inspiration... thursday?

1. cloudy and rainy vases, 2. Untitled, 3. Love for tins, 4. best trash find!, 5. winter conifer, 6. for the love of autumn shrine, 7. Hans Wegner - wishbone chair in blue, 8. ...era uma vez, 9. cones, 10. Untitled, 11. pomegranate seeds, 12. Untitled, 13. used to ..., 14. curves, 15. keeping the time by breaking with gold part II, 16. deer2, 17. gifted with flowers, 18. our sunny hallway, 19. Cooper's Shop (1847), Shaker Village, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, 20. wip wednesday :: rainbow blanket, 21. walnut linen doll, 22. 365 days of mug shots, 23. forsaken no more..., 24. Birdalope linen pillow

maybe i should change the name of this series? wednesdays are hard. i probably do need a lot of inspiration on these days. today it is a thursday though... my one day a week set aside for nothing:) i like this day. no school, no classes. nothing scheduled but perhaps a park day, if we feel like it. or not. whatever. a stay in your pajamas all morning, and drink coffee, and read, and sew, and play kind of day. they don't always turn out to be perfect days... but at least there is the hope and the prospect. it is something to look forward to. everyone should have that. happy thursday... or whatever day you have for this... do you have special day like this? i hope so!

camels for christmas...

or anytime really. a sweet and simple little fellow, made from wool and alpaca fur (i think, i have had it for quite a bit and can't remember!). the little saddle is made from a vintage doily... doily love continues! this will be in the shop later today... after i recharge my camera battery, which died half way through uploading. oops. it's been one of those weeks.

a penguin and some trees up next! is etsy slow right now, or is it just me? oh well. i'm having fun making these little goodies!

** in the shop now!

i decided to finish the little tree i started. it is listed in the shop now. i'm keeping it at a more accessible price (i hope?), to give my shop a little bit of a range. i think it is a simple, sweet little tree and it's made from wool and cotton, with a hand painted base and vintage button. more to come in different styles and colors.

inspiration wednesday (yes it's been awhile)...

1. rise and shine, 2. Little Bouquet, 3. leaf crown, 4. surrounded, 5. 8.30, 6. sunset, 7. traversing leaves, 8. Untitled, 9. fall loves., 10. leaves, 11. Untitled, 12. sunlit leaves, 13. swan dwelling., 14. leaf, 15. baby hats and baby toes, 16. banana oat muffins, 17. Wedding No. 99, 18. Fieldmouse messenger, 19. Paper Toy Tintin, 20. ., 21. Untitled, 22. Pumpkin Patch, 23. autumn storm 024hc, 24. golden, 25. marigold dyeing, 26. 1920's Dress, 27. abandoned, 28. The yellow cabinet, 29. Yarn love, 30. The sky, the sea, the waves & the beach, 31. blackbird forest, 32. cornflower blue, 33. scrap buckets, 34. it all ready is better!, 35. wed2, 36. shelving

i cannot believe how long the fall is here in georgia (didn't i say that about the spring?). the leaves have been changing color since september and are still going! the colors are amazing and there are still so many trees to go. except for all the rain (boo) the world looks so beautiful right now (yay). my favorite time of year... except i am sooo looking forward to christmas this year. the last few years have been very humbug, which isn't like me at all. this year, i am already excited. i even bought my christmas cards this week! i never plan early for anything either! we want to decorate the yard with lights, but going to the hardware store and looking at all those extension cords and lights made me realize it looks a lot easier than it is. yikes! well, until then, i get to enjoy a glorious yard full of red, yellow and gold!

a lot of work, a lot of coffee, a lot of distractions...

i have been working this past week on my new winter collection. slow going as usual, with two little ones. i kept my project in the kitchen and tried to work here and there when the children were occupied (my son took the last photo along with a million others. i don't usually let him use my camera, so he was very happily distracted). this little grey donkey is made from a vintage pattern, that i adapted a little to make it more seasonal. i love the idea of the humble little donkey. i tried to capture a sweetness, and the image of the donkey as both a companion and helpmate to humans. i made some little trinkets for the baskets that will come with him, but they can be removed and seasonal nature items like evergreen or berries can be added. i plan to make a little brown donkey an white one as well... but next up, i think will be a penguin. or maybe a deer? or my tree project i have abandoned? too many ideas and not enough time!

