Here we go again

Yep, it's another sale.

Organized by the same folks who did the Go West Craft Fest in Woodland Cemetery in April, this one takes place on June 15th at another Philadelphia landmark - 30th Street Station.  Almost every form of transportation in the city - Amtrak, local trains, trolleys, buses, taxis galore - passes through and around the station, so this could be a really good day.

There was a show back in February that had originally been scheduled to occur right around Valentine's Day, but that got rescheduled due to weather and Amtrak canceling service.  (I wasn't involved in that one, though I loved the idea of it being in the big indoor waiting room - talk about a captive audience!)

This time it's outside the station, on what is these days called "the Porch," an outdoor plaza area with umbrella tables and food trucks, which the local improvement district is touting as a "go to" place - they have live music, yoga classes, gourmet food trucks and a farmer's market all happening there throughout the week.

This sale has a heftier table fee than the last one, so I'm sharing a 10x10 space with one of the vendors from the last sale, a jewelry maker who does some really beautiful and original stuff.  I think we'll complement each other without filching each other's customers.

So now the task at hand is to yet again build up the stock so that there is something in the Etsy shop and yet enough on hand so that the show table doesn't look empty.  Also, pick up another table so my side of the tent doesn't look too sparse, and find some matching table covers, and weights for the table covers, and get a banner made, and, and, and . . .

Out with the Old, in with the New

Otherwise known as, "out with the broken, in with the hopefully longer-lasting and fully functioning."

Otherwise known as my freaking Singer is dying a horrible, loud, metallic yet squeaky, non-buttonhole forming death and I have headed her demise off at the pass and replaced her with a Brother CS6000i.

It'll be my first Brother machine.

I started out on my mom's Kenmore, affectionately known as the "gut buster" because you had to get its 20 plus all metal pounds from the upper reaches of the bedroom closet to even start sewing.  When I started sewing heavily in high school, it stayed set up on a trunk at the foot of my bed and I sat on the floor and sewed.  Hey, it worked - there was nowhere in my room for a table and I couldn't sew in the rest of the house.

When I moved out, I tried to take the Kenmore with me, on the logic that I was the only one who used it.  But it was not to be.  Mom visited my apartment and repo'd the machine, and I ended up with some crappy plastic job from a local chain store that lasted about 2 years.  The best thing about that machine was the store credit card - the interest was horrific, but at least I had credit.  And a sewing machine.

After that, there was a secondhand Necchi that I got from a friend of a friend.  That sewed like a dream until one evening greasy smoke started billowing from its innards.  Mr. Necchi left in a hurry.

That was followed by a Singer that lasted me at least 10 years; that was replaced by an old boyfriend (who was gratified that my kind of shiny gift objects were power tools or sewing machines) with another Singer.  That lasted until shortly after I bought my house; it was replaced by the predecessor to the currently deathbed machine.  When it kicked, I tried to have it repaired but the repair would have cost more than the machine was worth.

My sense of thrift is offended that it costs more to fix things than replace them, but I'm also no fool with my money.  If I can replace for less, or close to it, then I will.

The current Singer has lasted for about 2.5 years of daily sewing, sometimes for several hours a day, on any and every type of fabric.  It was about $129 new.

I think I got my money's worth, but it still irks me.  I also think it was having problems before this happened.  That just seemed to exacerbate it.

I read reviews on Patternreview; I looked at machines at SewVac Direct and Ken's Sewing; I asked my sewing friends on Facebook.  I eventually looked at Amazon.  The machine I'm getting had 28 reviews on PR, mostly all positive.  There were 1,612 reviews on Amazon, giving it 4.5 stars.

And despite wanting to buy the machine from SewVac or Ken's, I ended up going with Amazon because it was more than $30 cheaper.  Again, I'm no fool with my money, especially when there's less of it coming in.

Brother will be here soon.  I'm expecting great things, but really, I'll settle for no squeaks, no thumps, no metallic grinding noises and really good buttonholes.

Next up

I'm still hoping to fit in another show between now and then, but for now, my next event is the 30th Street Craft Market, scheduled for June 15, 2013, at the Porch, which is an outdoor plaza outside Philadelphia's 30th Street train station.

Organized by the same people who did the cemetery show, it's bound to be a good event.  This one's rain or shine, so I invested in a tent (and a tent mate -- the fee for a space was more than I was expecting, and the organizers suggested splitting the space with another crafter whose work would go with mine).

I'm pleased with my choice -- I've done shows with Charlene in the past -- and I'll post some photos of both our work soon.

More chicken, please

I thought the chicken dress was done.  I finished it.  I photographed it.  I listed it and showed it around on Facebook and here.

But it's been bothering me.  Something kept telling me it wasn't finished.

Now it's done.

What did it need?

It needed more chicken.

Chicken ruffle courtesy one of my aunt's house dresses - don't try to picture a whole house dress in chicken print, you'll just hurt yourself.

