Almost There...

These past two weeks have been a flurry of activity - most of which has left me feeling a bit schizophrenic. There was the wrapping up of the school year (I finished my last comment today and could literally feel the burden lifted from my shoulders), and graduating the senior class (my advisees!). I managed to miss the Renegade Craft Fair (total and complete bummer!), but enjoyed another fantastic COOP meeting (that group is getting bigger and better by the month). I finished teaching the son of the lovely folks that own this shop, and they gave me such a fantabulous gift of this fabric: So amazingly fantastic, did I mention that? There's some sort of very fine cotton gauzy fabric in there (the white and pink print), an eyelet fabric that will be the cutest flippin' skirt someday, a crinkly-striped rayony fabric that is my Dad's favorite and has me intimidated (but will be a good challenge), and a great yellow knit.

Being given the knit made me finally take this book off of my Amazon wish list and into my greedy paws. It's such a serendipitous event - girl gets knit fabric that she doesn't know how to sew, girl buys sewing with knits book she's been coveting but could really justify buying, girl doesn't realize it, but said sewing with knits book is also a major tutorial in using a serger. I was lucky lucky lucky and got a serger for Christmas and it's been staring me down in my craft room ever since. I even got it a special table to perch on, and still it sneers at me with its crazy 4-spool arrogance. I never thought about how sewing with knits means you want a stretch seam, so either it's the zig-zag on a regular machine or....drumroll, please...a serger. I'd been looking for a good, basic how-to-figure-out-the-monster-that-is-called-the-serger book, but hadn't stumbled upon anything I love. I already have the first Built By Wendy book and love it, so when I realized that the knits book was going to help me get started on the serger, well...let's just say I've had my nose in that book for the past few days now.

So, to recap: I now have a fantastic knit to play with, a book full of patterns for the knit, and a reason to finally introduce myself to my serger. Hello serger, my name is Kristina.

Somewhere in there, I did manage to make something. I think it was last weekend when I still had a stack of exams to grade and I was a little panicky about all of the work that lay before me (which always gets done, but part of my process is getting panicky about it), and so I whipped out these little needle novellas. Bookish felty goodness to keep your sewing needles tidy.I took a good, long while deciding whether to call them needle novels or novellas, and I opted for the latter because I feel that I might one day make slightly larger books that have a mechanism for holding darning needles as well. In any event, I had a lot of fun up in the craft room saying "needle novella" over and over.

Lastly, I need to make a note of the fact that I am really, truly going to miss Tim Russert. I know, major gear shift here, but it actually has to do with crafting. I like to get up on Sunday mornings and play hooky from yoga class (so not om), then go up to my craft room and hang out with Charles Osgood for an hour and a half (I ♥ Sunday Morning). Then I change to Meet the Press and keep crafting. I really can't imagine my Sunday mornings without either of these boys. Sigh.

OK, OK. I'll leave on a more positive note. There's a new baby in the family! Her name is Natasha, and she's just about as lovely as it gets.

Uncle Andrew says hello:

♥