Doin' my Homework

Between South by Southwest, old friends and family in town, and the bathroom renovations, it's a miracle I have accomplished anything above and beyond keeping my hair clean and my kitchen clean. I eek in time when I can these days, and my Superbuzzy stash is finally going to good use.
We bought this rocker at Ikea when we first moved to Austin. When we got home, there were no cushions included. I am not sure if we got ripped off or not, but I ended up buying some foam at a local upholstery store, and making my own covers for Harlan's very own rocking and reading chair. I used a cotton/linen blend on the back of the chair, and the sides of the bottom. I also used a green Kona cotton, some of the Joel Dewberry faux bois print, and the Superbuzzy trees. My brand new Janome machine came in super handy and I decided to trip out my pillow with this stitch along the borders of the fabrics:
Fancy, don't you think?
I also finally got around to buying a new foam seat for my mid-century love seat, and I covered it with some velvet Crypton fabric, and of course added some pillows made with Japanese fabric from Superbuzzy.

The blue leather ottoman is from John Derian in NY. It's one of my favorite stores of all time. In fact, I would be perfectly happy if Anthropolgie would move in next door, and City Bakery would move in on the other side. They could knock down all the walls, and I would move in and only let in my friends, people who promised to take in and care for stray animals, orphans from Africa and any eastern block country. O.K. you can also come into my store-house if you give me personal Pilates lessons each day with your expensive Pilates machine.

Those pillows on the sofa are also from my Superbuzzy stash, and I must admit that I sewed them a couple of months ago but forgot to post them. Here are details of all the pillows.


Here is a sneak peak of bathroom number one which is just about finished. The tiles are by Cocktail and the color is Mojito. They are made from recycled glass and they are super light and remind me of the ocean. I'm going to make both bathrooms pretty much the same, and my theme (yes, I'm giving my bathrooms a theme) is of course, the sea (or if you want it make it sound really fancy, let's call it la mer).

I've been slowly making more items for Rose & Duke, including more of the tree applique with painted deer shirts, onesies, and pants. I will be adding them to the shop tonight or tomorrow. I decided to stop hand painting the deer and go with using freezer stenciling them for now, since it's a little more crisp looking and leaves less room for error. A few of the hand-painted ones were not what I was hoping for and so I'll be adding them to a new SALE section of the site. I've also started sewing together the long-awaited waterproof play mats. These are great looking quilts with PUL waterproof backs. The PUL is the same fabric used in some cloth diaper covers to prevent liquid from getting to the other side of the cloth. The idea of the waterproof play mats is that they can be used with young babies whose diapers often leak (and who often puke all over the place unexpectedly). This way, mothers can protect their floors, beds, couches, and those of people whom they visit with baby in tow. The play mats are also perfect to bring to a park where grass may be wet from morning dew or rain. I hope these are a hit. Here is the first one I've put together:
As you can imagine it will be a challenge to photograph these since they are quite large. I'm probably going to make them in a large size and a small size, so that customers can have options.

As many of you know, I love to bake, and each week I make a batch of muffins, scones, or something else both tasty and full of fiber for us to grab in the morning and eat as we scurry out the door. I realized that if I at least post the breakfast of the week each week, along with accompanying recipe, that I'll be forcing myself to check in here four times a month. I think this is a must as I tend to get distracted easily and forget to post on a regular basis. This week's breakfast is a mixed-berry lemon muffin.
The special ingredient is a Meyer lemon which have been in the supermarkets around town this week. For those who have never had one before, those suckers are super sweet and delicious. I also made a big batch of vinaigrette with a few of them for salads.

Mixed Berry Meyer-Lemon Muffins:
2 sticks unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
Mix in mixer for about five minutes until light and fluffy. Add a swig of vanilla, and then slowly add four eggs, one at a time, being sure to mix well after each addition. Meanwhile, have four cups of well-mixed grains. I vary what I use here, and this week I used 1 cup of white flour, 1 cup of oat bran, almost 2 cups of stone ground whole wheat flour, and a dollop of ground flax seeds and wheat germ. Total grains should be 4 cups. Add to this 1/2 tsp. salt and 4 tsp. baking powder. Mix well. Grate the skin of an organic lemon (non-organic lemon skins are supposedly pretty chemical-laden) and add this to the grains. Have a cup of buttermilk set aside, and squeeze half a lemon into it. With the mixer on, alternate pouring in some flour with some buttermilk, ending with buttermilk. Add three cups of mixed frozen (or any kind of) berries. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes.
Last but not least, I'm excited to have joined Ravelry, the knit and crochet community. I first heard about over at Futuregirl's blog, and boy am I psyched to get back into my projects. If any of you are on Ravelry, please look me up (VioletteCrumble) and make me your friend! You know I love this web-community jazz.

