Seamstress for the band

my assistant attacks the thread

Seamstress is an overly complimentary word for my relationship with a sewing machine, but I have been doing a lot of sewing since I finished up working with Tres.  First up were pajama pants for the immediate family.  This was a Christmas project I had started several years ago (as in purchased fabric and sewed most of two pairs of pants) and then abandoned, when I realized it was just too much during what is one of the busiest times of year for a teacher.  With free time in the month before Christmas this year, I could finally get them done.  With the purchase of materials for one additional pair (we've added someone to the family in the interim - hi, Steve!), I got going.  Now, I am lazy and slow, but I did manage to finish with a bit of time to spare.  Here are the 7 pairs (the only ones missing are mine, which I finished after I had the out-of-towners' off in the mail).

I learned some valuable lessons along the way - trying them on early in the process will help you to realize that they require significantly more hemming than the pattern recommends, I'm not yet advanced enough for fabric with even a hint of stretch, and I still hate pinning and cutting - and this was a great project for getting reacquainted with sewing.

Next up were bags for wrapping.  While we were cleaning and organizing at my parents' house a few years ago, we found a bunch of leftover Christmas fabric from projects of yore.  A wrapping paper substitute seemed a logical solution and thus a family project was born.  Mom and I cranked out a bunch of bags over Thanksgiving weekend and then she, my sister, and I made some more at our respective homes.  I also embroidered some pre-sewn bags, just one for each person this year, but maybe I'll add a new one each year?  It feels really good to have finished some projects that have been "in progress" for awhile.

Cleaning onion seed this fall left me with a fair amount of mental space for daydreaming/planning.  I came up with several ideas for potential Christmas cards, but none that I could successfully execute (ask my former students, I am NOT an artist).  While I was talking to Tres about one of my ideas at lunch, he made a rough sketch and it was perfect.  A few weeks later, he drew the real thing.  I did my best not to ruin it when I colored it in, using my rudimentary Photoshop skills.

Tres prefers typing up a  yearly letter update to "writing the same message in every card," so he spent a few weekend hours doing that and then I printed everything and mailed then out over the course of the following weeks.  I've been making our Christmas cards since we decided we were grown ups and should be sending them out, usually just using stamps on blank cards (see aforementioned artistic shortcomings), but I'm so excited about the ones we made this year.  Of course, now I have all sorts of schemes for using Tres' artistic prowess.

Tres and his helper compose the Christmas letter

I apologize for the lack of activity around here lately.  There's been only VERY slow house progress, we haven't been up to many house/property-related projects, and I'm trying to figure out exactly what I want this blog to be. . . I'll get there.