Showing posts with label Austin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Austin. Show all posts

Friday, February 20, 2009

On the mend

Have you heard the one about the disappearing blogger?
Tea towel made as a surprise for a friend

When it comes down to it, I really can not do it all. As much as I, and every other mother I know wants to, it's just not possible. So there are choices. And they need to be prioritized. When I began this blog I did so in the hopes that virtually keeping track of my projects would help me finish them, and help me stay in touch with other bloggers who enjoy making things, baking, and taking photos of their accomplishments.
Pants made for Harlan this month. They were not intended to look like M.C. Hammer pants, but they kind of do.

What turns out to be possible, is that I eek out precious bits of time to make things (without keeping track of anything,) I bake things constantly (despite theoretically being on the Weight Watchers points diet,) I sit down to read my favorite bloggers' blogs, and keep in touch with them through commenting on their blogs, and I continue to take photos on a daily basis.

detail of pocket. Train fabric from Leslie.

When it comes down to my own blog, life seems to get in the way most of the time. Since moving to Austin a year and a half ago, I have not gone more then four weeks without any allergy symptoms. I do not mean a few sneezes and watery eyes either. We're talking sore throat, coughing that ends up in loud fits of gagging, partial to total loss of my voice, and completely blocked nasal passages that force me to sleep sitting up like the elephant man did (for some reason the one thing I always remember from the super tragic movie is that he had to sleep sitting up due to his messed up breathing issues). Do I sound like an old kvetcher, ready to move down to Boca yet (I wonder how the allergies are down there)? To add to all this glory, the state of being allergic so often has generally lowered my immune system and made me more vulnerable to infection. Since November, I have been fighting a sinus infection that has given me fever and chills, and body aches and exhaustion. It took me three months of living like this (with two brief periods of feeling well mixed in there) to finally stop and consider that maybe it wasn't just allergies that were bothering me. And now, on a ten-day course of antibiotics, I feel like a new woman. I am also seeing an allergist about taking weekly shots to stave off allergic reactions. I'm telling everyone this because I have basically been spending the last couple of months just going through the motions. There has not been enough time to get work done, let alone blog about what I am stitching while laying on the sofa with my eyes propped open. And now I feel that I am coming out of a tunnel and hopefully rejoining the land of the living.

Truck pants made for Harlan last month, using really expensive black stretch denim that I got in NYC to make a skirt for myself with. I have no idea why I blew it on these pants. I guess I didn't realize that one could not get similar fabric at local fabric chains like Jo-Ann's.

Moving to Austin may have given me massive allergies that will require weekly shots for a very long time, but honestly I fucking love it here. Winter with the sun shining almost every day, and warm enough weather to play outside is really the antidote to a lot of things in my book.




I recently just managed to get some of the vintage pillowcase dresses up in the shop. It was not easy to get fantastic photos of the dresses due to their being white and flowing. I'm working on getting better shots, but for now, click on the photos and check out the detail shots which I think came out quite nicely with my macro lens. Also, check out the new sleeper sets and romper dresses.
Long-sleeved onesies are still available for a couple more months too!

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Picopter Pants and other tales

Now that life is falling into place a bit, I am returning to doing things that I enjoy, such as working on projects planned for before we moved to Austin.

Case in point: I bought some helicopter fabric from Superbuzzy (do I even need to link it anymore?) back in August to make curtains for Harlan's room. It turns out that the blinds in there don't offend me as much as I originally thought they would, and the kid is totally, completely, obsessed with what he calls "piecopters". There are quite a bit of piecopters flying around Austin for some reason. We have even seen two of them make landings on near by hospital roofs (there are about a trillion hospitals here for some reason. They all have special purposes too, like the heart hospital, the children's hospital, the eye hospital, the trauma hospital, the big toe hospital, and the eyebrow hospital). I broke out the fabric and made Bub some pants that he refuses to take off:


I also recently bought him some frog rain boots at Target which he is quite fond of wearing:
This is the outfit he picked out today to wear to Ikea. We went there to pick out new bathroom supplies because we are finally getting the bathrooms renovated, hooray! I will post before and after photos when the work is finished. The bathrooms are way too gross now to simply post before photos. Seriously. If you thought our balcony looked like Sanford and Son's, you don't even want to know what's in the loos.

Harlan's latest obsession besides piecopters are pillow houses. We discovered pillow houses last week over at chez Ellen & Brennan. Their sons pull all the pillows from the house together and dump them across the living room floor. They then proceed to throw themselves on top of the pillows and one another. For, like, hours. It seems to never get old. They like to be buried in piles of pillows and pretend to be chickens coming out of the eggs too. That's good times. Here they all are at Harlan's first pillow house:

And here is Harlan at home with his own pillow house. Please note the pillow I made from Superbuzzy fabric!
Doesn't he look just like a newborn chick?

Here are the guys at a trip to the zoo last week:
And here is a lousy shot of an amazing band called the Quebe Sisters. You can listen on that link.
They are a family with three sisters who all won Texas fiddle contests (one is the national champ as well) and they sing the loveliest harmonies I have heard in years. Plus, you really can't beat triple fiddle.
If you're wondering how we got to see a band play, just notice the playscape (that's 2008 speak for "jungle gym") structure behind the tent. The local fancy supermarket has a restaurant and a huge deck and playground (with a heart hospital right on the other side! And the hospital that Ladybird Johnson died in, one block away) attached to it. On the weekends they have bands play for free outdoors so that suckers like us with kids can pretend we still have social lives. I don't want to make all of you who are freezing feel jealous, but it does feel pretty awesome to spend a winter evening sitting outdoors in a light dress and watch the sun set while drinking a margarita and listening to a kick-ass live band play. Did I mention the playscape behind the tent where Harlan is happy to run amok for two hours?


And now, I am introducing my new blog collection of local bumper stickers. Here are the best of the past week.

Irony and humor:


Scaring you away from hell with the threat of an angry and wrathful God:


That's right sistah:


Whatever it takes to keep you away from the devil:

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Down in Old San Antone

I've been hard at work making different items to sell, and I won't be showing most of them here until they're all complete and Stitch is right around the corner. In the mean time here is one design I've been working on. First, I wanted to do this little bunny for a wall hanging:
I had already sewn this embroidery from early on this summer into a wall hanging:
Then the bunny's balloon reminded me of a cute shirt that Harlan received as a gift for his first birthday. It had a large number one on it. I fooled around with a couple of variations:
and


Last Sunday the Crumble family went for a quick drive south to San Antonio to visit our pals Ellen and Brennan and their sons Quentin and Emmett. Ellen and I were college roommates our freshman year at Reed, and Brennan came as a freshman the following year. I still remember the letter I received from Ellen the summer before we met. She told me that she loved rock 'n roll and was currently listening to Daniel Johnston, Fire Hose, The Meat Puppets, and Neil Young (also a weakness of mine). She drove her grandparents old beater while smoking and listening to the radio, and she wondered what kind of car I had and if I was bringing it with me. I knew right away that we were going to hit it off even though I didn't yet know how to drive (I was a NYC kid- none of us drove). During our spring break freshman year we embarked on a road trip to Idaho and ended up going all the way to San Antonio, Ellen's home town. It was my first trip to Texas and I was hooked!

Here we are in our dorm room, dressed up like Gun's & Rose's for fun:


And these are shots of one another that we took during that road trip, in San Antonio:

I can't believe I'm sporting the vintage men's vest in both photos. What the f was I thinking? Even worse than the fact that this look was in fashion then is that it's on its way back. I just saw it in Lucky and almost felt compelled to write them a letter telling begging them to just let it go with acid wash and the other bad late 80's fashion choices.
I almost feel badly for the models.

Ellen and I drifted in and out of touch with each other over the years since college ended, and eventually we both lived close to one another in Brooklyn. Last spring Ellen returned to San Antonio and we are neighbors once again. I think she looks exactly the same now as she did almost twenty years ago. And look what cute critters she and Brennan brought into the world:


After eating some killer breakfast burritos (San Antonio is something like 80% Mexican and the Mexican food there is amazing) we went to a local park.


The picnic house at the park looks a lot like a famous San Antonio landmark:


I got a bit lost trying to find I-35 to get home from the park, but the big blue Texas sky did not disappoint.






That's my kind of October day. Guess what else we do in Texas in October?

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

I've got Bento Fever and I'm in Love

Now that Harlan goes to school in the mornings, it is up to me to pack him a lunch each day. Never mind that he only seems to like hot dogs cheese and fruit, I still need to pack these items in his super-duper lunch bag. I'm sure many of you who pack lunches are familiar with this site about bento lunches and ideas for what to put inside them. For those of you who love all things cute and Japanese, here are my latest acquisitions, all purchased under the premise that Harlan will like to eat what is inside things that are cute:





The best place I found online to get great bento boxes and accessories is ebay. There I discovered the colorful silicon baking cups that make great food holders inside larger bento boxes (or any larger plastic box). They sell a good assortment of these on amazon.

