Shaken Up

So there's been quite a bit going on in my life in the past month, and while change is great and I love the way things are headed, it means I'm not getting a whole lot of crafting time, and even less for writing about it.

I turned 25 at the end of May.  I know that's still young but I had a goal- or at least an idea of how my life would be at 25.  I would be the owner of a successful small business.  Good For Ewe is on the right track but it was a slow year.  I'm super thankful for my part-time job seasonal job that has turned into a full-time year round job.  They are also aware of my real business and that during my busy season I can't be there 60 hours a week and my flexibility is....non-existent. So I'm not horribly off there at least.

I would be in a fabulous relationship and living with my fabulous partner/fiance/husband in  our adorable little cottage in Broad Ripple which we would work on during the nights and weekends because fixing up an old house is something we both have always wanted to do. The reality is: I can't afford to move out of my parents' house because I spent all my savings on starting a company. And Rob and I had very different ideas on this whole living situation, but that doesn't matter anymore as we broke up on the 3rd day of our Paris trip.

I was going to adopt an adorable little rescue dog that I could stick in my giant purse and take to the Farmer's Market with me.  Never mind that it's been  years since I went to a Farmer's Market but that was going to be something that started happening when I turned 25.  I think I won this one...I have the world's coolest cat Madeline and my mom recently adopted a little tiny rescue dog who is adorable and high-energy and not something I necessarily want to deal with all the time. I love her to pieces, but I'm glad she's not my full-time responsibility.

I would have read all the Salmon Rushdie, Faulkner, and David Sedaris novels in existence by now, as well as be an expert on all things Shakespeare.  

Eh- I'm mostly there with the Rushdie and Sedaris. 

I would have well-behaved hair and wear fabulous dresses and high heels everywhere.  Seriously?  Am I Carrie Bradshaw?  I did shake things up here and cut off most of my hair- and I love it.  It takes a whole 10 minutes to dry and style and I won't feel so guilty about changing the color all the time and damaging it. And I bought a few new dresses for good measure which I do wear as often as possible. 

The reality is that life is not how I envisioned it would be at this point.  And I'm really really okay with that.  I work 2 jobs but I love them both.  I'm single but I have some really great girlfriends, and yeah, I'm the last single girl left of them but they're still super supportive and are helping me get ready for my first big trade show with my new company that is small but growing.  I do wish I had my own place but I'd rather spend my money on paying back loans and putting some in savings right now. I'll get there soon enough. 

So...moving on.  I went to Paris! I had a really nice time there, despite the weather being terrible and breaking up with Rob on the third day.  We have been growing apart since he started grad school around Thanksgiving, and I got to see him *maybe* once a week.  So it's sad but it's not like my life has changed dramatically.  There has been someone that I've been talking to but I'm not sure if it's going anywhere.  Perhaps after the trade show I'll sign up for an online dating site.  But I'm rambling...Paris. 

We went for a friend's wedding and it was chilly, but lovely.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures...

And lastly, what I've been making lately...

Okay- I'm heading out for a quick run before work.  Need to lose that 4 pounds I picked up in Paris (curse you, Nutella and Banana Crepes!) 

Holy Cow it's May

Time has been flying since I started working at the nursery.  I love it there and I absolutely love being swamped between the two jobs and trying to make things work with Rob and looking for my mom's lost cat, but it leaves less and less time for things like knitting, working out and sleep. Yesterday I met my aunt for dinner and I beat her to the restaurant and it occurred to me as I pulled out the perpetual sock in progress that it was the first I've knitted in days- and that's really weird. And oddly okay.

So let me show you my big project right now- it's a dress. At the nursery we are having a fashion show at work where a local boutique comes in and dresses up a bunch of models in clothing that's appropriate for working in a garden, we hand them a houseplant and send them down the catwalk. One of the people putting together the fashion show had seen a dress form made of chicken wire with real flowers blooming all over it forming the "fabric". And that's how she wanted to finish the fashion show.

