homemade monday: a little bit of this & that

my life has been such lately that both content and time are lacking.

mean while, make sure to keep up with my remarkable brother-in-law's exotic adventures (sometimes not for the faint of heart) as he takes on the position of program manager at a community radio station in dharamsala, india.

i was hoping to do a lot more sewing this long weekend, but tristan's naps have not been entirely agreeable. also, i discovered that the sound of the sewing machine makes him wail. thus i can't churn away while he sits contentedly close by, amused by fine objects.

following the directions in handmade home, i came up with this little sweater hat:



i used a shrunken navy blue wool cardigan that my mother sent me for the purpose of repurposing. she also sent me some old buttons, including the duck, which i attached to a piece of red wool felt. i used the infant toddler/template, but the hat turned out too small for my bruiser. i'm fine with that, as there are currently a few special newborns in my community.



another tiny experiment was sewing this patch over a giant hole on a favorite pair of tashi's corduroys. the applique is from an old shirt of tashi's. the sewing is rather sloppy, because, i discovered, it is rather challenging to machine sew four sides of a large patch when working within a narrow pant leg.



as i type this, we are waiting. and waiting. for the monkey bread to rise. it's our first time making it, and as is often the case, i am being challenged by yeast. i have it near the warm oven currently, and that seems to be helping.



we decided to make the rolling of the dough balls into an early imbolc ritual, thinking about that which we hope to manifest in the coming year. hopefully it will turn out nicely, and not rock hard! stay tuned for results!

and if you like old photos, check out my mother's flickr site, particularly the old black and white images of ancestry and her childhood in cyprus. there are so very many amazing sets to check out. she has been working incredibly hard at scanning all of her old photos and archiving them on flickr.


(that's me)