Also, I need your opinion on something. Should I cover the rest of my mid-century sofa in the same pumpkin fabric that I just made a new seat in. I love the funky pattern of the original fabric, but I'm not sure if it's just too many crazy things going on at once. I am slowly learning how make my surroundings a bit more minimal looking. What say thee? Yea or nay?

Second post in two days!

I forgot to do self-promotion last night.

This past week, Rose & Duke was featured on the blog Cuteable:

I was also asked to participate in Funky Finds' March Giveaway of handmade baby items. One lucky winner will receive a Rose & Duke gift certificate for any shirt or onesise.

Be sure and enter the contest :)

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:

Drumroll please....

Rose & Duke is open for business!

I love the way the site turned out, and I have more products that I'll be adding to the site when they're ready.

Today I was thrilled to see that Rose & Duke got a mention on my favorite blog about web shops for kid's stuff: Bloesem kids.

I must warn you to hide your wallet before checking her site out. Every store she highlights sells the loveliest handmade items for children. It's addictive for shopaholics like myself.

In mail news January was a pretty exciting month over here. I won a contest on Chet & Dot's blog and check out the booty I received from Jenn:
That's right gals! I got a free Chet and Dot drawstring bag, a kleenex pack holder, a scalloped-edge wallet, a mini spool of twine, a bookmark, and my favorite, a tiny penguin ornament. I tell you it was better than Ed McMahon showing up at my door with balloons.

But wait, there's more! Last month I fell in love with a new blog, Elsa Mora. I found Elsita through the flickr embroidery group, but she also makes spectacular porcelain sculptures, detailed dresses, jewelry, and prints. Anyhow, Elsa highlighted one of the prints she made on her blog (it's called Motivations) and I commented that I wanted to purchase it when it went into her etsy shop.

Instead of putting it in the shop she sent it to me! I got it to frame and give to Joe for his classroom, although I'm looking forward to the summer when I get to have it back.

Lastly, I had pretty much given up hope of ever receiving my swap package from the Montessori by Hand holiday traditions swap. I sent my package out on the mid-December deadline, and when mine hadn't arrived before I left town for the holidays, I wrote to my swap partner. She had apparently accidentally sent my package to the wrong address and it was returned to her. Anyhow, it finally made it to me in late January and inside were some recipes, some truffles, and this adorable acorn hat family. Emily also included an envelope with some other acorn hats so that I could make my own. I have to admit these were worth the wait!

And here's another reason for a drum roll, after staying home with Harlan full-time since he was born I've finally gone back to work part-time. Now that Harlan has acclimated to Montessori school, I'm going to work at my own school each morning. I'm tutoring junior high students at a near by public school in a rural area that I had never been to before. It's only fifteen minutes away from my central Austin neighborhood, but you would never know you were right next to a city based on all the fields that stretch to the horizon. The weird thing is that it's kind of a rural ghetto. There may be expansive fields on either side of the two-lane road, but every few fields there is one filled with something like a row of pink dumpsters, a gentleman's club, or a cluster of mobile homes with cardboard window coverings (and yes, they are occupied). I'll have to start taking some pictures to add to the rural decay flickr group. There are some truly spectacular shots in this group, like this one, and this one, and this one.