** next post i will share some halloween/birthday photos!

lovely day...

i spent a lovely, mellow day with the kids yesterday. we have been taking it easy lately. just trying to enjoy time together. i always have so much anxiety about what we "should" be doing, that it can be easy to forget to enjoy what we are doing. sid drew a face on her pumpkin and then i carved it for her. i like the sweet happy face she made. she liked finding the seeds and roasting them in the oven. the kids took it upon themselves to pick flowers from the yard, and now we have these little lovelies to look at around the house. i love how they naturally bring things from the outside world in. we have these beautiful little collections of nature around the house. we have also started reading the secret garden together. a wonderful book, that is new to me as well. reading together is one of our most favorite activities. i'm trying to learn to let go a little, and learn to say yes more. to accept happiness as it comes, not how i want it to be.

thanks for all your kid thoughts yesterday. much love to you all.

i ran across this little online benefit that is going on to raise money to buy a special van for a special little boy and his mother.... wheels for henry. it looks like many etsians are participating. i wish i had some items in my shop, or i would have too. you can help out by buying something handmade. a great way to support a special cause and handmade as well! i hope you will check it out.

little objects, large memories...

today is the birthday of my oldest son, reece. he should be eight years old. even though eight years ago i couldn't imagine the pain ever, ever going away... today i look back and i am surprised that i was right. i guess, in some small part of me i thought or hoped it would eventually fade away. it doesn't.

yes, you learn to live with it. you learn to feel all the other other emotions besides sadness again, but it does not go away. maybe on his 20th, or 40th, or 60th birthday i will say something different. today, though, i still get tears when i think of him. not just on his birthday, but any day i allow myself to think of him. i don't dwell anymore but there are little moments... seeing my kids run through the park with an older friend for instance, i'll suddenly realize with surprise that they could all be mine. that is the hardest thing i guess. knowing in my heart i have three... but everyone else only sees two. i am a mom to three, but although my house is filled to the brim with the noises, and toys, and clothes on the floor and just the sheer essence of two of them, very little is evident of the third one.

when a child dies before birth, he is so very real to you. he is still your child and always will be. his presence was so very strong and unique to me, but sadly to so few others. when he was gone, i was left with so little... a perfect shell i found in the water while pregnant with him and held onto for luck. the tiny footprints taken at birth. so very few mementos, they don't even fill up the little silk box they give you to hold them. i still treasure them to this day though. i take them out on his birthday and hold them in my hand to feel closer. they are so small... but they carry such weight in my heart. just as he did. just as he still does. though my house may be a little bit emptier, my heart is still full.

happy birthday reece thomas. i love you. always.

thanks so much for the wonderful support you always give me, dear friends, and for the forum to share these thoughts. i know you will think of me with kindness when you read this, and more importantly you will think of my son. that means more than anything. it is a precious gift. i am going to close this post to comments not becasue i don't want to hear from you, just because i know it is hard to find the words to write something... and your kind thoughts are enough.

xoxoxo, cary

mountain weekend...

we took a lovely trip to the mountains last weekend for my husband's birthday (courtesy of his very generous parents). We stayed in a lodge, and had a wonderful time. the leaves were really coming out... you could just watch them popping with color. we took some great hikes, one ending at a waterfall. we also discovered our three year old loves nature... but not hiking so much. i'm hoping she will outgrow this. we all love to hike. she has no problem walking around the city, but stick her near a nature path (or even just mention it) and suddenly her legs are too tired to take one step!



i also discovered i am rather obsessive about taking mushroom pictures. "help mommy find more mushrooms!" was a nice way to distract Sid, but it really was for me. i can't seem to stop! my husband found it a bit much. (i have a million different ones, and i will slowly add them to my flickr... mostly for my own enjoyment).



but it is a much more enjoyable hobby than "please don't kill yourself on that ladder!". this was actually in our room at the lodge... maybe better for older kids.


i hope you are enjoying your fall so far!


** more shop updates coming after i finish up a million custom orders. i'll let you know. i will stop taking special orders after next friday (the 23rd), so get them in now. i have decided the holidays are always just too hectic for me to take anymore. i have a lot of winter items planned though!!

happy birthday...

happy birthday, my love. i have been lucky enough to share 15 of these special days with you, and i am grateful for each one.

more from around the house...

here are some more little projects from the house. i made curtains last week out of a vintage linen table runner. after a shaky start (i've never made them before), i'm happy with how they came out. i hung some curtains in the front window finally, but i think i will add some embellishments to those before i take some photos. we put together sidney's bed... finally!! now we need to hang up the fairy net we bouught her and some pictures above it.

i have also discovered that signing up for a parent cooperative is really much more work than i anticipated. so i have been quite busy with her school. i have a basket full of work sitting here, and so many orders to fill. i'm feeling a little overwhelmed. if i owe you something, i apologize for my slowness. if you were hoping for more fall goodies (as i promised) i apologize to you as well. maybe i should move onto winter? now that is already october!

around the house...

