Vegan Pigs in a Blanket

If you were looking for cute appetizers without meat, you may want to refine your search. These little pigs are not for human consumption, and the blankets will be for keeping newborns warm and snuggly. Following a pattern on RepeatCrafterMe I whipped up these little morsels to be part of a gift set for some co-workers. My friend Myra has ordered some adorable pig themed blankets from Etsy that should pair with these quite well.

 Even though I made them just a few days apart from each other, and made the noses and ears in the same sitting, they are not quite the same. How I can follow a pattern for ears and have them come out different sizes in one sitting baffles me. But the babies won't know and the pigs don't care. 

Pig snout!

Pig ears!

Deep fried pork skin? Ewww, that's not vegan!

Pig tails!

Non-Paleo, plant-based pork products!

Hansel and Greteling our way through the dog wash

Be it ever so flea ridden, there's no place like home.

Our work trip to Chicago went smashingly. What gets me through a 17-hour day of proctoring on hard cement floors? Pure greed for the paycheck and the joy of not cooking, cleaning, washing, vacuuming or doing dishes for six solid days. I love hotels. I was born for hotels. But as I'm not living in the days of steamer trunks and extended holidays on the Continent, we had to pack up and head home. Home to our happy pooch who seemed to pick up every flea in Sacramento that was displaced by the Monster Storm of 2014.

Our dog sitter had mentioned that Molly was scratching a lot and was a bit out of sorts while we were gone. We spotted some fleas and put on the scary chemicals that we may have procrastinated with a bit. No go. She was still a wreck, so we synchronized our watches and planned to meet at the dog wash after Ernst's work. He got stuck in traffic, so it all came down to me. I had the joy of bringing the dog that hates all living creatures into The Honest Dog, a place where people bring in their pets to shop - because that's what people with good dogs do.

I brought along the only trick left up our sleeves - bread. Molly loves bread more than anything, even fresh meat. I got her to walk in like she was a good dog, with a piece of bread shoved in my fist. I got her to walk past the resident cat and dog, all eyes on the bread. When she saw the dog shower and stopped in her tracks, a little nibble didn't cut it, she got a whole slice as we walked past the good dog on the grooming table. As I lied to her about what a good dog she was and hooked her collar to the chain in the shower, bread crumbs were flying everywhere. She was in gluten heaven as the first sprays of water hit her, and then it was too late.

She got her flea bath. I got my flea bath. The only one who didn't get a flea bath was Ernst, who conveniently walked in while I was paying. It had all gone so well, I breathed a sigh of relief, and at that moment Molly flung her newly washed and still damp body up towards the owner's cat on the counter. The fur flew for a bit, both cat and dog got in their quick swipes and it was over. Oh, to be one of the relaxed pet owners who meander through the store with their calm canines. No, we have Molly the Pumpernickel Pup. After getting home, I took a long, hot human bubble bath - because by then I was toast.

"Treats and Stuff!"

"DOG WASH?"

Our wet noodle.

Feeling quite crafty after the faire

The Leif Quilt gathered no moss.

Well, well, well. That about sums up my feelings after my craft faire in Curtis Park, a totally cool neighborhood in Sacramento. The people were great, the weather cooperated, the venue was nice, the other vendors were not intimidating and ca-ching ca-ching, I sold half my quilts and some other items. The first quilt sold in the first ten minutes, and that certainly got things off to a nice start. I explained my process so many times I got tired of my own voice, but my up-cycled process seemed to be a hit with this eclectic and gracious crowd of shoppers. 

Every time a quilt sold, I crossed off the price and wrote SOLD across the price.
That seemed to work to say, HEY FOLKS, they're going fast!

Lars the Snowman Quilt sold with the matching hat.

I got some paper towel holders at Big Lots to display the hats.
Only the Snowman and the Minion hat sold, Miss Mattie Gasgar and gang came back home defeated.

