the wooden wagon

I fell in love with The Wooden Wagon, a lovely little online store primarily selling wooden toys and folk art, last year, and bought my favorite Christmas gifts from them.

I think this year it will just be Ostheimer wooden animals (fox, fawn, and baby bear*are my favorites right now, but Marian has requested a Clydesdale, and the brown horse above is kind of close?), but I was nonetheless happy to see this show up in my inbox today:

Free shipping on orders over $25 in November.
Coupon code: FRIENDS

Usually, shipping is a flat $4.95, so never prohibitive.
*Reuben's favored book is the Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? that Uncle D bought him when he visited last month.

What do you want?

Christmas Workshops

Last night, I was pinning a long enough row of green linen ruffles to a pillow case that I emptied my tomato pincushion of pins. The original tomato I've had since I started my own sewing box in elementary school. I've made and admired lots of lovely pincushions, but there's something about those classic tomatoes, you know? Anyway, empty of pins, I noticed a tiny shiny: what was certainly a lost needle, just barely poking out. Yup, 'twas! Remembering a time, long ago, when I found piles of needles in my mom's tomato, I kept at it. And, squishing and pushing and flexing, I found all of these. Just 3 were visible when I started.

Finding all of those lovely tiny needles has me in the mood for handsewing, as does CHRISTMAS! The grandest of gift-making holidays is fast looming, and so I happily announce the First Annual Purple Petunia Christmas Workshops. On Thursday nights, starting at 7:30, there will be Crafting going on at my house, and I invite all to join me. Here's the deal:

I'll have a project set for each week. You are welcome to join me in making that project, or bring something of your own to work on. Some weeks, I may provide all of the materials. Other weeks, I will ask you to bring some of them, or chip in a couple $ to cover, for example, the dent you make in my hoarded wool felt stash. All weeks, I have quite an impressive array of tools and accessory supplies that I'm happy to share.

These will be more of the working sort of workshops than teaching ones. This is my way of forcing myself to get my own projects completed, so I cannot do a lot of wiggling, but I'm there, and (I hope!) so will other crafty sorts that have helpful minds and experiences. Also, don't expect anything fancy, food or decor-wise; these are work meetings, not impress-you meetings. You can bring something to share, of course, and I'll probably have a snacky out now and then because I'm a super-nursing-and-therefore-constantly-munching-mama. Food is a very important part of my day. If you're lucky, the house will be clean. At least the table will be cleared...

This is me, and our family life is still kind of a disaster, so I'm not promising something medical won't come up and change these plans, but we think (!!) chemo is done for now, so I'm going to go out on a limb and post a schedule:

November 12: wee handsewn toys (felt creatures & peg folk)
November 19: Amish puzzle balls (nice tutorial here; more, plus lovely examples here)
November 26: stuff yerself with turkey! other things going on this day...
December 3: organizing boxes (as seen here on lovely design)
December 10: wooden animals
December 18: finishing projects

(found this great tutorial list if you're looking for your own projects)

Early that week, I'll post the details (what I'm working on, what I'll have available, what you should come prepared with), and an RSVP via comment or e-mail would be appreciated so I can set up extra tables if needed. Again, you're always welcome to bring your own projects or just cozy up and share ideas.

Happy Halloween!

From my beautiful mother yesterday--a cinnamon sachet that's hanging on my front door right now. That woman does fine work!

(It arrived yesterday with Reuben's birthday--!!!!--present, a pecan roll, and home dried apples. A perfect autumn package).

crafting emergency

Sunday morning Nathan woke me up early, something he LOVES to do and I really really hate him for, but am always eager to help because I love that annoying man too and I am a firm believer that love is shown through helping (something we argue about because he likes to help less than I do. sigh). Complicated, like all good relationships. Anyway, I popped up a bit more quickly than usual because these were his words:

"Valerie, I have a crafting emergency."

Could he have tempted me more?
I am all over that.

He had good prizey plans for his (almost) half world championships, that he organized because he loves that cycling activism sort of thing, but couldn't attend because they were rain-postponed to Sunday and he had meetings because he does show his love through helping sometimes, and so kept his church obligations. But he slept in a bit. And needed help.

See our joint efforts here. There was some irony in mind.

I always want him to craft with me, but have to accept getting to craft with him, on his terms.

It's a start.

spooky acorn babies

I love love love little people figures, and I think my favorite sorts are acorn babies. I think I saw the idea, using hazelnuts instead of acorns, in Feltcraft. Maybe not (all my books are still packed up, pending a bit more shelf building around here, so I can't check), but you wouldn't regret buying that fantastic little book... Anyway, the base is a wooden bead hot-glued to an acorn. I'm not usually a hot-glue fan, but the quick-dry and bulky qualities make it perfect for this project. The hole in a wood bead fits neatly onto the pointy end of an acorn, but it needs a bit of support to stay there. Some acorn varieties sit nicely in their original state (see photos in my last post for a happy example), but many, as liz r. commented in the last post, won't. I've found that just sanding the base a bit will usually provide a nice steady base; the acorn is thick enough at that point to stand up to it, structurally (aren't I punny?).

Acorn babies as nativities here (2008).
Acorn babies as little cute dudes here (2007).

But acorn babies as spookily cute Halloween figures right HERE (2009)!

Audrey made the ghost (a circle of white cotton), I the mummy (1/8" bias strips), and Marian this cheery little witch. I'm still hoping for a scarecrow...

We took a couple of process shots for the witch's little hat; they're mostly self-explanatory. I twisted the half-circle into a cone shape & inserted it in the ring (I traced a bottle cap for the outer circumference of the rim, snipped out the center, and cut the half circle just a bit larger. A bigger half circle would give you a taller crown; a smaller half circle would yield a shorter one. You may adjust the overlap to fit the cone into the rim at your desired height, so the measurements are quite flexible.), stitching them together into a sweet wee hat. The orange bow was, of course, Marian's idea.
I love how straggly Marian made her hair. At first, she glued individual strands of green string hair down in very neat bangs-and-back rows, then wanted it shorter, so trimmed. Then wanted it thicker, so added scattered staggers of strings for a deliciously witchy look.
Abby started a witchy, too. Guesses as to whether I'll make it to the post office with that and the outgrown baby clothes I'm sending her before Halloween? Afraid I won't be betting on me... I was such a better mailer when I had little stacks of etsy packages going off twice weekly. We did make her a wee hat, too.Oh, look how seasonal she looks next to our bright orange stack of parking tickets! (we always forget the street sweepers...)

acorn craft: pumpkins

The first acorn craft of the season is a reprisal of the acorn pumpkins Shannon & I did a couple of years ago. I saw the idea in a Family Fun magazine. In that first batch, I was displeased with the paint; we used craft acrylic and it didn't adhere well to the acorns. This year, I used spray paint, and was also careful to polish the natural velvet off of the pumpkins to provide a better surface. Acorn polishing was, for me, highly addictive, and Abby and I surprised ourselves a bit with our buffing passion. I sorted out an assortment of sizes for a nice little tableau. I badly want to let Reuben play with acorns, but he's still in the instantly-pop-in-mouth stage (and is more frantic about it than either of his sisters ever were), so I have to just give him short, oh-so-monitored visits with my stashes. Doesn't he look like he might share his mama's acorn love, given the chance?Getting glossy orange.
I left them out to dry, and half were stolen by that chipmunk of ours!
(the next batch were more carefully monitored).
Since I like everyone to play, I forced my brother into a crafty corner, too, and he handily utilized one of our cracked friends:Oh, such a crafty family are we!
(D is in medical residency now, and planning a wound care fellowship, so this is totally up his alley :)!)

fonts

Thanks to my sister Camie and her scanner (and can-do-and-right-now attitude), the girls and I finally made fonts of our handwriting. We used fontcapture.com, which is free and instant and awfully cool.our fonts pdf
edit to add: I just put my Christmas list word document into "valerieprint" and now I feel awesome.