Split banana

Doily

Alabama Chanin style organic cotton jersey doily.

Someone said it looks like the sun with lots of little suns embroidered on it. I can see that.  

Giving this one to a friend.  

No, I don't have an etsy store but I might try to start one in the future.  If you see anything you like on my blog, let me know.  I'll make you one.  Make you a doily like this one for 100$. Just give me a week.  It takes awhile to make. 

Bookshelf

Nap & hat

Reeboks

Water, water everywhere

Computer & sloan

Jewish American short stories

These stories are mostly cutting and funny & mostly Jewish American.

A.V. Laider, Max Beerbohm

The Dead Fiddler, Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Jewbird, Bernard Malamud

A Silver Dish, Saul Bellow

Action Will Be Taken, Heinrich Boll

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowski

Children on Their Birthdays, Truman Capote

Henne Fire, Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Old System, Saul Bellow

I found them in three anthologies:  

The World of the Short Story, Clifton Fadiman, 

The Art of the Tale, Daniel Halpern

Jewish-American Stories, Irving Howe

Read any of these? If you have half an hour, you can.  If you are Jewish, you might get more out of these stories than any other random story Oprah suggested. 

If you wanna talk stories you can comment here.  

For a short one I really liked "Action Will Be Taken".  It's a very funny satirical comment on corporate culture. 

The Borowski story on the Holocaust is the most intense & sad story I've ever read. 

The Singer stories feature hysterical women and the supernatural. No fainting or sanatoriums here.

India ink & blowfish

Xmas time anytime

Just read art before breakfast by danny gregory cover to cover as soon as it came in the mail. 

Then drew this. So fun. 

Scissors & triangles

Pincushion & needlecase drawing

eyeglasses drawings

My glasses and Sloan's glasses. 

Sloan always generously shares his lens on the world, telling me entertaining stories and info.  When we first met, he didn't have the same glasses but I was just as drawn to his appreciation for life. 

Alabama Chanin style DIY swing skirt & how to unclog spray glue

This skirt I just completed and gave to my mother was in the works for about the last six months. 

I started from the very beginning on a family trip to Appalachicola, Fl last Thanksgiving. First step was cutting an Anna's Garden stencil from pennant felt.  

When I went to adhere the paper printout of the stencil to the felt as a cutting guide, to my dismay, my spray glue nozzle was clogged.  

I googled places nearby to buy turpentine so I could unclog and use my glue and get going with my project. 

To my surprise, I found out that the neighborhood we were actually staying in right next door to Appalachicola, Indian Pass, happened to be the main place in the country where turpentine used to be produced when it was made in the US.  It's made from pine trees.  What a coincidence! 

I was then at the same time amused and kind of more frustrated that I couldn't find anywhere in the area that sells turpentine now. 

Happy ending was, after more researching, it turned out I didn't need turpentine after all.  My family of diet coke drinkers were skeptical, but I soaked the nozzle of the spray glue in Diet Coke for about an hour and worked out the clog with the point of a straight pin.

If you need to dissolve or clean something, think about using Diet Coke. Its acid breaks down kind of a lot of things. 

This skirt is based on the Alabama Chanin pattern size xl.  I used lightweight cotton jersey. 

crafting hero: Rachel the Quilter

 Rachel is a quilter.  She's 97 & tells my boyfriend's mother - tell that girl to hurry up and come see me.  When she quilts she jokes - who will take over her quilts if she's not around long enough to finish. 

When she was growing up, her family made everything themselves. These days she sells welder's caps - they're quick to sew so she profits. I saw one last time I visited Hamburg, Al & they're like a wool bike messenger cap I've seen before but they're made from cotton. 

 I haven't met her yet but Rachel is a crafting hero of mine. Yesterday I was thinking about my unfinished projects, a frenchie, skirt and quilt all in the last phases & then I imagined Rachel would probably say "Girl, just finish it" So I did finish the skirt and frenchie.  Sometimes you have to find your own crafting heroes (and invent them if you don't know them too well).