Lady of the Thread's Sewing Basket

Merry Christmas! Hope everyone had a nice day. ^_^

It’s been a somewhat busy week so it’s nice that I can relax now. Monday evening, my brother and I dropped by neoangelwink and loudnbothered’s place for a few minutes so I could give them their card and present. Tuesday was a business meeting and lunch, which went a few hours, followed by a little last minute shopping. Our solstice celebration was that night so there was a big dinner. I had a bit of a headache so I napped for a couple of hours before helping my mother and sister wrap presents for some of the store employees. This year, we put together gift bags with a bunch of candies and snacks so there were lots of little things to wrap and we didn’t finish until around 1 AM. Wednesday and Thursday included some last minute crafting (I went though more than half a bottle of tacky glue within the past week! o_O;) and cleaning.

Today was spent at home. My family tends to be impossible to shop for so I just bought The Muppet Christmas Carol for us to watch this afternoon. We rarely watch movies together so it was something nice to do. And tomorrow we’re having relatives over for a dinner party to celebrate my mother’s birthday.

I still have to visit one friend over the weekend and give her my present but most people have gotten my crafty little gifts by now. So I can post some of the stuff I’ve made these last few weeks with out ruining any surprises! :-D

I made this pouch for neoangelwink. It’s another design from the Omiyage book; this one is called “Avalanche Lily.” The bottom piece is a large star and there are little triangle pieces sewn like godets between the points. It has a pretty interesting shape with the bottom being a pentagon and the sides slanting inwards towards the top. (My brother thought that it looked like a weird tiny hat when turned upside down! XD) The closed pouch is supposed to look like a star-shaped flower from the top but I think the cotton was a bit too stiff for it to work as well as the model in the book.



( another pic )

The crochet project I mentioned some weeks back was a baby blanket for sakuralenayuy. I used a free pattern I found on the Lion Brand yarn site and their Wool-Ease yarn in pastel yellow. I actually made it yellow because of a story that my mother told me about a neighbor making a blanket as a gift when I was born; the neighbor had made it yellow so it would be suitable for either a boy or a girl.



( detail pic )

I stitched a Christmas ornament for ngmaster and an extra of the same design for myself. The design is called “Emerald Teardrop” and it’s from a Mill Hill kit from the mid-1990s. I originally stitched the design ages ago but the hanger broke some years back and I’ve been meaning to remake it since then. I got new beads and finally got around to doing it this year!

Ugh. I made the little empire-waisted bodice from the doll dress I was crocheting and it doesn’t even come close to closing over the Barbie doll’s bust although I used the sizes of hook and thread specified. It’s like an inch too small. o_O; I went back to check my stitches and it looks like I crochet too tightly, I’ve got one more stitch per inch than the gauge says I should have. But even if that’s the case, it should only be short by about half an inch, which makes me wonder if there’s a problem in the pattern too. :-/ Bah. Maybe, I should just give up for now and start my fairy costume instead. At least I’ve never sewn anything for myself that was so ridiculously small that it wouldn’t close by inches!


Anyone want to do something in the city on Saturday? I’ve been feeling a bit bummed the last several days and it would be nice to see people. I’m free until early evening and haven’t got a specific plan in mind although lunch, checking some Halloween shops, or looking for trims for the fairy costume are possibilities.

Hmm… And with Halloween coming up soon, I should figure out what I’m doing for that. Need to ask my brother if he’s up to doing any photos since I normally like to do that on Halloween and/or the Sunday before when the botanic garden does their Halloween event. Maybe, it would be a good time to finally take better pics of my red Ayame since I still haven’t had a proper photoshoot with that one.

Also kind of wondering if I should attempt to pull together that Nancy Drew costume for Halloween. I could probably buy most of the pieces although getting the same blue for the jacket and pleated skirt might be tricky. Yes, I’m contemplating buying the stuff for it. ^_^;; Although I've loved Nancy Drew since I was in third grade and think it would be fun to dress as her sometime, I don’t really want to make that particular outfit. I only picked it as the one I’d do because her look has changed so much over the years that I think it’s the only outfit that would be remotely recognizable as Nancy. >_>; And even then, I'd probably still need to lug around an old clock for anyone to get it. (I know there are the movie costumes, too, but I don't like any of them that much and I'm not nearly as cute and petite as Emma Watson. ^_^;;)

Well, I’ve redone most of my cosplay.com gallery now so maybe I’ll actually catch up with posting photos there soon. Still have a couple of albums and costumes to add plus a bunch of older photos that I never got around to uploading like nearly all of the PSOH group stuff from AB. ^_^;

Had a business appointment in the city yesterday so I also picked up some black fabric to use with the stained glass fabric for the fairy costume. Haven’t started it yet; I figure even if I did finish it by Halloween, it’d likely be too chilly to wear it out, and I don’t have any parties to go to so I can just work on it when I feel like it.

I also picked up some new crochet hooks because I just got a huge stack of crochet doll clothes patterns on closeout from Annie’s Attic a few days ago. Back in the 90s, I got their bed doll society patterns for a couple of years. It was basically a pattern club where you got a pair of doll patterns in the mail every two months and each year’s worth of patterns would be based on a certain historical period or theme. I had the Edwardian and Gems of the South collections. I also wanted some of the older collections pictured on the back of the patterns but there didn’t seem to be any way to actually order them directly. (I eventually bought a couple more of the collections on eBay several years later.)

It seems that the bed doll society finally ended and all of the leftover patterns were put on closeout for $2 apiece so I took the opportunity to fill in the holes in the sets I already had and buy what I could from the other sets I wanted. ^_^

So, I’m trying to decide what I want to make now. (Although I played around with these patterns a lot in the old days, I was always jumping between things and never did complete any of the dresses. ^_^;;) Checking through the crochet thread I had stashed away, there was a ton of pink, enough for one or two of these if I got white thread to go with it:



Not sure. I’m leaning a bit towards the one in the middle. While the first one is pretty and looks like it would be fun to make, there were others in that set I liked a lot more so don’t know if I want to do that one. I also have enough of the main color for both of these:



But I don’t have any of the other colors. I actually kind of like this one over the other pink gowns but the pattern calls for rayon thread for some of the parts and I’m so out of the crochet loop, I’m not even sure where I could order it these days. :-/ Need to review my crochet stitches, too. I haven't done anything more complicated than a fuzzy yarn scarf for years. ^_^;;


Oh, and I also picked up Volume 3 of Petshop of Horrors: Tokyo yesterday. The little summary page for Volume 4 says it's not coming out until May 2009! T_T Argh! Tokyopop and their slow releases!