Wabi Sabi

Wabi Sabi is my new favorite thing. . . or rather, a new word I learned to describe an old favorite. . . captivating decay. . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi


Thank you to the person commenting on my etsy Treasury who told me about it.

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What can I say, between cutting my fingernails, reading a book, thinking about the weekend, and writing a powerpoint I couldn't concentrate. So I took this quiz.

Joy is a Flag. . .

Kyle and I drove up to Flagstaff this weekend (and by we, I mean, he drove and I road). The weather was gorgeous! The aspens were turning and spraying their yellow leaves everywhere. We started out by going for a hike on the Humpreys Summit trail. . . we didn't make it terribly far, but did have a lovely picnic along the way.
After that we went down to the historic downtown and did some Christmas shopping and ate some fancy desert.
The we went to Lowell Observatory and saw Jupiter and his four moons. It was pretty cool. They were having a business sponsored night, so we didn't have to pay to get in, which was very nice.









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Saturday Home Projects

I've made myself a list of projects that take up an entire day. I do one project every Saturday. Last Saturday we cleaned up the front yard - after which all the leaves on our tree decided to drop for fall (I think we have the only tree that looses its leaves in the entire neighborhood). One of the projects I really was looking forward to was finishing the garden in the back. I had little hope for this one getting done because it needed a whole lot of dirt to happen and I don't like spending money on dirt. Does anyone?
Anyway, last night Kyle and I were walking back from the dog park and this guy was shoveling around some dirt in his pick-up. I decided to ask him if the dirt was coming or going and was informed that he was taking it to the dump the next morning. Short story even shorter - this morning I got a nice pile of free dirt in my back yard!! Score!

We enjoyed some nice weather in the double digits for a week or two, but the past two days have decided to go triple again. . . I decided to work outside anyway. This is me in my rock grinding gear. . . I found out rather quickly that a bathing suit top is not the best thing to wear when little bits of rock are flying at you, so I had to put a long sleeve shirt on. It actually didn't seem too hot. . .

Here are some pictures of how far all the Lowes giftcards I got for my birthday got me before the thermometer decided to get stuck on 115...

The rest are pictures of what I accomplished today. We ended up having just the perfect amount of dirt! It was dark outside when I finished, so I apologize if the photo quality is kinda shady.





Please note the awesome trellis I built out of wire. . .it reminds me of Jacob's Ladder. . . the one you make with the string game...Hopefully in a few years the bougainvillea will have matured quite nicely and will hide all the wires. I have deep grape, fushia and white planted.

Project 17 of many. . .

When I was in Chicago I went to Fishman's . . . I found a remnant of some very lovely fabric and got a great deal on it. I decided instantly that it needed to become a coat. I knew I wanted it to be very basic. After I drafted the pattern I came to the realization that I did not have enough fabric. As a result the coat is much shorter than I had originally intended and has a couple of interesting seems. It is almost done, I am waiting on the lining fabric to show up on Monday. Until them I am thinking about the poulaine (poo-lan'), because this coat reminds me of the middle ages, and trying to decide on either the brown or the yellow buttons. What do you think? I am also accepting judgement for the fact that the center back seem does not match. . . note however, that I was lucky to even have enough fabric to cut it out.




I also went ahead and put together a little story board to inspire me on how to style this coat for the hoped for (fingers crossed) photo shoot I'm having sometime in the up and coming weeks.

Medievalism by caits212 featuring Anthropologie

. . . yeah, it's mostly shoes.

I don't get it. It's ugly.
Aquascutum Sprin 2010

This link is to a treasury that I made on Etsy. . . it won't last long

Project 16 of many. . .

I finally finished the Claudia Bag. I don't know what it was about this piece, but I fought with it all the way to finish. Hopefully now that I have one under my belt and the patterns and samples made the next one will go more quickly. The tough part was sewing the leather - sometimes my machine liked to sew it, and sometimes it did not. The tension on the machine had to be adjusted to how sharp or semi-sharp the needle was. So, if it was sewing fine on a slightly old needle and I put a new needle in, it would stop sewing correctly. When I started making this bag I was using all the scraps from the bridesmaid dress project, so I had no idea how much fabric it had taken. Later I went back and calculated how much it had used and it was over 6 yards of silk just for the flowers! Good grief! I was really lucky to find a leather store just down the street from me (or maybe not so lucky as now hundreds upon thousands of ideas are spilling forth and I don't got the means to support the habit :/ ), without it the bag would have been all silk. . . and I think the contrast of the leather adds a lot. Now I just need someone with a nice camera to take some shots of it for me.