Here are good websites that carry Decole and other cute goodies. WARNING: LOCK WALLET UP BEFORE PROCEEDING:
http://www.sugarpinebeauty.com/ (type decole into search)
http://www.pancakemeow.com
http://spiralling.typepad.com/shop/
http://www.loloko.com/catalog/decole.html
http://www.shelovesstars.co.uk/

Click here to see the most amazing bento lunches ever.
My Nikon D70 SLR takes great photos but unfortunately one can only use the manual settings with a specific lens that I do not own and can not justify purchasing right now. My condo (like most structures in hot climates) is very shady. It is surrounded by dense trees and has long eaves that hang over the windows, keeping it cool but also quite dark. It's nearly impossible to get a good photo of anything on my porches or inside, but here are a few peeks. This is my trendy gnome and mushroom doormat, courtesy of Target:


This is the are in front of my front door. My mother gave me the beautiful bougainvillea, which I have always always always wanted to grow, ever since seeing them all over Florida. Anyone remember Poppy the Pig? I have filled him and a metal bucket with various succulents. I love me some succulents, ever since seeing them all over San Francisco. Now I live in a climate where they will thrive happily. The man at the gardening store warned me to bring them indoors when the temp. drops below forty. How can this be? What about all the giant ones I see on everyone else's front lawn? Does anyone know? I have many more planted out back on our deck but no photos yet.


Here's the cabinet I bought at Ikea recently to keep my fabric in. I may not have my craft room yet, but at least I don't keep it all under the bed anymore.

This is the area over our sideboard in our living room. It's what we see when we are sitting on the sofa on the opposite wall (which I will photograph when I finish making pillows for it).

Here is a close up of my Halloween chicks, purchased from Jennifer Murphy.

They're just so dang cute, and the fact that they are made in China did not deter me from buying them in the least. It's great that Jennifer had such a high demand for her products that she was able to outsource making them. One lesson I learned back when I went to that Design Sponge sponsored event for people starting their own businesses (be sure and click the link as it goes to all the files from the event) is that most buyers are interested in the design and price of items, along with the story that is behind them. Were they designed by a famous RISD grad who used to work for Martha Stewart but then dropped out of the corporate world to raise her daughter and sit around crocheting pot holders that she started selling on the street corner? Apparently most consumers are only interested in the story up to a certain point, and after that the price is an issue. Making things by hand in the U.S. is costly because the cost of living here is so high. Minimum wage is even up to $7.50 an hour in some states (still too low in my opinion but that's another discussion). If any of us expect to make a living by making things by hand then we have to charge accordingly and the question that remains is, Will people buy a bunch of Halloween pom pom chicks for $20 a chick? I wouldn't. Not because I don't respect the time that went into making it, but because right now I can't afford it (although I have found a way to justify such purchases many times in the past). Now, happily there are some people who can afford it and will shell out the big bucks for things that are locally made. These are most of the people who buy my stuff, and I'm happy they are there, but the truth is that I can only make one or two items a day and that is not enough to live off of. So, I have finally found a company in New Jersey whom I am working with to make a couple of my designs by machine. The process is not cheap, because they are in New Jersey and not China, but I want to keep my products 100% American made and charge accordingly, hoping that customers will still support me because they like the designs, the workmanship, and the fact that the products are all locally made. The one glitch I am having right now is color matching machine threads to DMC colors. We'll have to see the results when my samples get back. I hope that I can eventually have everything I design made professionally so that I can spend my own time making things for myself and designing. You get tired of embroidering or sewing the same exact design over and over by hand. Getting back to Jennifer Murphy for a moment, does anyone know where one can buy the material used to make the kind of bears she and Molly Chicken make? I would love to try making a few for gifts (gifts for myself that is) but I have never seen any place that sells that type of faux fur.

This weekend Joe and I did some iron-on transfers on t-shirts for Harlan. They came out pretty cute. Guess which two designs I found and which two Joe found. Scroll down for answer.


The two of the left are Joe's. The first is an Pogo image that is super cute. He wanted to do another one using a Love and Rockets image but we could not find any that worked on a t-shirt for a little boy. Instead he went with a good old fashioned Black Flag logo. I chose a page from Richard Scary's most beautifully illustrated book I Am a Bunny, and of course the Stray Cats logo. We have to keep Harlan old school.

I have one last question to pose for my readers. I've cancelled the business Bun Bun Babythreads with the state of NY. I need to reopen it here in Texas, but I also want to change the name so that people don't assume everything I sell is for babies (I often hear, "Oh, I don't know anyone with a baby"). I'm thinking I should keep Bun Bun as a prefix for the name but don't know what to put after it. Let me know if you have any ideas.

For good tunes, go here and listen to Petra Hayden's genius cover of Thriller and breathtaking a Capella version of God Only Knows. I heard Petra's a Capella cover of a Journey song while driving Joe to work one morning on a local radio station. The music in Austin is one of its main draws, and I'm relishing in discovering new artists to listen to now that I'm here. I don't get out to many (many being zero) shows any more, so being able to actually depend on the radio for good music is a saving grace.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Victory!


Apologies for the lengthy hiatus, but the movers finally arrived and I have not had much free time ever since.