The Bunny Quilt

My best moment came the next morning. A super nice mom bought the Bunny Quilt for her little girl. She said it was in hopes that it helped her daughter sleep through the night. The next day she messaged me through my Square Register to say it worked! Her daughter slept through the night in her own bed with her new Bunny Quilt. So much for my pledge on a stack of fabric to never make another puffy quilt ever, ever, ever! The Amazing Puffy Quilt to Make Your Kid Sleep Like a Bunny - I can see the Etsy title right now.

It's seventy degrees, break out the hats!

After yesterday's deluge (a new rainfall record at Sacramento airport) today felt like Hawaii. Wrapped up in boots and my raincoat, the temperature in my car said 68 hot humid degrees outside. Just perfect for tomorrow's craft fair to sell wooly scarves, warm and thick hats and cozy quilts. If there was such a thing as a craft fair curse, I would have it. I really pictured a fair on December 5th to have a chill in the air. Silly me. I may have to make a sign that reads "For your little bundle of sweat...er...sweet baby".

But I've been sewing my little heart out and crocheting like mad. The grand total comes to 10 quilts, 11 hats, 3 scarves and some craft and sewing supplies I don't need anymore. The set up has taken more brains than most of the items for sale, because apparently you can't just throw a bunch of stuff down on a table and sit back while people shove money in your hand. Silly me. You have to merchandise, you have to think like a buyer, you have to go to interior design classes and mannequin making classes to "set the scene." Thankfully for me, my neighbors will help me with this, because they too want to sell winter things to people wearing t-shirts and shorts in December. Maybe we can set up a snow machine, or blow freezing cold air in our little corner as we pile them with scarves so they "don't catch their death".

We pack up the car tonight and then hope for an arctic blast to hit during the night. I keep telling myself it will be OK if I don't sell anything, it has been a fun experience getting to this point. But who am I kidding, I never want to see these things again. Except the penguin, I have become quite attached to the penguin. She's got winter wonderland all wrapped up.

Little Mattie Gascar

Rastafarian Snowman

One-eyed Minion

Mr. Sweaty Ears

Dilbert, the Geek Chic TV Quilt

Audrey. That's all I have, Audrey.

Digger, the dog quilt for your lap

Fredrica, the Farm to Spork Quilt

The Bunny Quilt who's official name has escaped me because I'm burning up in my winter clothes.

Sunday Mourn

It was stacking up to be a perfect Sunday morning. With my monthly volunteer obligations nicely tucked away a couple of days early, I had the weekend free to tie up loose ends. And I mean that literally - I needed to snip loose ends from my craft fair quilts, wash the second-to-last one, sew the last one, make a few more gift tags, photograph four quilts and my latest hat creations and post them on Etsy.

And…washing machine drum roll please…the washer broke Saturday morning. It had an error message that read OE, flashing incessantly with a full load of whites. Why do washing machines always break down with full heavy loads of towels? Never with just a little quicky load of rags, no, machines must come to a crashing halt with at least seven or eight sopping wet full-sized bath towels. After restarting several times hoping the OE would just go away and things would start spinning in the right direction, it was time to call in the expert. But before that, my husband looked at it. After Googling what OE meant, (it appears to mean that there is a washing machine full of sopping wet towels going nowhere) he set to work trying all the easy fixes. First we drained the machine out, mostly into a bucket. The hope was that what Ernst fondly calls my “quilt kr@p” was clogging the filter. Nope, it wasn’t that. Next was draining the hose, hoping we would find the nasty clog of fabric fuzz. No fuzz, clean as a whistle.

Now came the really fun part - Googling how to take your washing machine apart in 47 easy steps. Thankfully Ernst is super good with tools and broken things and not getting too worried about 8 sopping wet towels being held hostage by a flashing error message that makes no sense. OE? We still don’t know what it stands for. Overworked Engine?Outrageous Expectations? Is it Korean for Get a Different Hobby, Anything But Making Rag Quilts, You Fool? A call to our expert friend who owns River City Appliance moved Ernst on with confidence to Step #48, removing the pump to see what was stopping up the works. And what do you know, quilt kr@p! Putting the washer back together of course took 53 steps, but it appears all is well and I promised on a stack of folded white bath towels that I’ll clean the filter every time I finish a rag quilt. Every. Single. Time.

