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A must, according to Suse.

…Elinor Dashwood!

You are Elinor Dashwood of Sense & Sensibility! You are practical, circumspect, and discreet. Though you are tremendously sensible and allow your head to rule, you have a deep, emotional side that few people often see.

Take the Quiz here!

Babes in arms. Soon.

There has been a marked silence in blogland lately, particularly amongst the ladies in waiting. I’ve been hoping that we are all just going through the frantic and harried late third trimester nesting times in which all is well with the babes, and we are just too busy with wrapping together the pieces of our lives that need to be taken care of before our bundles of joy arrive. It can be so stressful, these last few weeks, when the doctors say to heed the movements and make sure you feel at least 10 movements every two hours, and if not, CALL. I’m finding myself looking at the clock, wondering why LB hasn’t moved, gently prodding my belly to see if I can get him to squirm, and either feeling panic or joy when I don’t or do get a response. And then there’s the fear that I’ll go into labor at any time, and even though he’s a big robust boy already, it’s still too early, so please, please don’t come yet. And then there’s the office. The loads and loads of loose ends to tie up. All the things to get in order for an extended absence. Finding all the things that must be delegated and delegating them properly so that all will be well. Finishing things that have been in work for ages. Anticipating what might come up whilst away, just in case. The management tends to get a bit nervous when they know you are single thread and there’s nobody else who can fill in for task X, should the need arise. And even though I am single thread on many things I do, the chances are that no emergencies will arise in my absence. And the company will go on. My single threadedness remains only the smallest drop in a very large bucket. So I won’t actually let that bother me. Much. I have much more important things on the horizon with which to prioritize my emotions, thoughts, and energy.

Today I’ve caught up on several posts and projects that have been rattling around. I made some bibs for our bloggy babes. My hand painting is crude – the pencil sketches turned out much nicer than the actual product, once rendered in paint. And even though it’s not much, and they didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped and imagined, it’s something that I wanted to do.

Now, to send them off!

I’ve been on a roll.

I’ve had some sewing projects on my mind for some time, and have finally tackled them. This dragon pattern is from Winterwood Toys in Australia, and I fell in love with it when I first saw it. I bought the kit, which is a divine rainbow hand dyed wool felt, but I wanted to try it with plain fabric as well. Also, I only get one chance with that wonderful wool, so I wanted to do a practice run anyway. When I do the wool, it will be for my new little one. But big brother has announced that he wants one too. My fingers will be quite sore from stitching!

I had visions of using fun fabrics and the rolled edge serger stitch to make all sorts of fast and fabulous toys, but learned quickly, during my recent foray into the land of piggies, that that wasn’t to be. I didn’t even attempt to use the serger on this dragon. The pattern, when I opened it, seemed so small. The display that I thought I remembered in the store was much larger. My memory is probably off. I enlarged the pattern by quite a bit, and the end product is still smaller than I’d imagined it would be, but I think it’s delightful. I made some modifications, in that I stuffed the wings and didn’t quilt them, and I made my own mane pattern, since the original pattern was missing that detail. Also, I stuffed it. It looks like a pompadour in the photo!

I was planning on making two, but all this detail work is more than I imagined, so I’m not ready to take on another. Except the wool versions. And then I’ll be hand-stitching. I’m finding that I enjoy the wool and the hand-stitching.

All in all, I love the look of these small toys, but the execution is excrutiating. My fingers are sore from stitching and turning and stuffing such tiny pieces. I don’t know how toy makers do it. It’s a fun project to tackle once in a blue moon though!

I’ve been meaning to make these for quite some time. I had the pattern squirreled away for over twenty years, but couldn’t find it. Then my grandmother relinquished the coveted heirloom set to my mother, who passed it to me, and I was able to make a new pattern from them.

The beginnings.

I also wanted to try toy making with my serger, using the rolled edge stitch, which I LOVE. Sadly, I’m learning that sergers don’t do well with small things or curves. They work great for long straight things. It could very well be me, though. I’m new to sergers.

I used the serger on the mother, but went back to the old fashioned tried and true sewing machine for the piglets. Even so, I find that making such small things is quite difficult with a machine. It would have helped if I’d chosen friendlier fabrics, but I had my heart set on these fun prints.

Some of the piglets are a bit wonky, but isn’t that the way siblings are? Some have different characteristics than others, but they all have their finer points (siblings, not stuffed piglets). All in all, I think they exhibit personality. Not the best workmanship, but they’re cute, and I’m not displeased.

Spurred by a recent visit to Target in which we found it impossible to steer past the toy aisle without the young lad going berserk, I devised a plan. No, you can’t have everything you see and everything you want. These things are privileges, and you must earn them.

Okay, so I tried to put it in terms of 3-1/2 year old language skills. The Good Boy Chart. I made a set of magnets with happy pictures and a chart with ten spaces to fill. Good boy deeds earn magnets. But they can also be forfeited. So it’s one step forward, two steps back. But he gets it! So all week he’s been working on earning stars, and he is now very close to earning a reward. He wants a Batman mask.

Last night he opted to continue with his bad behavior, and have a star removed. It was quite amazing to me, that he weighed the cost of the transgression, and decided he’d rather go on doing what he was doing, which was something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, but which was FUN! …and forfeit a star.

I can see we’re going to have our work cut out for us.

We did remove the star, then he decided he’d go ahead and stop doing what he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He wanted the star back, because he’d stopped, but I explained that he had had his chance, and now he has to earn it back again.

I’m a tough mamma-jamma.

*~*~*~*~*~*

My 8 year old nephew is spending the weekend, and my little guy’s behavior slides drastically during such times. He (my nephew) is the sweetest boy, but I think my son just gets too wound up and excited to have him here. Consequently, there were meltdowns and a significant loss of stars. This morning we worked hard doing jobs to earn them back. Sadly, Target was freshly out of the coveted Batman mask, but happily, they had a bazillion other things to choose from, and my little one was tickled pink to get to choose… …a Transformer -Barricade- which also, as luck would have it, was marked down to $5 from $20. Woot.