Last Call...

Of the 24 of you who managed to make your way back to my blog, I've only had responses from three, which frankly, isn't enough to warrant me making such a huge time commitment again with this blog.

Friday night 11pm EST (UTC-5) is the cut off for the survey. After that I'll make my decision and post up here sometime this weekend or early next week.

If there isn't enough interest I'll probably consolidate the rest of the posts so that some of it is still up somewhere on the web. I'll need to hunt down the pictures that I accidentally deleted, but I'll probably only put up thumbnail-sized ones if it's just for archival purposes.

In the mean time, feel free to find me over on tumblr.

<3
SWD

To Blog or Not to Blog

It has been about a year since I stopped posting here on this blog and started using tumblr...

...and I love it over in tumblrland, I really, really do. But sometimes I miss blogging here. And a couple people have made comments lately that make me think others might miss me being here, too.

So here is the question for you:
I know this blog still gets regular traffic, but are any of you still interested in me posting new stuff here?

Let me know by filling out this quick survey CLICK HERE <<--

<3
SWD

Socks and Things

Once we settled in to our new location, I really had planned to get back to sewing blogging more, but that just hasn't happened.  I'm not going to stop blogging altogether but it will likely be less frequent.

I'll still post mostly sewing here, but also other things. I've found another place on the internet to showcase my miniature painting for the time being. 

And it's not like I haven't been doing things. I have! :) Lots of things! Some of them even sewing things! But there has been a lot of work to do, some busy fun times to be had, and I've found myself spending extra bits of my free time making small videos for my YouTube channel.

Today I'm hoping to put together my fall/ winter 2013 sewing schedule (more of a list of thing's i'd like to get done than a rigid schedule). And I do have one small thing to share:

a sock!

I've been knitting for about 25 years, but I don't knit often. I thought I just didn't enjoy it.  But last fall some sock-weight yarn went on deep discount at my cloth store so I bought enough to make a pair of socks each for my husband and I.  

I cast on my husband's first sock in January and knit a couple of rows then. Then there was the move.  I picked it back up about a month ago and have one of the socks completed :) I found that I really enjoy knitting and that working with good yarn (read: not that cheap-o acrylic) makes all the difference in the world. <3

I've cast on and started the second sock of the pair, which I hope to have finished before the weather turns cold.

On another note, a wonderful person I know, who happens to also be an Olympic weightlifter (and blogger, read here), posted yesterday: "Try learning something new today." Now, I'm always up for learning, but sometimes I get so busy with the things that have to get done (job, dishes, garden, family obligations) that I forget to enjoy a few moments of learning something completely fresh & new.

Then there was this morning. Someone I had been following posted something that made me angry, put me into a bit of a funk about how sexist some people can be, especially some women!! And I was letting it get me down.  Then I ran across this (again, thanks to Sarah): it's a pin-up from the 1950's called Hilda. 

I'm not usually one for pin-ups. I understand the appeal, but I always feel so much like they go against any female empowerment I try to hold onto. They so often feel to me like the pin-up girl is less a person and more a 'thing' and is no more than the sex her body parts can offer. Hilda does not feel that way to me. She is joyful, she makes me feel very body-positive, and she looks like she is living her own life to the fullest. I loved it!

Dance like no one's watching

So I started searching for the author's name and ended up by accident on a Wikipedia article about another Hilda: Hilda Bernstein, a women's rights and anti-apartheid activist. I found her story interesting and ended up searching from that to the Women's March to Pretoria in 1956 of which she was a part.  Reading the story of what the women in South Africa did that day to demand their own rights was really moving. National Women’s Day is now an annual Public Holiday in South Africa on August 9.

Wathint'Abafazi Wathint'imbokodo! "Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock."

And while sometimes I feel like no matter how hard people work against racism, against sexism there it will remain forever, I am also reminded of the strong women who have risen up together to say, "NO."  It has not yet been even 100 years in this country (USA) that women have had the right to vote. In my own lifetime I have seen the ending of apartheid. I have seen the implementation and fruitfulness of Title IX, without which I am sure we wouldn't have the WNBA. And even recently, we see women the world over stepping up and saying, "enough," demanding to be treated humanely, not as less than men. It gives me hope, and that hope gives me patience.

The world has a long way to go equality-wise, and it's easy to feel depressed over how many awful, cruel, and systemic discrepancies exist. I encourage you today to take something that upset you or angered you or made you feel low & use it to find out something new, something that can bring you hope. 

<3

Parade

Since my recent sewing is completely unbloggable please instead enjoy watching our local 4th of July Parade (it's only about 4 min long).

Have a great week!

Rice and Doughnuts

This week, rather than sewing pictures, here are a couple of new (short) vids I posted this week:

Have a great first week of summer!

Herb Garden: Mint & Parsley

One of the reasons that we wanted to own our own home was to be able to have a garden.  Growing up we always had both a vegetable garden and an herb garden. And while the big vegetable garden for our backyard is still in the planning stages, we've been able to get the first part of the herb garden started.

Seeds planted the last week of May: Parsley & Spearmint

Getting Curtains Started

It's been another busy week here at the house with lots of work to be done and jobs besides. 

We bought fabric for curtains a couple of weeks ago when it was convenient for my husband to meet me at the fabric store I work at to pick something out.  We ended up with:

• plain, white broadcloth for sheers
• purple & white chevron fabric for the bathroom (see previous post)
• green/blue/etc fabric for the office (see previous post)
• blackout fabric for the bedroom
• fabric for the bedroom curtains (which you will have to wait to see)
• and this for the main rooms: