sequins!

sequins!, originally uploaded by alicen.

Sneak preview of something coming up next week...

Corset shirt thing

DSCN0945, originally uploaded by alicen.

Another project from this book. Totally hand sewn, mostly while riding the bus to and from work. Looks better when actually being worn, but photographing myself is HARD.

Kai's Quilt (with mushrooms)

DSCN1016, originally uploaded by alicen.

I can finally post this, since I did manage to get it over to Jess and Colin a couple weeks ago. The quilt is for Kai, their son, who was born just over a week ago. Jess and Colin are pretty much my first friends to have a kid, so they get get the benefit of my not being sick of making baby gifts (I am told this will kick in at some point). I decided to make the quilt only a few weeks before he was due. I was pretty psyched to actually finish it before he arrived on the scene.

It didn't actually take me all that much time to make, all things considered. The quilting is done by hand, which too most of the total time. But I did that on the bus to work, which worked out pretty well.

Jewelry

So, I don't have an engagement ring. I never actually wanted one (they seem silly when you're getting a wedding ring, and the symbolism is weird), but we did decide there should be something. So now I am wearing this:



And Tom will have this as soon as he gets back from China:



They are from here. If you can't tell, one of the rings is silver and the other is gold on each necklace. We are digging the simplicity, though our wedding rings will probably be fancier (or at least sturdier). When we get there.

ENGAGED!

So a week ago (June 13th), Tom and I went to Oakland to pick up our car, stopped by our friends' house to drop off their babywarming present, and then headed to east to "find some nature". We wound up at Mt. Diablo State Park.

We hiked around and bit and wound up talking about the whole Engagement Thing (an ongoing discussion over the past couple months) and decided to get married! Here we are:



(Yup. Marrying that guy. We tried taking serious pictures too, but screw that.)

Afterwards, we took pictures of one another making dinosaur faces to celebrate.

Fleece

IMG_0061, originally uploaded by alicen.

I went to Maker Faire last weekend and picked up, among other things, a bag of assorted hand dyed fleece. This necessitated my learning to card the wool. (Thanks to Jess for letting me use the carders!) I will probably spin it into bizarrely variegated yarn for socks or something. Hopefully I'll get a better picture of the next step.

Things I've made but haven't blogged: Various hand-sewn clothing, progress on a couple of quilts, various repairs and upgrades (replacing buttons, etc.), experiments with letterpress, yarn purchases, and more.

Headband

DSCN0938, originally uploaded by alicen.

I've been messing around with things from this book recently, and this is one byproduct. I've been really enjoying the process of creating lately, of watching elaborate designs emerge from little bits and pieces. I'm also fascinated by the idea of owning lots of carefully complex things. This isn't fancy, exactly, but it contains far more attention to detail than most things in my home.

Oh, and one more picture.