quyen

me playing with textures on an image of a couple friend of ours. it still doesn't feel "right" to me, but i'll keep trying. maybe it's because i know how gloriously vibrant all my original photos are.

saturday: too lazy to drive back to vancouver

saturday: lunch at downtown kirkland's busy mexican restaurant after a morning of uprooting hundreds of clover-related flowering weeds that multiplied like bunnies. on the way back to the car, we stumbled across my new zealand felted pebble wool rug for 50% off and i couldn't pass it up, so now i feel bound to buy couches to match even though that will leave us with two lonely couches that don't quite fit in with everything else. i also bought $200 worth of dance shoes at a shop down the road...go local! and a housewarming party with two of the sweetest little girls.

le sigh

i heard at work today that it's going to hit 68 degrees this weekend. while this fahrenheitical statement would normally not make any sense to me, i do know that i set the temperature in the house to a nice warm 68. so that sounds pretty exciting to me!

the newest issue of martha stewart says to cut cherry blossom branches to use as a simple centerpiece for your kitchen table. i'd never seen the type of flower before, and i thought they had hand crafted a flower out of crepe paper and glued it onto a branch, until i came across this lovely tree.

my friend, soosie

daunted by the cold weather and the little daylight that is left to me after i get off work, i'm revisting the idea of textures. i'd rather be out shooting rolls of fuji film with its gloriously bold colors than fussing with a photo editing program, though.

handmade with love

although i could whip up the most awesome purse in a matter of minutes, i've half finished many-a-clothing-projects, and i'm happy to report that i successfully made a test dress. becoming disillusioned with finding the perfect cocktail style BM dresses on macys.com, and fueled with a bit of frustration and rage, i went out and bought patterns. i abhor patterns like i abhor sewing pins.

measure twice, cut once is a mantra my dad taught me. it applies to everything from sewing, to metal work, to wood work, to restoring cars. he's an upholstery mechanic by trade, but i do about 99% more sewing than he does. he's probably part of the reason why his only daughter can happily sew through anything 3/8 of an inch thick but when it comes to lighter fabrics i'm done for. i was tempted to get some great, heavy, upholstery fabrics that i imagine the dress at left would be made of, in my sewing world, but i made sure to steer clear of delicate fabrics and bought some cute cotton to work with.


so i basically did this as a test run. 5 hours later i learned the value of
a) the measure twice cut once rule....however, even though i saved myself from cutting the pieces along the wrong run of the grain, this rule didn't manage to save me from picking the wrong pattern! i didn't want the halter top option! oops! so here's what it would look like without straps that tie up around your neck.

b) pinning. i managed to pull off a dress, made to fit me without the use of any pins, because i abhor using pins in my sewing, but i do admit they would have come in handy. three random needles sufficed.

c) even though i chose the smallest possible pattern size, which allowed for a 24" waist, it did nothing to decrease the cup size from a double d. i had been tempted just to sew all my pieces together in one go, but that would have been disastrous...see second half of d)

d) press open the seams with an iron. no really. it's important. and if i try on the outfit and realize i made the skirt portion too big for my waist, don't just sew it smaller! unpick the bodice, sew it, then press open the new seams.

although i usually like my images to match the width of my text blocks, i couldn't stomach the thought of showcasing myself 410 pixels wide several times over. damn, i think i'd better start practicing my look-casual-and-candid-but-still-look-pretty poses....i've got a wedding coming up! so without further ado, me with a fire-poker and other pictures that show off my love for cute shoes:

keep in mind the dresses will be in damask (ie b&w)

i like the concept of c, it's almost like eyelet, but i think it is a terribly ugly shoe. jenn, i know you hate the idea of ankle straps chopping of your legs in photos, but i like b and d, both are vegan. the style of b is super cute, the downside is it only comes in 7.5, 8.5, 9 and 10. it is available in all sizes in the neapolitan color...

i call today an indoor day.

my dad once dubbed me "an indoor girl." i don't hike, i don't camp in tents, i don't do outdoor sports, and in the summer, you'll never catch me out after dusk for fear of mosquitos.

i think i need to get a new coat that hits just above my knees, because i used to walk outside on crisp winter nights and say, "it's so nice out," referring to the scent in the air, refreshingly cool and laced with whatever pheromones westcoast foliage emit. now i avoid checking the mail for days at a time because it's too cold out. the dampness of the area adds an element to the cold that cuts through you in ways that perhaps make the prairies slightly more tolerable. i don't know what the american equivalent of "the pairies" is. the midwest?

it snowed yesterday. i call today an indoor day. apparently it's 43.2 °F, which, in canadianspeak is 6.2 °C.

the upside is that an indoor day means lots of sewing and catching up on stitchpixie orders that have gotten tossed to the wayside in the wake of wedding planning.

i found an old photo of tiara modeling some st*tchpixie bling.

so jenn. do you want any prints for your suite? these are a lot more feminine than what i usually do, and certainly better than darrell's....

child sponsorship

i came home from my first ballet class in ten years yesterday, barely able to walk from my jazz class the day before where, to my surprise, i pulled off several split switches (not me in that photo; i can no longer jump 4 feet off the ground), and i was so very excited to have reclaimed something great of my childhood and was equally excited to take a couple photos and blog about it, but my mood was deflated as if my pretty blue pickup truck had just gotten sideswiped by a semi-truck. i considered stopping writing, and briefly entertained the idea of deleting the entire blog, because what purpose did it really serve anymore? it was originally started an outlet for me to organize my wedding thoughts and keep in contact with my bridal party.

so this is more of an eljay post, but i guess it gets a spot here because a) emily keeps up with my life and b) kiesha asked me to write a new blog. so kiesha, jessica, katy, chelsea, marne, bailey, and anyone from our group that might be reading this...you have to leave a comment to say you were here, because it will give me some encouragement to keep writing!

in my last growth group, people had a lot to say about tithing - that they wrestled with it, and prayed about it, and despite their financial woes, and in the end it provided its own unexpected rewards, but i just chalked it up to crazy protestant talk... (although i believe it is catholics that are more fervent about that ten percent). but i guess it's god's turn to "put it on my heart." i've sponsored a child in zambia through world vision for a few years now, starting back when i was a college student with no income, but wanting to put my st*tchpixie earnings toward something. i'd wanted to sponsor a child in high school, and attempted to rally friends to commit to $30 a month between us, but my parents brushed it off as something that i was not expected to do. so i rebeled in college and did it by myself, without an "after school job" to speak of.

so i sat down and made these donations tonight that i thought were very st*tchpixie-appropriate:


10% of st*tchpixie earnings have always been saved towards sponsoring a child, but i feel like my target audience for my product - vegan/left-wing/feminists is often at odds with the admittedly christian organization. i remember being at craft fairs, and people's faces would brighten up at seeing my 10% sponsors a child signs. then they'd ask me what organziation i went through, and i was heartbroken about the reactions i got when i said world vision with all its christian connotations. regardless of what background people come from, i think a lot of them are hostile toward such organizations and brush them off, saying that very little of your dollar actually goes toward helping the child and it gets eaten up in administrative fees. but i found the expenditure breakdown from two big organizations, so you can see for yourself that they're not out to rob you of your money.