Of course the move in did not occur without major drama. The truckers finally phoned us to say that they were in Houston and would arrive the following morning. The next day (while Joe was at work, even though we had planned to move in to occur when he still had three weeks left of vacation) The driver called me to say he was downstairs and that his 18-wheeler would not be able to get into the apartment complex. He asked me to come downstairs.

I strapped Harlan onto my hip because otherwise he runs in the opposite direction of wherever we are going. We descended into the heat and humidity and walked all over the parking area while the driver pointed out problems with bringing his truck in. Either he would not be able to turn the truck around to go back out the entrance, or else the truck would hit electrical wires that covered the exit. Keep in mind that the driver had me walking all over the property to show me these pitfalls while Harlan and all 4500 pounds of him squirmed and squealed on my hip because he wanted to get down and run. OK, I said. No 18 wheeler. What next?

The driver told me he would have to go rent a U-haul and "find some guys" to help him move everything from the 18 wheeler on to the U-haul, and then up the steps into my apartment. I quickly called a friend of mine to find out where the local day laborers hang out. I told the driver and he thanked me because You can get those guys without paying them much.

I got in my car with Harlan and drove to the ATM to get money and then to the supermarket to get sandwiches, fruit salad, cokes and waters to give to the guys. There was no way I was going to contribute to exploiting some poor immigrants who were about to move all my crap twice in the heat.

Never mind that Moishe's guaranteed that our stuff would be delivered a month before it actually arrived and still expected me to pay for it. They had also promised me that their long distance truckers were theirs (they were not. They were contractors, which explains why their truck was not replaced when it broke down) and that the movers on the other end were also theirs (they were not. They were day laborers that I had to find for the truckers and had to pay so that they were not exploited by the truckers). Keep in mind that Moishe's is supposedly the moving company with the best reputation nationwide. Moishes's moving company. I threw that sentence in for google searchers to find this story. Long distance movers. There's another one for googlers.

So, the stuff is here, some is broken but most is not. Our queen sized mattress for some reason looks like a giant ass sat on it. We can not figure out what happened, but each side of the mattress is majorly indented and there is a thick, high, mound running vertically down the center of the thing. It's a bit unsettling.

Now for the fun part- unpacking all the goodies and decorating a whole new place. Little did I realize how much I disliked so many aspects of my last place. I must admit it's good to be home.


P.S. These photos are all of Harlan at his favorite new place on earth- the new Town Lake Park which has a giant area with a spiral in the center that shoots water and cool steam at various heights and intervals, and is surrounded by tiny pools for the toddlers to get down and splash around in. It's my new Ft. Greene Park. We go every afternoon after Harlan's nap and meet up with all the other neighborhood moms and their toddlers. I must admit, we ended up in a pretty awesome spot.


Tune in next time to hear about the $175 speeding ticket I got for going 29 in a school zone and to see the latest crafty decorating as well as my new Decole goodies and great places to get some of your own.

Monday, August 20, 2007

The Album Cover



I got lucky with this photo. Harlan was running amok in his favorite playground and I was trying to get at least one non-blurry photo. I didn't have to do anything to adjust this one, it just came out great.

Last Saturday we cruised a couple of yard sales (Scored a P.D. Eastman board book for 50 cents, which is great because Harlan is learning the alphabet with these Eric Carle animal/alphabet cards and now his new board book) and then went on to my all-time favorite place to shop: The City-Wide Garage Sale. As we walked into the auditorium we noticed people coming out holding lots of good stuff. Good stuff that they should have known not to buy because I was on my way. Stuff like antique children's western rocking chairs and Haywood-Wakefield dressers. These gloaters wore badges on their chests that announced that they were Early Shoppers. Turns out anyone can get there at 8:30 (an hour and a half before the doors open to the rest of us slugs) and pay $10 to go all Wilma & Betty when the horn sounds for the sale to begin. I shouldn't complain because I got what I went for: Two antique metal wall sconce/shelves to hang in our bathrooms (no photo sorry) and some vintage embroidered pillowcases for $2 each from the guy who always has four giant tables of vintage linens in massive heaps that you have to dig through along with other crazed enthusiasts. I love how soft vintage cotton and linen bedding is. Check out the French Knots on the first one:




I also have to admit that one thing I love about Austin is the abundance of taco trucks. Here's one at the closest gas-station to our apartment to sell Willie Neilson's Biofuel(the store that carries our regular B99 was closed on Sunday and my tank was seriously empty):



I got a phone call on Saturday from the driver of the truck with all of our belongings on it. They were broken down in West Virginia. I called him this evening and he says he'll be here tomorrow or Wednesday. I'll believe it when I see it. So far I have gotten pretty good at making dinners that you can bake on tin foil and serve on plastic plates. Last night we had pecan crusted salmon, baked asparagus with parmesean, and corn on the cob. I salted it with salt packs left over from a trip to Sonic. I refuse to pay for salt when I have perfectly good salt coming to me any day now in a truck.