New Routine In Progress

This past week has been a bit of an end of an era for me. The last two years I have had the pleasure of working from home, my commute consisted of a walk through my living room to my office. Due to my job disappearing, lately I have been forced to put myself out there in a horrific job market to find something new. My first instinct in times like these is to go hide under the bed, but I sucked it up and with several pep talks from my Jay and my mom and pretty much everyone else that knows me managed to search out and get a great job. The only down side to the new job that I can find so far is that I have to commute downtown 4 days a week (this is a good solid hour each way). It's been a bit stressful for this chronic suburbanite, but I have been learning new things every day. I'm quite able to entertain myself during the commute with my ipod and lots of new podcasts, but it all seriously cuts into my craft time. If only I could knit and drive at the same time! I started last Monday and the new job, along with my youngest ending up having pneumonia, definitely contributed to it being very quiet on my blog. Hopefully all will settle into a routine soon and I will figure out how to fit petting fabric and yarn into my new schedule. Now, if only I could convince them to let me bring this very important desk accesory with me to my new job...

Love is...

...handmade Valentines! They worked soooo hard on these for their classes. The seven year old did the owls and the five year old did the kitties. Making our own Valentine cards is quickly becoming one of my favorite holiday traditions, hopefully one they won't outgrow anytime soon.

On the back: Whoooo will be your Valentine? Owl be your Valentine!

On the back: You are the Purr-fect friend. Happy Valentine's day!

Super Magical Pillowcase Tutorial

The day I finally understood how to make a pillowcase using this method was a total revelation to me. It is so easy and it still feels magical after many a pillowcase. Some call it the tube method, some (somewhat crazy) people call it the sausage method. The magic of it is that you end up making the whole edge of the pillowcase with just one seam (the contasting end fabric, thin accent fabric, and the rest of the pillowcase fabric) and no raw edges showing. So then, you are just left with having to sew up the other two edges.

There are lots of pictures, so I made a pictobrowser for the tutorial. The "notes" on each picture contain the directions. You will need to hover your mouse over the little "notes" word on the pictobrowser below.  Also, you have to click on the number "2" to go to the additional photos/second half of the tutorial.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Jungle It Up - Third and Final Phase

I got to work yesterday afternoon and finished up the remaining little touches I wanted to do to the 7 year old's room. I finally recovered her vanity stool with the zebra fabric she wanted. Not sure why I kept putting this off, it took all of about 20 minutes.

I also relined the little drawers on her armoir...

And whipped up a new pillowcase for her bed. I always forget how fun and easy the "magic tube" pillowcase method is.

Such a satisfying little project with big impact that takes less than an hour. Now I'm wanting new custom pillowcases for my bed. I took pictures of the way I do them and will post a tutorial soon. I'm sure it can be found elsewhere on the internet but I mostly want to post it to be able to remind myself how easy they are (and so I don't have to keep searching for that one scrap of paper with measurements on it every time I want to make one).

I think I'm done with jungley things for a while... except there is a lot of that zebra fabric left that would make some fantastic little throw pillows...