The Button Box

Have you ever read anything by Wendell Berry?

His nonfiction is really good - even though I disagree with some of his ideas, overall we're on at least a similar page, with most of the same aims in mind. 

More recently, I discovered his fiction, and that's been a whole new (old) world for me. He writes about a fictional town in Kentucky whose residents over the years have been fleshed out in many books and short stories.  Most at least partly take place in the 1940s, the dividing line for farming communities - pre-war "old" ways and post-war "new" ways and technology.  Berry comes down firmly on the side of the old ways, or at least the ways of respect and stewardship for land and life before everything speeded up and got "easier". 

In "Andy Catlett: Early Travels" there's a quote that I think you all will enjoy (if you're still with me by this point):

I went to the closet - "press" was her term for it - behind Grandma's chair and took out her button box.  Every house I visited as a child had a button box.  It has disappeared now from every house I know, but then it was a necessary part of household economy.  No worn-out garment then was simply thrown away.  When it was worn past wearing and patching, all its buttons were snipped off and put into the button box.  And then when something old needed a new button, or when something newly made needed a set of buttons, the button box provided.  Grandma's was an old shoe box better than half full of buttons of all sorts.  It was a pleasure just to run your fingers through, like running your fingers through a bucket of shelled corn.  My old game with it was to paw through it in search of matching sets of buttons, especially the intensely colored glass buttons that had come off dresses.  I sat on the floor by Grandma's chair with the box in my lap and fished out a set of shapely black buttons and lined them up on the linoleum beside me.

My great-grandmom, who died when I was 8, had a button box.  So did my great aunts Margaret and Violet, and my aunt Betty.  My mom had a variation - she kept hers in discarded pill bottles and jam jars, by color.  

Inheriting all their button boxes gave me way more than buttons.  And I, too, have run my fingers through the button box, just for the pleasure it gave me.

Did the women in your family have button boxes (or jars)?  Do you?

Another non-sewing post

But a legitimate question, anyway:  what the hell season is it?

My vegetable seedlings have been in for a couple of weeks, the lilac has bloomed and gone, the blueberries are almost done flowering and the other night it was in the mid 30s.

Today it's humid and thundering and supposedly going to 80 degrees.

What happened to spring?  How did we go from early March to late July?  Where's April?  And what happened to May?

I'm not amused, and my tomatoes are just downright baffled.  They keep trying to start blooms and then it gets cold and they drop off.

Not sure what we'll be eating this summer.

I leave you with a few of what the garden is producing right now - irises in abundance (how exactly do they spread that quickly?  I tore most of them out last year and I still have 4 clumps the size of armchairs) and the first yellow rose of the season.

There are pink and red roses blooming as well, but I've got a soft spot for yellow roses, always have.

And that second iris is one I've hunted for for years - when I was little, my great grandmom had a whole bed of those in her back yard.  She called them "flags," not iris, but it was the same thing.  My aunts never liked this one, said that flowers should be pink, not brown and yellow, but I always thought it was pretty.  It's taken me years to track down: I never saw anything similar in the garden catalogs, but finally I saw them blooming in a yard here in my neighborhood and the owner let me dig a few to bring home.

Now, being iris, I have about 30 of them.  Along with the purple shown above, some lavender, 3 varieties of pink and a few pale yellow that I brought from Mario's house.

I'm seriously thinking about digging out all the iris beds and just making one big one with a handful of each color.  It'll look like a blooming Crayola box each spring.

Now that would make me happy.  If only they would then smell like a blooming Crayola box.

Did anyone else love the scent of a brand new 64 crayon box when they were a kid?  Crayon contact high.  They don't smell the same anymore.  Or my  nose grew up.

Working in reverse

I recently finished these two embroidery motifs.

Actually, I finished the peace sign made of leaves a few weeks back, and this afternoon, while wandering through Facebook instead of doing the sewing I should have been, I finished the tree motif.

Maybe I should start planning what these things want to be before I start embroidering them?  You think?


I'm assuming at this point that I'll piece around them and make a few more pillow covers.  They aren't selling as well as I would like, but I really, really like making them, and that has to count, doesn't it?  The right someone will come along soon and fall in love with embroidery, random patchwork and the idea of pretty soft things in their homes.

At least I hope they will.

The tree motif actually went really quickly, being only two colors.  The peace sign took longer, since I was using 4 or 5 different shades of green and doing all the leaves of one color, then switching off to another color.

I do have a lot of earth-tone and neutral scraps in the back, along with a few more vivid greens and maybe one bright floral just to jazz things up.  Maybe I need to go in the workroom and just lay fabrics out and see what happens.

And maybe I'm just procrastinating because I have 41 plaid flannel Christmas stockings sitting on my table, constructed, backed and pressed, waiting to be embellished.

Procrastination is my friend.