It feels good to be back at work, not just because it gets me out of the house, but because as some of you may know I was suffering from stomach issues and ensuing panic attacks when I was in graduate school (and pregnant with Harlan). I was tutoring at a public school back in NYC at the time and it became physically impossible for me to continue the work I was doing as well as attending my classes. I could not get on a subway. I was positive I was going to need a bathroom or that there would be a bomb on the train, or that there would be a bomb scare and the train would stop and I would need a bathroom and not be able to get to one. I could not stop thinking about the people who were on the subway both during 9-11 and during the blackout a couple of summers later when subway riders were trapped for hours. It was a very rough period in my life, both because of the physical and emotional issues I was having, and because of how difficult it was for me to get those around me to understand that I was in a legitimate crisis and not able to control what was happening to my body. While panic attacks are common, people who have never had one can't really grasp how terrifying they are, and how much they can limit one's ability to function. In my personal situation, the panic attacks were a direct result of the stomach issues I was having during my pregnancy, and once Harlan was born, the fear of having more panic attacks did not help my stomach functionality return to normal. It became a case of the chicken and the egg whenever I had to give up control and get on a subway or bus or in a car, and I retreated into a safe and wonderful world in Fort Greene where I was lucky enough to be able to surround myself with compassionate and intelligent mama friends. For Harlan's first year I was never alone, and I never had to explain to anyone why I couldn't get on a subway and come meet them. I was also lucky enough to have Joe support me and believe that I would get better. He never pressured me to get on a subway that I couldn't get on, or to "try this or try that" as many other well-intentioned loved ones suggested.

I was not a stranger to the world of panic attacks when I became pregnant with Harlan. Back when I graduated college and began my first job teaching at a school for children with emotional and learning disabilities, I experienced panic attacks for the first time. This first time too, stomach issues were involved, as was the fear of getting on public transportation. The school was two very long bus-rides away from my house and I was lucky enough to have a best friend who drove me to work at the crack of dawn each morning, even though she had no reason to be up that early. Our friendship ended years later, but I will always be thankful for her help during my first crisis. I suppose I have been very lucky during both periods in my life when I was full panic-crisis-mode. If I had had to experience either time without such wonderful friends and loved ones, I'm not sure I would have made it through to the other side. Anyhow, the point of my divulging all of this personal information to the world is that my being able to take myself to work each morning means that it's finally over, and that I'm officially back in the world of the fully-functioning. For the most part I kept my crisis to myself, because it was difficult to explain and also because it was shameful. In retrospect I can't understand why I felt ashamed except that I was afraid of being judged. I suppose I'm not anymore.

Greetings earthlings

Yes, it has been a long time since I posted an entry here. The explanation for my absence is that we took a long vacation back to NYC for Christmas and then down to Florida for Harlan to meet my 95 year old grandparents.

Since our return I have made a new year's resolution to get my time management under control, and to prioritize what I spend my non-Harlan time doing. This blog has been bumped down a notch, along with reading my favorite blogs, because right now I am under a deadline for the launching of the new Rose & Duke site and so I'm spending whatever time I have working on samples of the 2008 designs to photograph. I also made it a new year's resolution to make more time to work on personal craft projects for my home and my family. It seems like I used to spend a ton of free time making cute outfits for Harlan and other nifty creations, but sadly that free time got all eaten up by work obligations, and suddenly what began as a fun way to make money without leaving the house became a very full time job. I am going to try and find balance this year my friends.

Without further ado I present the highlights of the past month:
Harlan enjoyed opening a ton of Christmas gifts at his grandma "Mimi's" apartment. It was so bittersweet to be home (Joe wonders how long it will be until we call Texas "home") and see all our family and friends. We miss everyone a lot but at the same time our peers with toddlers are stressing about finding places to live where a second child could fit, and getting their toddlers into pre-school. As many of you may know the pre-school scene in NYC is super competitive and expensive. These are two adjectives I'm not so thrilled with, and our trip basically reaffirmed that we made the right move to Austin.
Our trip to Flordia was ironically freezing cold. The local news seemed to have around the clock coverage of the local citrus growers and how they were trying to salvage their crops. Harlan enjoyed meeting his great grandparents, but let's just say they had forgotten how two year olds act and seemed to think that I had let a wild gorilla loose in their condo. Above is a photo of a house that had a crocheted gaslight cap. I really wanted to get up on the lawn and get a close up shot for the blog, but I was too chicken to get out of the car with my camera. There were a LOT of crocheted gaslight caps, all in green, white, and red for the holiday season (or because everyone in Florida is Italian, but I tend to think the holidays had more to do with it).
This photos was taken at a recent turkey fry potluck party that my friends Kevin and Jenifer hosted at their home here in Austin. The Jackalope that Harlan is posing on was made by Kevin at his amazing business Blue Genie Art. By the way, if you have never tasted a deep-fried turkey before you are seriously missing out. I went to the party thinking it would taste just like turkey except with a fried skin on the outside. Instead it turns out that frying a turkey seals in all the juices and flavors that end up pouring out of the meat when you bake it in an oven. D-licious. Below is a shot of Kevin deep frying some Twinkies. I didn't try these, but I heard they were pretty F'ing good too.

