Maker Faire Ticket Giveaway

Extra! Extra! Get 'em while they're hot! If you are going to be in Austin on the weekend of October 18th and 19th, and you would like to go to the Maker Faire, I can help you with the cost of tickets, courtesy of Average Jane Crafter. The adult tickets cost $25 each, the student tickets cost $15 each, and the youth tickets cost $10 each. I have FIVE to give away (2 adult, 2 student, 1 youth). Please note that you must be an actual student or an actual youth to use the allocated tickets. In order to enter the drawing, please leave a comment by 1:00 PM CST, Monday, October 6th. I will draw winners at that point and post the results. The comment that you leave must include an e-mail address where I can find you (unless I can find your e-mail through your personal profile that you post with), what kind of tickets you want and how many, and one of two things (yes, there's a twist): 1) A link to something handmade that is for sale that you would love to buy for yourself if you got some free money, or 2) A brief description of something you do to help other people or make the world a better place. I will choose three random winners. If the total amount of tickets requested by the three random winners leaves leftovers, I will draw names from posters requesting the type of tickets leftover. In other words, if, after choosing the three winners there is a youth ticket left, I will draw names from posters who requested a youth ticket. Good luck!

In making news, I took a day off from working on items to sell, and made Harlan some muscle car shorts with this cool fabric. He gasped when I showed them to him, but then I had to practically twist his arm to get him to try them on for a photo. He's very fickle these days.

Rose & Duke got a mention this week on the Wickedly Chic blog, thanks ladies!

PLEASE REMEMBER TO INCLUDE YOUR E-MAIL IN YOUR COMMENT, IF YOUR PROFILE DOES NOT INCLUDE IT! I HAVE A FEW COMMENTS ALREADY WITH NO MEANS OF CONTACT.

Almost Famous

Rachel Hobson of Average Jane Crafter interviewed me for her column on Craft Magazine's website. Thanks so much Rachel, you rock!

The dress is a sample that I made recently, but there should be about twenty unique dresses in time for the Bizarre Bazzar at Maker's Faire. Each dress is made from a vintage hand-embroidered pillowcase, and is fastened with vintage buttons. This is my first step away from hand embroidering items myself, and moving into producting garments that can be made faster, but are still special and different from other items usually found in children's clothing stores. As many of you have probably figured out by this point, hand embroidering isn't exactly fast, and therefore is not very cost-productive. I hope the dresses are a hit!

DRUMROLL AGAIN!

Kim kindly declined an apron. Her comment on my post was not an entry into the draw :)

The actual winner is now......

Brook!

Brook's blog has some fantastic embroidery on it lately. I know she will look super hot in her new apron. Congratulations mama!

DRUMROLL PLEASE!

And the winner of the vintage chicken scratch apron giveaway is......



KIM!
Kim, you didn't mention in your post which apron you want. I will e-mail you and find out.
There will be lots more similar giveaways in the future. I'm telling y'all that Austin is a treasure trove of inexpensive vintage goodness. I have to say that it was really a pleasure to get comments from people I never heard from before in addition to those whom I know. I am not that great at always responding to comments, but I sure do love getting them, and also discovering some great new blogs from commenters.

Sorry, but there are no photos in my post for the first time. I'm scrambling to work on clothing-making whenever I get the chance and the camera is sitting in its drawer. More exciting posts next week!

Vintage Chicken Scratch Apron Giveaway!

Last weekend while doing some vintage-goodness shopping, I came across these two old aprons with chicken scratch embroidery on them, and could not resist. Once I got home, I remembered that I don't even wear aprons very often, and I knew that one of these lovelies deserved a home with someone who could really appreciate it. Since chicken scratch is all the rage in crafty blogland these days, I just know there is someone out there reading this who will want one of these aprons. Leave a comment saying which apron you want (I only will give away one) before next Tuesday, and a week from today I'll have Harlan draw a name at random from a hat. Be sure and comment with a way that I can contact you via e-mail should you win :)

Another cute mid-century kid's chair was scored here in the great state of Texas:

Also in crafty goodness news: New curtains for Harlan's closet, sewn from Ikea fabric (forgive the lousy photo).

A plain denim skirt made from the Sew What! Skirts book that I bought a loooong time ago. Yes, it's another photo that doesn't do the subject justice. The skirt came out really cute, but no one is around to help me take a photo right now, so it's just me, the bathroom, and the lack of tri-pod.

Going in the mail tonight is a wedding gift for some friends who got married back in June. I actually had completed the pillow on time, but I was waiting for the second piece of the gift to become finished (it's something Joe made) before mailing it. I hope the recipients are not reading this before they get the pillow. If so, sorry it's so late! The fabric in the background is the same fabric I used to back the pillow with.

French knot details on bride-kitty's dress:

Some vintage 40's rayon crepe fabric that I'm going to make my next super lightweight TX style skirt with:

I'm a little unsure of how it will look once it's on me. It may too shear, and too unflattering, but I'm going to finally take the plunge and cut it up. I've had it sitting around since I got in Portland way back in the day.

Ladies, check their shoes FIRST!!!

OK blogland friends, I have been sitting on this juicy story for a couple of months now, and I can't keep it to myself any longer. To those of you ladies who are single, and to all of us who remember being single, what is one of the first things you check out when you meet a man you might be interested in? It's the shoes, right? He might be cute, but if he's just wearing jeans and a t-shirt or some other nondescript outfit, it's always necessary to see the shoes so that you know if he's going go home and put The Clash on his stereo, if he's more of a Dave Matthews kind of guy. Yes, there are other kinds of guys too, but I find that most young men fall into one of these two basic categories. Well, today I have to tell you all that a good friend of mine was out on the town a couple of months ago, and she definitely went a little too far "into her cups" as they say in the south. She brought home a gentleman whom she had met several times before, and the next morning, she saw HIS SHOES for the first time. Can you imagine the horror? That's all I'm going to say here my friends. I should warn any of you at work that when I sent the link to those shoes to a couple of girlfriends at work, they laughed so hard and so loud, that they had to share the shoes with everyone else in their offices.

In news from my home front, there has been a bunch of hand-embroidering going on for the upcoming Maker's Faire in October. We also celebrated Joe's birthday this weekend, with a surprise (that I arranged) visit from Joe's best buddy Neilson.
Luckily Neilson enjoys good food, and so we spent the weekend doing the local gastronomic tour. First stop was at Torchy's Taco truck which recently merged with another truck called Shuggies (I think) in a larger space. Joe ordered the chicken fried BLT from Shuggies, and it was phenomenal. Cushioned in between a squooshy hoagie roll was lettuce, tomato, some green chilies, mayonnaise, and several pieces of bacon that have been fried in fried chicken batter. The bacon tasted totally crispy and surprisingly light.
We also got to sample some tasty jalapeno hush puppies. Oh yea. Of course some tacos were part of the meal as well.
I'm pretty sure this is the barbacoa taco with queso fresco, cilantro, avocado, and lime.

I baked a chocolate cake for Joe's birthday and got lots of help from Harlan, who is recently really into helping me bake. Any time he hears the Kitchen Aid mixer going and he's not already helping, he comse running in with his stool and slides it up to couter to help.