-weekly trip to Costco for our typical giant quantities of food that I will see vanish all too quickly. On the way there she warns me through her sneaky smile that she IS getti

Well here is the final home for the fanciful little embroideries that occupied me for a few days. They are quite happy here I do believe. A fall jacket for Isabela. Not quilty and heavy for really cold days, but just warm enough for gathering up the last remnants of summer as a cool breeze moves in. Just like it did today. It was wonderful and made me nostalgic for gleefully anticipating fall as a child. Each pocket got quite the inspection from the now expert . She thought the birdie could hold some more flowers for her once they were quickly plucked without permission from the fledgling newly-planted baby crepe myrtles . Kinda hard to reprimand the chubby little hands in the viewfinder whilst taking pictures, because they seemed to belong to a little flower fairy and not my Bela. How could you punish a flower fairy? One, two, three, four, five, six. "This little phlox flower has more petals than the one you stitched on here mommy". "Oh but look at your boots

I'm rolled up in a pod and not sure how I feel about it. I squinted my eyes shut for about the first two minutes of playing it back after I was recorded, and then decided it would be okay. I think its okay. I almost didn't listen to it, because, you absolutely never sound like what you think you sound like. But maybe I sound like what you think I sound like. If I sound like a big ball of talkity-talkiness, then yes, thats me. Like that ball of fabric strips up there all wound up and pinned together and plopped on the wires of communicado nouveau. Lori at SewForthNow asked me a while ago to chat with her about my fabric brain and we finally pinned down a time to do so. Thanks Lori! Her blog is essentially a list of program notes that refer to each of her podcast entries . So you can visit her sites to get to the interview or you can click on the new podcast interview link over there on the right under "More of me at" to download the mp3 and have a listen.

Yay. I got the rug I've been wanting . After a year of watching it, I got it on sale. Its soooo soft and Leo looks really pretty on it. The gold stripes that surround the black stripes remind me of his sweet eyes . I've also been receiving and reviewing some samples of the first line of needlepoint pillows that I designed , debuting next year. So theres just a tiny tease up there. It is so fun to see my art translated into needlepoint. Really, really cool. Makes me want to needlepoint actually. These pillows will be finished goods though, and not like the kind you do yourself. Still, though. It makes me want to needlepoint something myself. But I'll just lay around and think for now. I'm happy. xoAM

That was quick. I showed Isabela how to do a simple split stitch and she instantly sunk into a new favorite time eater. Then she chose her own fabric, requested an owl drawing and got to it. Only stopping for me to change her thread colors and an occasional 16 thread pile-up underneath. Isn't she doing great? I think about what she'd be missing out on if she never saw me working on my own little weekend stitch-away. Reminds me of learning to use the sewing machine at about the same age. I could not wait to figure that thing out after watching dress after dress rattle through it by my mom. I also remember learning to embroider and choosing a kit at the store that was of a little girl bending over to pick some flowers. I chose it because her little bloomers were showing and the instructional photo showed them rendered in white french knots to look like lace. I was dying to learn french knots . These are some of the little goodies I was playing with to keep myself out o