Moving on to Sunday morning. Perfect, a rainy day in the forecast, the big Sunday paper waiting to be delivered to me in bed by our adorable dog, some serious puttering ahead, including postponed laundry and all the things sidelined by the Attack of the Giant Quilt Blob. Then the phone rang at 5:20ish am. Ernst got it and mumbled “San Juan” as he handed it to me. Oh, the joy of being a substitute anything. The money is unexpected and always welcome. But that moment of lying in bed, trying to remember What day it is? Where I am? What am I supposed to be doing today?  Trying to sound perky to my desperate coworker who just wants to hear a definite Yes, of course I can come in! I decided a bird in the hand is worth two quilts in the bush, so I said yes. I made two travel mugs full of coffee, threw on some clothes covered in threads, put together a pathetic but healthy bag of food and stumble/drove into work. I decided against hauling in my sewing machine, the fabric fuzz would be a dead giveaway. On this perfect Sunday morning, I don’t want OE to stand for Ousted Employee.

Target practice with needle and thread

Puffy Quilt - Kim Kardashian style.
'Cause...you know...

My quilt making is at an impasse right now. Since discovering the new option of making a puffy rag quilt, I'm in quilt confusion and not sure in which direction to go. The traditional way of making rag quilts, if you can call a relatively new craft traditional, is to sew a piece of batting into each square with an X and then sew all the squares together. Another option is using flannel and not sewing the Xs, but they don't seem to have the same personality and charm. The newest option, the puffy type, removes the whole step of cutting out the batting, and the time-consuming X sewing process. The downside?

They take up so much room!

In prepping for the craft faire, I have four regular quilts waiting in a suitcase, and two puffy quilts bulging out of a giant blue IKEA bag. Too much fluff!

Another plus of the puffy quilts is that they don't sew an X across the pattern of the fabric. This doesn't matter so much with stripes, calicoes, polka dots and checks - but when there's a pattern involving people or animals, I run into trouble. I have no choice, I have to sew that X right down the middle of the square, and if I wasn't gauging things right during the cutting-out phase, I have to just cringe and sew right through and apologize later. Here have been the latest casualties.

Mr. Scarecrow got it in the arm and face, and the crow croaked too...

...a side of beef anyone?...

...ribs perhaps?...

...Ugh, right in the chest...

...and then the rear...

...makin' bacon...

...Veal? That's so wrong!...

...the bears are not safe...

...neither are the children on the beach...

...poor puppy...

...I killed two birds with one sewn X.

Staying out where it's safe.

It's not fair. It's faire.

Craft fair, craft faire, whichever way you spell it, I've been wanting to do one. A real one, that is. Along with my neighbors who knit and crochet, I've done two craft fairs. The first was on a rainy day at a retirement home. It was a dud. The other was on a hot day at a school carnival. It was not quite as bad as the first, but it was not great. For a craft fair to work the weather needs to warrant your goods, (no scarves and quilts when it's 90 degrees), there has to be a lot of people, and they need to be in the buying mood. Selling to seniors who have just downsized a lifetime of stuff into a small apartment is a bad idea. Kids at a school carnival have no money and wouldn't buy a quilt even if they had it. So we're hoping that the weather, the crowds and the mood are just right for this, our first real craft fair(e).

Holiday Craft Faire
December 5th, 2014

Sierra 2 Center

Rooms 10, 11 & 12

2791 24th Street

Sacramento CA 95818

(916) 452-3005

www.Sierra2.org

First of all, it's on a Friday. That's good. And it's at the beginning of the month before people have spent all their money on things like food and other non-essentials. It's inside. That's great because who wants their quilts blowing all over hin and yon, not me. They provide the table. That makes my shoulders so happy. It is a good price, and with sharing the table with my friends one good hat sale will cover the cost. Let's see, what else? It's near the DMV and the organizer assures me they get lots of lunch time traffic and there is a neighborhood event there that night that hopefully will bring in some crowds. That's what I want - crowds of freezing people with lots of cold hard cash, looking to warm up with some quilts and crocheted hats.


