glittergoods

goodbye headache, hello sun

I've spent the past two days gingerly negotiating around a migraine & its aftermath, so I could not have been more delighted to wake up this morning to discover that it was gearing up to be sunny.  Say what you will about the drear of our Northwest winters, but spring is really something around here.

And just how, you may be asking yourself, did I spend this sunny morning?  By bundling my kids off to their respective schools, then sitting in a coffee shop for an hour, working on the grannies (I'm on edging now, doll-sized stuff is so satisfying to do!).

Then a quick trip to the yarn store (ok, a quick trip to the yarn store across the street from the coffee shop, which conveniently had just opened as I was finishing my hour of coffee + crochet, then another quick trip to a different yarn store that's kind of on the way home) to get this pile of color

on the off-chance that another little girl I know might happen to need a granny square doll blanket.  Which totally blows the whole idea of it being a stash project (though the one I'm making for my girl is 100% pure stash, baby), but I can (& probably will, tonight, to my husband) make the argument that what I'm doing is filling in gaps in the stash (er, because while it might look like these colors pretty well match what I've already got, I don't have EVERY SINGLE SHADE.  Yet.), so that in future, my stash projects will be much better-balanced.  Or something.  I haven't been to the yarn store in a long time, ok?

With the nice weather comes the appearance of the first of the spring skirts (oh, punchy balloon, you were full of annoying vitality when I took this picture, though you have since fallen prey to migraine-induced BALLOON DESTRUCTION.  My son will miss you, but I will not.).  I think this is the 5th or 6th of this particular pattern I've made (the pattern is two pieces, yoke & skirt, & I've actually redrafted the skirt piece to make it longer for my little beanpole), & the love affair is not over yet.  Two, maybe three of these fabrics

are slated for New Look 6506 (if you look it up?  Don't be alarmed by the fact that the cover illo shows a little girl in a pink tweed suit, ok?  The skirt, on its own, is terrific.), though my plans may change when Erin posts her skirt tutorial.  I also want to find a good, easy pattern for some summery wide-leg pants for her  -- any suggestions?

playing catch-up

Beautiful little color week plus painting like a madwoman threw me off my blog game (both posting & answering comments, sorry!), but I was taking pictures, even if I didn't get around to posting them.

Here's red, on top of one of the many rubble-like WIP piles produced by the hallway project.  I love this little accordion, particularly when the kids aren't playing it.

Rubble aside, this is the actual WIP shot I took on Friday, which gives a peek into how much thrashing around we did before settling on a color.  It's been a while since we've done any painting, & I'd almost forgotten how much I love looking at paint chips, how much possibility there seems to be in each little hopeful square of color.  It makes me want to pick a really difficult, possibly unruly shade of paint & try it out, just to see if I can figure out how to work with it.  (It makes my husband want to hide my paintbrushes.)

As focused as I've been on house projects, though, I did find time last week to squeeze in another little skirt.  Rigorous testing proves that it's quite twirly, & I plan on making a whole big stack of them for little miss summertime.  I also made a matching headband, just because I love that pattern & there I was with plenty of extra fabric, but our fashion standoff continues & so I haven't gotten a picture of her modeling it yet -- though she did proudly wear it to school, Janis-style, today.

Now, this is the kind of sweet little pile that I was wishing for on Friday but which didn't materialize until today (the paint store is very conveniently located across the street from the fabric store, which has meant quite a few long leisurely mornings of "important errands" lately).  I am having such fun with making skirts for my girl that I've decided to splash out & try a sundress next.  In my mind, the dress is winsome & vintagey, not at all like all of the "festive" Fourth of July dresses I saw at Target today on another "important errand" (which mostly yielded an excellent orange expanding file for organizing the stack of one zillion recipes that have been scrawled on envelope backs, ripped out of magazines, & printed off the internet.  Clever & attractive organizing containers are as full of possibilities as paint chips, though I wish they were also full of lots of extra time to keep everything organized.).  We'll see.

fresh paint, pajamas

Here we are, blue.  My boy has the annoying kind of fever this morning:  just high enough to keep him home from preschool but not high enough to make him feel like, say, resting on the couch all day.  Today promises to be long, although the upside is that we all have a good excuse to still be in our pajamas.

The new paint is not exactly the restful watery wash of color I was envisioning, more like Tiffany Box Blue (it is historical fact that I have a hard time picking blue paint), but I'm just going with it because this is not such a bad paint mistake & also it's in the back hallway which is:  1.  full of old, west-facing, single-paned windows & becomes unbearably hot in the summer, & 2. exactly the kind of pass-through space where I love to use big color.  I have this idea that making the hallway the color you'd paint the bottom of a swimming pool will trick us all into thinking it's actually cooler back there than it really is; we'll see.  I think it's going to look great once I get the thousand miles of trim painted, although, really, just getting rid of the tan trim would be a source of joy in itself, no matter what color I was using.

brown!

I've been thinking about color all day because I'm painting the back hallway & have either made a super excellent or seriously misguided color choice.  I can't tell yet. 

No doubts about these, though.