What's old is new

I went to hock my wears on S. Congress today in the Guerro's outdoor area, along with my friend Jody who also sells hand embroidered and appliqued children's clothes. Unfortunately, today was one of the only super cold and windy days in Austin this year. The winds were so strong that our entire tables and garment racks kept dumping over, so we packed up and decided to have a mamas' day out. Luckily for each of us we sold a couple of items in the short time we were there, covering the cost of the spot, and we scored a free make-up day next Saturday!

After a tasty lunch and couple of drinks we checked out the new old-fashioned candy store and ice cream fountain shop: Big Top. I've been watching them decorate the shop with giant circus posters for a while now, anticipating their grand opening:


There were wall to wall candies- the hard to find kind that you thought you would never see again!

The ones that immediately grabbed me were these chocolaty morsels, filled with liquid marshmellow:

Because the store just opened I knew that whatever I bought would be super fresh and I was not disappointed one bit. This Valomilk melted in my mouth, and the chocolate was surprisingly good quality. As soon as I saw these maple peanut balls in the bulk bins I knew I was a gonner:

What they lack in aesthetic value they more than make up for in taste and texture. Again, they were super fresh tasting. "Num num num" as Harlan would say (and as he did say when he got hold of the bag I left on the counter). Less appealing for taste value, but more appealing for ha ha value were these:

I also picked up some cinnamon toothpicks for my mom since we'll be seeing her up in NYC very soon:

Last week I received a surprise book from a secret friend of mine who works at Conde Nast and always hooks me up.
The new Son of Stitch 'N Bitch book by Debbie Stroller. The patterns were overwhelmingly cool and very clever. My favorites include the Lucha Libre ski masks:

The High Fidelity sweater (look- the pattern across the chest looks like 45 rpm records):

Joe wants me to make him this hat:


I guess I'll have to add it to my super long To Do list. Luckily I'll be able to get at that list soon. I've begun the Rose & Duke 2008 collection and have decided that once they're up and the site is launched (early Feb.) I'm going to relax and only fill web orders until the summer at which point I'll begin producing for next year's Christmas fair season. I seem to have spent all my "free" time over the past year working on embroideries and other business related stuff and suddenly I have no time to make anything for myself or my family. Suddenly it's no longer fun, and surprisingly unprofitable for the amount of effort involved. I may keep up with one retail store in Brooklyn and one here, but otherwise I would rather try to concentrate on the Christmas season when I can do what I've been doing on a more frequent level (I missed the deadlines to apply to a bunch of good craft fairs here this past season) and on web orders. This way I'll get all the profit myself and will also be able to make the whole thing more of a part time venture than it has been so far. I want to keep it fun! That said, here is a sneak peak of some of what I'm making for next year. A few of the designs are expanded and more detailed versions of the appliques I made at the beginning of last summer (see some old pears here.) These old applique designs were the first to sell at Stitch and the most fun (and least time consuming) to create. Bingo!
Happy Cherry Hoodie:

Happy Flan Onesie:

Happy peach face shirt:

A pair of pears:


I have a few more in the works as well, mostly inspired by Japanese sweets that show up in my craft books or on bento boxes or Decole goodies. I've seen a couple of crafters out there make really great stuffed versions of these sweets. Check out Cutseypoo and her egg tarts, Cocokoala's needle felted critters, She Like's Cute's softie pins. I can't get enough. What did old people do before the internets showed up? I feel like when Joe and I one day tell Harlan tales of how we grew up with telephones that were attached to walls and no internet, that he will think of these stories the same way we thought of the ones our parents told of growing up sitting around a radio on a Saturday night, and what they watched the first time they saw a television. Joe recently had such a conversation with one of his classes of high school seniors. A particularly funny student asked him if they had cars when he was a kid, or they had dirt. Perhaps I should call Bill Cosby and tell him this "kids are funny" anecdote. Perhaps he's already reading it.