just a quick update... since it has been a week (ack, where does the time go?). i feel so crazy busy all the time, i just can't figure out how to fit everything in the way i want to. i don't think it's really a matter of too much to do, just poor organizational skills. i'm terrible at that. so i just run around like a headless chicken half the time, and sit on my rump getting bleary eyed from reading everyone's blogs the other half!

i have been sewing, of course. i am doing little bits around the house. i am making new bags to use when shipping, instead of boxes inside of boxes. i'm also watching lot's of this sort of stuff...

new giraffe...

new giraffe listed in the shop today... whew, this one was a lot of work! i love how it came out though. more work to come. i also listed another tiger this morning.

bright sunshiny day...

what could this thing be i see up in the sky? it's bright and yellow and i have to squint to see properly. my husband says it is called the sun... but i'm not so sure? it has been a while! as you have probably heard, there has been a great deal of rain here in atlanta. days and days of endless rain. it sort of puts your brain in a funk. you stop thinking as clearly. after it is over it is like emerging from a deep sleep... eyes blinking and unfocused. we were lucky to not have any real damage. a wet yard and basement but no real flooding. one tree fell in our yard, but thankfully it was a small one (because we do have some very large ones). it is currently in our garden though:(


so we are trying to get back to our normal routine after a few days of everything being canceled. i promise i have been sewing but it has been slow going. blame my foggy brain. here is my sunshiny flickr favorites for this week. sorry for the long break. i promise to be back soon.

1. yellow bed curtains, 2. 12/365, 3. Molly's Sketchbook: A Daisy Halloween Costume, 4. Untitled, 5. u-pick, 6. pinecone nest, 7. Untitled, 8. My Vintage Flower Press, 9. 2009 Halloween costume, 10. mermag tea party, 11. Peggy, Joan and Betty, 12. little yellow, 13. Sunflower Prairie Brooch/Pin, 14. Madison peach, 15. look what the little bit of rain woke up, 16. Untitled, 17. Long Gone, 18. sugar sugar, 19. fall prairie, 20. 9/22/09, 21. dream bus, 22. Untitled, 23. Hoops, 24. Hi ya!

small miracles...

five years ago i lost my wedding ring. it was such a sad thing to happen. i can't even express how sad and regretful i was, but if you are married (or even if not) i'm sure you can imagine. not only did i love my beautiful ring... one that i picked out myself and was based on a design from the 1920's... but it is just something you can never replace. my husband and i have talked over the years about buying another so i would have a wedding ring at all, and wouldn't feel sad every time i saw my empty finger. really though, it wouldn't be the same as the ring he placed on my finger that special day. i know a marriage is much more than a ring but of course it becomes a beautiful symbol of the love you share.

i lost my ring, i believed, while on vacation in vermont. i couldn't find it after leaving the house we rented. i was horrified! i searched through everything i had, contacted the house owners, even searched my own house from top to bottom... just hoping it would turn up. years went by, i moved several times, and gave up hope.

until!... about a month ago I got a rather frantic message from my mother asking me to call her because she had something to tell me about my wedding ring. my mother had recently decided to move in with my grandmother to help her out as she is getting older. my grandmother just turned 85. i went to her birthday in august to celebrate, staying in her guest room. i also did this 5 years ago, about a month after i lost my ring. except it wasn't the same guest room. my grandmother had since moved from that place. her guest room, now in a different home, has become recently occupied by my mother who one day decided to clean out a dresser to make some room for her things. she told me she opened the top drawer of the dresser, and sitting right there in plan sight was my wedding ring. my wedding ring! MY WEDDING RING!!! this was the frantic message she had for me.

my grandmother had never seen it and had no idea how it got there. i have no idea how it got there. i guess i must not have lost the ring in vermont. it must have been in my suitcase and actually fell out at my grandmothers old house. i did not use that dresser while i was there. so someone else put it there. it was moved to a new house. my grandmother and aunt have both looked in the same drawer and never saw a ring there before my mother opened it up and found it.

i really do not understand how it was lost, or how it was found, or where it is been all these years. i do know i am so grateful for the moment i saw it again, and was able to slip it back on my finger, a place where it will stay for good i hope. i hope it is done with it's journey now. i will take it as a good sign... a sort of new beginning in a time of many new beginnings lately. when my husband came home that evening i ran out to show him, and proudly joked that i was married again! i know that the love this ring symbolized did not journey away, it only grew while it was gone. i also know, though, that i am grateful for small miracles and for my beautiful ring.

doily obsession...