Scott, our marketing guy and one of my best buds at work instantly said "that's a Paige Project!" and I was given a budget and a deadline for a dress made of flowers.  Artificial flowers though- he wanted to use it as a display after the fashion show was finished. I was a assigned a model, given her measurements and set on my way.

I figured I would make the dress in 3 layers.  The first would be an opaque fabric, light but sturdy and green for the background.  I chose a plain jane quilting fabric. I essentially made a tube top with some heavy duty elastic on top that flared out for the skirt.  There isn't much shaping to it because I didn't want to spend hours and hours on the bottom layer.  She will wear it for an hour- tops- and this will work just fine.

The next layer that went on was a big fat roll of tulle in a neon green color.  The original goal was to attach a netting and loop the flowers through, but I couldn't find one heavy enough plus I ended up using flower garlands instead.  It does provide a little extra something between the fabric and the flowers and I think it was a nice detail.

Next came the flowers.  I was making a top of plain pink flowers and then making a big full skirt of azaleas and gerbera daisies, and was going to break it up in the middle with a sparkly orange belt/bow. I spent a lot of time listening to Pandora and tacking on flowers, but it was coming.  And Scott our marketing guy was thrilled to see every little progress picture and that really helped me keep working on it in a timely manner. 

I also had a very helpful assistant throughout the whole project.  She's going to be a very sad cat the day the dress leaves the living room floor. 

Here is the dress, ready for it's test run.   I'm not the person who is going to be wearing it, but I put it on anyway and had Rob take some pictures so I could look for bare spots. I only found a few and fixed them quickly, and took the dress to work the next day. 

*The belt is a little low on me.  I figured that since our model was over a foot taller than me, the belt would hit her exactly right.  It turns out our model is the leggiest woman in the world and I had to get rid of the belt entirely and fill that spot in with more flowers.  Which I had to buy more of. And wait for them to get here. And I'm stuck. 

So here is the dress now.  I need one more length of azalea garland and about 20 minutes and I'll be finished.  When the model tried it on, Scott and I agreed the skirt needed to be fuller from the inside, so I need more tulle to make her a big poofy slip too. I'll try to make it to the fabric shop today so that won't be a big deal and hopefully those flowers will arrive today so I can turn it in tomorrow or Sunday, have it off the floor and collect my paycheck. And I'm totally cutting the orange belt fabric up and putting it and the green leftovers in my next quilt because I'm cheap like that. 

So that's been my main project for a while now.  I also have a really big trade show coming up for Good For Ewe, and time not spent on the dress or working at the 2 jobs is spent preparing for that.  I completely lucked out though- and I have so many fabulous knitters and and crochet-ers helping me with the little yarn samples for the trade show.  I've still got to make the actual set, and that will be more sewing than knitting, but I'll get there.  I have a set up in mind, and I'm hoping to start next week.  I'd love to be done before I leave for Paris on the 28th so it's one less thing to come back to. I'm also knitting a few little things for the display but those are the least of my concerns.  They'll fit in a carry-on if they need to. 

I've also made a trade with a guy at work for a table for my trade show.  You can rent big plastic table for $150 for the 4 days you are there.  Or you can buy one for a lot less than that, and since the show is only 4 hours away I'll be driving and not shipping it there.  I am concerned about space issues, so I wanted a smaller, round table- like a Bistro set, without the Bistro price. Then this guy at work was showing me some of the things he's made lately- he's a wood worker when he's not selling trees (which doesn't sound Kosher to me but whatever). So I mentioned that I would like a little table for my trade show and he said he'd make it.  I asked my price and he said he would do it all from reclaimed wood and use the tools he already has if I would fix a couple pairs of torn shorts for him.  

I am clearly the winner in this deal. I will need to buy patching fabric, thread, and heavier-duty needles, but that's going to be way cheaper than a table.  And it will mean that every single thing in my booth is handmade, and to me, that's really cool. 

