I found a fantastic set of cookie cutters at a yard sale yesterday. They cost a dollar and included the all-important chicken, so they needed to come home with me. Here are the girls sizing up the new chick in town.
Amelia is all about recycling.
I didn't really need to make two more necklaces, but this is what happens when I'm supposed to be doing something else.
A four harness table-top loom, bought for a song (haggled a bit, no less!), and totally worth the fact that I feel like total poo today (even after 12 hours of sleep). It had one broken leg, which my dad is remaking for me, and I'll have to learn how to use it...but these are all just details:)
I've spent a leisurely morning "watching" my favorite weekend TV show (Sunday Morning) and printing up a gocco storm. With chickens on my brain lately (sorry, can't stop thinking about them), my doodles have often been poultry-related. I burned a screen of a few of my chicken doodles a week or so ago, knowing that I wanted to turn them into stationery. And this morning, I awoke with the memory that I had just the vintage paper to turn into note paper.
This lovely bunch of grade-book sheets was found last year at a yard sale. The woman who sold it to me told me that she'd kept it around, trying to sell it each year (with her husband requesting that she just chuck it, already) knowing that someone would want it. It was as if I was adopting her family pet, she was really happy it had found an owner who would turn it into something new. I was thinking about binding some more books at the time, so I thought these would make great pages...but this morning it struck me that I could just cut them up and make stationery sets out of them.
So some precise cutting (perfectly soothing activity early on a Sunday....making neat little stacks of paper), a little gocco magic, a latte, and Charles Osgood; and here they are! Poultry Paper Stationery Sets:)
There isn't much to report around here lately, which is why I haven't. Well, there isn't much unless you consider having three insanely adorable chicks to stare at all day blog-worthy news. For fear that my blog will turn into the chick-cam, I've tried to keep the myriad of photos I've taken of them away from here...hence, I haven't been posting.
Oh, and the vintage patch punchwork (used to make the totes) that I found at a yard sale a few years ago? The same lady was having a sale this weekend and I found another piece of the stuff, so I have two more patches to sew. I went to the yard sale again hoping I'd find it...when I went two years ago, I tried to haggle her down since I was buying a lot of the embroidery, but she wouldn't budge. Stubbornly, I refused to take it all (instant regret, but ego intact). Well, she got me in the end because two years later, I forked over the rest of the cash for the last bit of it. I know it might seem odd that I'd find it at the same yard sale, but this is a mondo yard sale - - like I think the woman has a serious hoarding problem. Too bad for her, but fine by me because she has some great stuff to look through. I got a cool printed table cloth that will become something tote-like, some fuchsia satin (oh yeah), and another sweet little piece of embroidery with ducks on it. 
As for the punchwork, I think I might put a patch on a thrifted skirt and save the last one for something else.
Next time I might try vinegar in with the lemon juice since I think the store-bought stuff has vinegar and I like that a bit. It really wasn't too hard, although we followed the recipe to a T and probably didn't need to drizzle in the oil QUITE as slowly as we did. And we also used less oil - maybe about half of what the recipe says, but that could be due to the fact that I didn't have jumbo eggs so I used 5 yolks of our smaller eggs, which might have been less than what 4 jumbos would have given us. In any event, I'm keeping the jar in my fridge and plan on having a lot of egg salad this week since I have to eat the whole jar myself. I don't have a cholesterol test scheduled any time soon, so it's all good.
And this sweet little pack of fat quarters. 
It was all about finding linen today:)
Of course, I could JUST buy a fern so I also picked up a particular grey-leaved hosta that I have been coveting and a few other shade-loving plants. I actually went to two garden centers because the first didn't have any dill. My father, for the second year in a row, is growing dill which has become inhabited by swallowtail caterpillars (I'll try to remember to take a photo to show the next time I'm there.) I figure, if the swallowtails don't find my dill, I'll just eat it, but I am under STRICT orders from my father that I am not to abscond with any of his swallowtails. Meanie.
I also managed to check out a small yard sale up the street from my parents' house. I found this sweet little hand painted ceramic bud vase and this great wool sweater which I'm going to try to felt and then sew into a bag. Hip hip hooray for the start of yard sale season!