as you may have guessed i am guilty of a little doily obsession...partly fueled by this wonderful designer and blog, and the huge heap of handmade loveliness my mom bestowed on my sister and i recently. she has been holding onto a large collection of doilies, lace, table cloths, pillow cases, and just handmade goodness in general, made by women in her family. oh, how i am enjoying looking through this very large collection! i have already started to display some in the house (i have plans for a doily wall), but also have been incorporating them into my shop displays.... and now into my work! i have just listed this lovely turquoise blue and white wool mushroom in the shop. i think the vintage crochet lace is a lovely way not only to honor and preserve the handiwork of the past, but also mimics nature it's self!

busy little bee...

it's been a busy week... after appearing in the storque for a few days. but things are slowing back down now, as they always do. i have a few special orders for the next week though, and i have so many things i want to make besides that. too many ideas... my brain gets overwhelmed and i end up completing so few of them. my brain is faster than my fingers unfortunately, especially because i hand sew everything. this can be a good thing sometimes, because it forces me to think about what i am making... and often gives me the opportunity to make changes. a lot of my work is trial and error. i spend forever on each piece... great for the creative process but not so great for making money!

so, i have much planned... more lions and tigers. giraffes and peacocks too. mushrooms and pumpkins and leaves... and on and on. i'm working on a new idea for trees that i have been playing around with in my head for quite some time (i'm also obsessed with doilies right now).


this is only the first stage. deciding on what materials i want/can use to make it work. the simple "mechanics" of putting a new pattern together. i'm sure it will look very different after i have worked at for a while. it might look nothing like this tree does now.. who knows? that's the fun.

i don't draw very well, and since everything i make is 3 dimensional i tend to work more like a sculptor i guess. i draw the simple forms i will need, but often the piece i make really come to life through my scissors. i cut and shape, and throw it on the floor, and start all over again. i feel like i often use my scissors as a kind of chisel, if that makes sense? my scissors, needles and fabrics are my most important tools. i am trying to be better about writing down clear patterns. some are created from scratch others i adapt from vintage patterns i find (often so much they barely look like the original). i hardly ever read the directions to patterns... to me the fun is figuring out how to fit everything together like a puzzle to achieve the image in my head or on the page... or whatever surprise may come.

the trouble comes when i go to make the same thing again, and i'm searching all over for scraps of paper tucked here and there. i've learned not to bother even keeping patterns for ears and beaks because they always get lost and it's easier just to cut them free hand anyway. i have been trying to collect all my general patterns and trace them in a book, and attach each already cut out pattern to the same page. maybe i'll take a picture of that to show you next! i would be embarrassed to show you my actual work room... that should really be my next big project!

signs of fall...

there are many signs of fall around here this week... and not just the rainy cool weather, or the few red leaves peeking out here and there. my youngest started preschool today! such a big day around here for all of us. she did wonderful and had a great day. i think it was harder on my son and i who were staying home! lot's of boo hooing going on:) i did manage to do a little work though, and listed the first of two pumpkins. i will have a limited run for fall, as i did last year. i have some new designs for 2009. the leaves are a little different and i have added embroidery. i will have some orange pumpkins to add soon as well.

i wanted to share another fun crafty project i worked on last night. i made some really cute snack pouches for my daughter to use in her lunch. the school she is going to is very environmentally friendly and discourage plastic, and plastic bags. we never used them for my son either... we had little metals tins, and wax bags instead. though better for the environment, the wax bags are disposable, so i thought i'd try something different. i found this pattern online and tried it out. i made two bags last night and found it to be very easy (i am not much of a machine sewer)! they washed really well today too when i tested them out. they went into her lunch basket this morning with a few tins, and a cloth napkin on top to cover it and use while eating. adorable, and good for the environment.

want another chance?...

if you were really hoping to win my handmade charlotte giveway and were left broken hearted... here is another chance! katy at winsome hollow is giving away a skirt (this time for babies) and one of her own beautiful nest with eggs along with it. how great is that?! go here to enter... good luck!

in other news, i should be ready for another shop update tomorrow! i will start putting some pumpkins in the shop. are you in the mood for fall? it is in the 60's and raining here today... and suddenly i am so excited for fall to come! i have some new ideas for a fall series, that will also include some favorites from last year. i have a couple new animals for my wild life series also in the works. right now i am working on a wee peacock! i will share that soon.

east west...

just wanted to mention my lion was included in a post about embroidery here. that japanese embroidery book looks really interesting too!

bright color for a rainy day...

i used to make these cute little fairies for craft shows, when we were doing them as fundraisers for my son's preschool. they were always such a big hit! kids and adults alike love them. they are a fun project because they can be as simple or as complicated as you like. it was a rainy day today, so we pulled out the flower petals (found at dollar stores), pipe cleaners, and wooden beads. they pick everything out and help assemble as much as they are able. my son drew all the faces. i glued it all together with the glue gun. all set for a little rainy day play. maybe if it clears up tomorrow we will venture out to make fairy houses for them!

now to clean up the mess....