I do have one more little project- my Halloween cross stitching. I finally joined audible.com last month and last month my free book was The Great Gatsby.  The movie comes out today and I wanted to re-read the book before I saw the movie, and it was free on Audible if you join.  So I joined.  Plus I get a new audiobook every month and that's well worth the $15 a month membership. And the real reason you're getting that story is because I cross-stitched most of the time I was listening to my book, and I hope I get to keep up this stitching/reading thing for a while.  I can totally handle a book a month! unfortunately, Gatsby was a really short book and I didn't really get that far in the project. 

And finally...garden shot! It's small but it's organic and it's all mine! 

April's Fool and Flu

I was really excited for my first really busy weekend at the nursery this past weekend.  The older staff talks about those days like they are battles or storms that nobody could fathom forgetting. So I was really disappointed when I came down with food poisoning at 2 in the morning, 6 hours short of my first busy weekend.  When after a few hours the chills and headache began, it was pretty clear it wasn't food poisoning.

I didn't think I'd ever been too sick to knit, but this weekend I truly was.  I seriously laid on the couch for 16 hours, trying to summon enough strength to go refill my ginger ale that my uncle had brought me. I'm loads better, but still a bit wobbly.  I did go to work yesterday, but not for a full day and I bleached everything that I touched after I used it. I still haven't eaten a proper meal since this all started Friday night.  And that was my weekend.

I did manage to finish one little project I had started last week- yet another stash busting shelter blanket. Tada! I think I have enough stash left for one more...

If you're new to the blog, I routinely do destashing projects like this: Crochet a square using a giant hook and at least 6 strands of yarn.  This blanket probably ate 6 pounds of yarn (that I was never going to use), unraveled 3 sweaters (that I was never going to finish) and is now headed to the Humane Society where it will serve as a bed for a homeless animal. So these blankets are a great thing all around. And they don't have to be beautiful- animals are color blind and probably just happy to have something of their own. 

That was finished on Sunday night.  After 19 hours of sleep on Saturday, I was feeling a lot better on Sunday, albeit still a little wobbly and green around the gills. I tried to work on my Harvest Home cross stitching and decided it's probably time for it to go back in to stash room for a few months.  I was tired of trying to figure out which of the unmarked 12 shades of green went in to this one part and I decided I needed a new project for a bit. Plus there's been one cross stitching project calling to me since I got the right fabric and threads for it back in September...

Well...almost the right fabric.

I began this Halloween cross stitch project a couple years ago and after I got about 1/6th of it done, figured out I didn't have enough fabric. And the bad thing about cross stitching is that you can't really add more to it once you made that first big mistake.  I was also using a really rough aida cloth that was almost burlap.  I loved the look of it, HATED touching it.  I also wasn't thrilled about my selection of thread- it was a tad big for the project.  So I wasn't too terribly upset about the mulligan. When visiting a yarn shop in Bloomington, IL last fall I had some time to kill before my meeting.  They had a pretty fantastic embroidery section and I found my perfect thread- a Shaker Sampler cotton called Raven.  It was black from a distance, but close up it had a beautiful, hand painted green in it as well. The fabric I saw was amazing- a gorgeous tea stained antiqued cream color that had a personality but wasn't too demanding for attention.  I had to have it.  But it was $40 a square foot- and I wasn't sure how much I needed.  I opted for the stuff that was $8 a square foot and decided to bust out the tea bags the other day.  Surely it can't be that hard.  Can it?

I did some research online and found warnings to crafters of the dangers of dyeing fabric with tea, which made me even more excited/determined to do it.  I wanted a nice, spotty/splotchy fabric that had a few highs and lows, but nothing too extreme.  Since I was only going to be using one color of thread (black) I wasn't too worried about how it would stain my threads.  I'll just try not to sit on a white couch while I'm stitching- problem solved.  So I put on the kettle and got to work. 

It was pretty easy.  I thought I'd dab the wet tea bags over the dry fabric before immersing it all into a very large, very strong cup of tea and letting it sit for a while.  The dabbing really didn't do anything, so I just put it all down in there with the tea bags. I did get a few darker spots where the tea bags actually sat, and I love that. As I was taking the tea bags out and rinsing the fabric to eliminate the excess tea, I noticed that one of the spots was a little more red than the others- I dug out the tea bags and saw that I had accidentally used a roobios (red African tea leaf) in there too.  You can see that splotch in the hoop. 

