What I've been up to lately

Let's see, lately I've been:

-Going to estate sales
It so hit or miss. One day George and drove to a bunch in the DC/Virginia area. I got a few pieces of fabric here and there like old cloth napkins. And I picked up some sweaters for felting. Gotta get ready for the winter and scarf making! Some of the houses made me kinda sad--they were just left as the people had left them all their little personal things and food still in the kitchen. Some of the houses also made me want to make sure I never have so much junk. Time to make a pile to go to the Goodwill. At a sale outside of Baltimore someone scored a haul of fabric, I just know it. There were all these old sewing machine and buttons and lots of homemade clothes. I made off with a bunch of buttons and some scraps of fabric. But I know there was more there. I saw even more buttons in jars going out to someone else's car--boo, not mine. But I was still happy with my score.

-Organizing my buttons.
Sicne I got even more buttons at the sale mentioned above, I had to really go through them--sort them, clean them, etc, jab myself in the finger with a seam ripper and bleed profusely. Owww! I still don't have a great system, but I've got the colors I use most sorted, black, brown and white and then blue, greens and purples are together and red and pinks are together. I don't have many yellow so they just hang out with the whites. But I also have tons of buttons that I'm not going to use. I'm trying to figure out if I can just sell them, put them in cute little bottles or sell them with a little kit or booklet of button craft ideas. Hmm, maybe that's a plan.

-Getting acquainted with my serger
I got a brand new serger for Christmas--thanks Dad! But with shows and life and the free classes not being held on days that I was free, I didn't get familiar with it until now. I took my first class yesterday. Threading the serger isn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. The bottom threads are the most difficult. But I'm feeling good about it. I came home with some serger thread too and I'm hoping to whip up a skirt from recycled t-shirts before my class next week.

-Cutting patterns and testing new ones
I'm getting my fall fabrics ready. So there's lots of cutting and more cutting. And I still have to cut more interfacing. Plus I'm working on a new clutch. I felted a bunch of sweaters and got them all cut into pieces so I'm ready for the fall and winter styles.

-Reading
Last week I took some time off to celebrate my birthday and got through a whole book in about two days. I have piles of books to keep me going all summer. I got some through Titletrader.com, this oneline swap. It's worked well for me. And a friend just turned me onto Goodreads.com so I can see what other people are reading and get some ideas for new books--as well as warn poeple away from some books I've read.



Baking a cake
-I love baking, but normally I don't do big chocolate cakes. I love chocolate, but I prefer brownies. And when I do make cakes it's more like peach upside-down cake or blueberry tea cake, things like that. I saw a recipe in the Washington Post that looked too delicious not to try and I had a BBQ to go to so I thought it was a perfect time to try it. I was a little disappointed, it was just chocolate cake. And the icing was a pain. I have the hardest time with icing. It's always too runny. I had to add and extra cup of confectioner's sugar to this stuff just to get it thick enough. Not really as thick as I'd like it. And then it was just so sugary. So I need to perfect an icing that I really like.