So, here we go, between now and December 5th I'm going to be a sewing machine. As in a person who is sewing a lot at her machine. Sewing and cutting, and planning and snipping and washing and labeling and hoping my hands don't fall off from exhaustion. If you need to contact me, you'll find me in the pile of fluff we call our house. Bring fabric.

Besides the three quilts I have remaining on Etsy, this is what I have worked up this week.

I cut out and sewed up a Farm to Spork quilt...

...it's got scarecrows and cows!!

I just cut out a Geek Chic TV themed quilt with tie dye! Groovy, man.

My one-eyed Minion guy will be there...

...with Swirly Hat One...

...Two...

...and Three.
I need more stuff.
This is so not faire.

Fall into the next season

We have four seasons here in Northern California: Green, Brown, Browner and Wet/Fog. We are now in Browner, but the forecast for tomorrow is Wet! Time to put away the summer clothes and get out the three-quarter sleeved lightweight jackets! Yes, there are those times when we worry about the oranges in our backyard freezing, but once you say "oranges in my backyard," you've lost any sympathy from folks in the cold weather states.

In order to get really excited about my clothes each season, I put the off-season ones away in nicely organized boxes. I'm careful to only put away the clothes I really use and love, Oh, who am I kidding, I just fold them up quickly and shove them away because I'm so sick of them after the long summer/winter season. This time I have a system, and it will be ruthless. For the 13 winter skirts that have remained from my last purge, I came up with a way to make sure they don't get folded up once again into the Boxes of Unending Hope. To my rescue enters the lowly clothes pin.

A baker's dozen of winter skirts

On each hanger of each skirt, I've attached a clothes pin. If I wear a skirt and it makes me happy, doesn't annoy me in any way, shape or FORM, or cause me to grimace while passing a mirror, it loses the clothes pin and stays on my good side. The Skirts of My Discontent do not get put back on the hanger, they go straight to the Goodwill drop-off center which is so close I could walk. (If I walked there more the skirt might not annoy me so much, but that's another matter.) If a skirt goes the whole season and still has its clothes pin on, then that probably means I never liked it much anyway and it won't get stored in the spring, but it'll go down to the Goodwill drop-off center (that I really should walk to more often). Why just the skirts? A line of clothes pins down my whole closet would be a bit much, so for now my pants, tops and shirts are on the honor system.

Now it's time to wash all my summer clothes, box them up and donate the ones that are not even close to being Clothes Pin Worthy. If there wasn't such a huge bag of them, I'd totally walk them down to Goodwill.

One last summery day to hang out the wash.

Were we really swimming just two weeks ago?
I won't mention that or the orange trees in the yard to any cold weather folks.

A skirt in this color would be so fun.

Who wants to make a Minion?

We've got eyes on the top of our bed.

Heard from one room in our house to another -
"I lost an EYE! Oh, never mind, I found it."

It's hat crocheting time around here. This one is another cute creation from a pattern on Repeat Crafter Me. This is my second Minion-inspired hat, and I have yet to see the movie. The pattern is a popular one though, judging from the requests I'm getting after the first hat. After I make one more for a little buddy of ours, and I still feel like making more (most likely not!) I'll post some on my Etsy shop. They seem like they're super easy to make, but then I start fretting over how many hair tufts to add, where exactly to place the eyes and how to get the perfect little smirk out of the mouth yarn. By the time I'm done I feel like those eyes are staring me down, knowing I'm a big Minion fake because I didn't see them on the big screen. It might be time to switch it up and make a few scarves. Scarves with no personality whatsoever.

No doubt about it, it needs some eyes. 

One eye, or two?

Two it is, but we need pupils and we need them now!

Much better, but where's his mouth?

Hair, eyes, pupils and a cute smirk. Have I created a monster?