I set the fabric in the screened in porch and there was enough wind to have it dry in a few hours.  I began stitching a bit later, and I'm thrilled with this project now.  Love the pattern, love the fabric, love the thread.  I'm so glad I decided to try again with this project. Probably should have ironed the fabric before I started but I'm not too worried about it. 

So that's my crafting for now- a change of cross stitch projects and a few other knitting projects that I'm not really wanting to do right now but need to finish regardless. I'll try to finish up another one or two before my trip to Paris next month so I can start something exciting and new without project-guilt.

So I'll leave you to your needles with a few pictures of Spring at Chez Paige...

Quilted with Love

Every once in a while I start a new project and I get a little...obsessed.  Rob's t-shirt quilt was definitely one of those projects.  It didn't hurt that it went REALLY quickly too.

So when I last blogged I had two columns of t-shirts done.  The next day I had 4.

It was going so quickly.  I think I sewed a whole column together during the commercial break of one of my shows.  Seriously.  The next day brought the blue strips between the columns and the sides. This part was a little trickier because for some reason the t-shirts wanted to stretch a lot more than they did from side-to-side (which still perplexes me knowing what I know about knit fabric). 

As you can see, I had a lot of help on this step. It sat like this for a few days because I was working a lot and wasn't looking forward to all of the precise trimming I needed to do to make it even horizontally. The Habitat for Humanity square had to lose an inch and a few others lost half an inch before the top and bottom blue went on. 

Somehow it ended up wider than it is tall.  Hmm.  Wasn't planning on that.  Luckily I had enough backing fabric to accommodate it. It's all good. So it sat like that for a few more days.  This morning I got up bright and early and met my friend Sally who happens to have a long arm quilting machine.  I was there at 9 and by noon we had this...

Using the long arm is fun and kind of scary.  It's an absolutely huge machine and I'm terrified I'm going to do something wrong and break it somehow.  So I enjoyed having adult supervision when I was working on it.  It's a really strange and complicated machine- I think it might actually be easier to fly a plane than operate a long arm.  And it's super noisy- it sounds like a weed whacker that's sending out morse code. Anyhow, it took about 2 hours to set it up on the long arm and an hour to do the actual quilting. Last time we did this, Sally programmed a pattern in to the machine and we just cranked the quilt up and over to let the machine keep quilting.  This time I free-handed it, which means I held handles that felt a little like riding a bike and steered in stitches.  It was pretty fun.  

Next I trimmed the batting so it stopped at the edge of the quilt top. 

Next I cut the excess backing fabric away so that only 2 inches remained on each side.  I didn't do a proper binding because I'm lazy like that.  So I pulled the backing fabric up, folded it over and stitched it down.  It took about an hour and I really like it.  I think the crazy fabric is great because it (a) was in my stash and I didn't have to pay for it this week, (b) ties in the different colors in the t-shirts and (c) isn't going to show as much dirt as a solid color backing, which is great because boys are pretty gross sometimes. So it's a win all around. 

Here's a sexy shot of the backing fabric.  I think it looks pretty cool with the front. And I don't think it's too girly. 

And now the quilt is in the wash because I had lots of kitty help and Rob is quite allergic. I used polyester batting instead of cotton batting this time because it was on super duper sale this week and I figured Rob wouldn't know the difference between the $6 batting and the $30 batting. It's still batting.  Sally thinks the polyester is going to poof up quite a bit more though and it will be more like a comforter afterwards.  So if there's a dramatic change post-washing, I'll post a new picture. 

Lastly, here's a couple of my little "secrets".  I figured I'd have a little fun with it since I was guiding the machine instead of programming it. 

(I put 3 hearts in it)

Proof that it's a labor of love. I considered putting an applique heart on it somewhere but I figured this was more subtle and that's how I roll.  I wanted to keep it as manly as possible. (Minus the hearts.  But those are my little secret.)