Looking Like Busey but sewing like Martha

Pants! Pants! Get 'em while they're hot.
I wanted to warm up my sewing skills (it's been a little while since I've sewn an entire garment) with something for Harlan so I made him a quick pair of elastic waist pants with this stretch corduroy houndstooth fabric. I like the way they turned out except that they are HUGE no matter how you dice it. Harlan is a tall and lanky baby, he is not one of the ones you may see with the chunked-out thighs that roll over the knees and the squooshy tushy. I am therefore putting these pants away for next fall, which I think is a more appropriate time to sport this fabric anyhow. Perhaps I'll knit him a brown sweater to go with them. Next I'm going to make him some pull-on pants using a different pattern and some cotton broadcloth since the warm weather is upon us. Afterwards I will go straight into sewing that blouse for myself that I posted about doing a while back. The New Vintage Wardrobe dress will come next, when my skills are good and heated up.

Today we went out in search of sneakers for Harlan over in the Fulton Mall. Fulton Mall is an outdoor strip of Fulton Street that runs maybe a mile and is completely filled with "urban" brands of clothing and jewelry, cheap household goods, and of course a few fast-food stores thrown in in case one gets hungry. If you are like I am and always thought that urban meant city, then you have not worked in advertising. It was there that I discovered that urban actually means inner-city, and not all of a city. In this urban mecca we strolled into Jimmy Jazz which I love because it gets The Clash song stuck in my head day. Harlan ended up with an adorable pair of Adidas white leather sneakers with olive green Velcro tabs across the front. Good stuff. I may go back to get him a giant down parka for next winter since they are selling them for only $29. They have giant fake fur edges on the hoods too. No one will mess with Harlan at the playground if he has that one, believe you me.

As we left and wandered towards Atlantic Ave to buy some middle eastern food I passed a store that for some insane reason I have never noticed before. Sav-A-Thon was right there, tucked in a side street, just waiting for me to discover it. There it was, just what I thought Brooklyn and all of lower Manhattan had lost to gentrification, a giant old-fashioned sewing and craft supply store. They had cotton muslin in white and all colors of the spectrum for only $2.99 a yard, as well as everything else a girl could want. I picked up some elastic, buttons, bobbins and a new pattern as well. I have been wanting to buy cheap muslin to try sewing my vintage dress with before using the fancy fabric I bought at Purl, but I didn't want to wait until going up to the garment district to have to buy any. What a great find!

The last couple of days have been pretty good around here as far as mail goes. I got packages from Bitter Betty and Future Girl in exchange for a couple of little craft supplies I sent them (see old post about getting rid of craft supplies). Here's what I got:
From Future Girl, some lovely vintage trim (I'm especially fond of the German stuff) and yarn for me to make some amigurumi critters with eventually. Hooray! And look how romantic the people on the yarn package are. You know it's good stuff when lovers use it.

Next I got some ric rac and a zipper and more German looking vintage trim from Bitter Betty. But what else is in the picture you ask? It's one of her amazing decoupaged embroidery hoops. I'm so excited to use it as a frame for an embroidery (or a photo transfered onto fabric, I can't decide what to put in it right now). Thanks ladies!

As I mentioned in a comment on someone else's blog last night, I have been walking around lately looking at my reflection in store windows to see if Gary Busey's mug shot is looking back at me. If you don't remember that picture, perhaps you can recall the recent mug shot of the diaper-wearing astronaut? Same feeling. Last week I ended up with a shiner after falling down a flight of steps in my friend's lobby. I had Harlan in the sling and was carrying a ton of bags so I couldn't see my own feet and they were slippery from the melting snow outside. I flew down and landed on my butt-bone. Harlan had a bump on his forehead and I could not figure out what he had bumped it on. The next morning I woke up and had a giant black and purple bruise over the bone above my right eye, the same side of my body that I carry Harlan on. I guess my back hurt so much that I didn't even notice the slam to my face. Add to this my hair which had a month's worth of white roots that gradually turned pale orange to dark orange to reddish brown, and I was a sight for sore eyes . It's amazing how much it affects my mood when I look crappy. You would think that considering I am not single, nor do I go to work each day that it wouldn't matter, but it actually really does. Just like when it's dark and rainy outside, if I look like Gary Busey I am not in a good mood. Well, luckily today everything has changed. My eye bruise is minimal, I dyed my hair (and therefore it is also clean), and it's seventy degrees and sunny out. Life is good.

You know why else it is good? Today on Martha, Jenn Docherty was the special guest crafter and she demonstrated how she felts little birds. I have been dying to make one of these but was not quite sure if there was more to it than I thought there was (there isn't, just make a shape with roving and poke with felting needle). That Martha may come across on screen like a real pill, but she has great taste as well as her finger on the pulse. Thank goodness for my Tivo (so I don't have to sit through the entire program) although now that The O.C. is no more, and The Office seems to have disappeared I'm not sure what I can veg out to when I'm just too pooped to do anything else. Even my Showtime favorite The L Word ended this weekend (anyone else hoping Jenny dies out at sea and doesn't get picked up by some hot lesbian boat of Coast Guard babes?)
More time to read I suppose.