Wee Wonderfuls

I'm a sucker for musicals

I really *really* enjoyed this "internet miniseries event" from Joss Whedon. Check it out now if you're interested b/c I think it's only up til tomorrow night.
 

picking buttons out for her new sweater

it's 90º and I'm knitting

I've blasted up the a/c and am in denial. I've done my time this morning on the surface of the sun watching Oscar splash around at swimming lessons. Now I've handed him off to the young peppy babysitter who doesn't seem to wilt in the heat as I do and I'm settling in for some doll-sized knitting. I'm working on a set of notecards for the shop. We're trying to get some non-pattern stuff in there. Mix it up!

supplies

Check out our new Rosa ribbon.. Goldilocks! I love it! Thanks Rosa for making such super cute ribbon for me to hoard :)

While I'm on the topic of supplies indulge me while I do a little bitching about my fabric stash will ya. I have two ginormous closets full of fabric, two!, and still I cannot put together a simple little patchwork without a mountain of effort. All my pieces are too small or the color is okay but the scale is wrong. Too many things on white backgrounds. Too many novelty prints. Too much japanese fabric that doesn't work for anything (hello storybook prints). Too many scraps of vintage fabric that are too scrappy to make anything from. Not enough stripes and dots. Not enough basic florals. And somehow I can never find just that right green. Or gold. Or pink. Or lavender I'm looking for.  I feel like I spend a ton of money on fabric but maybe I don't spend enough. I need to live near a quilt shop so I can fill those little here and there needs on the quick instead of making the biannual trek to the stitches and stuffing and hope that'll get me through. No, I need a fabric store to sponsor me! And send me giant boxes of samples every month. Oh, wouldn't that be heaven. Or maybe I need to just move into a fabric shop. Some giant emporium with stacks to the ceiling of every print imaginable. Somehow I imagine I'd still have quilters' block when it came to picking my patchwork pieces. Or maybe I need to just take a day to sort my stash by color so I can flippin find anything. Anyway, here's what I came up with. I just picked one color to go with, blue, and then it made things a little easier.

fairy dress-up

Ok. I drew up the instructions for the fairy dress-up dress. They're a little slapdash but should do the trick. I was hoping to make another for Phoebe and was planning to draw up the instructions as I went.  Unfortunately I didn't have any good coordinating fabrics on hand to go with my new pink cotton lawn print (also from sale aisle at JoAnns) so I had to just draw this up by memory. Hope it works! Nothing is very exact. I figured it's dress up, and it's a pullover apron deal so it doesn't need to be exactly the right size and will last a few years before it's outgrown. And I didn't want to finish any edges so that's why it was put together the way it was.. finishing-free. But you're lucky, Tim saved you. He insists my handwriting is illegible so he went through and typed up all my handwritten instructions. So now it's fancy! Here it is. Here's the original in case you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about.

baubles

The super busy holiday weekend sort of shook me out of my gardening obsession phase. That, and the hail that came through and knocked off half my new flowers petals. hmpf. Before I'd leveled out I was getting very into the idea of an almost magical garden, you know the kind that glowed in the evening, smelled amazing and was full of perfectly matched sparkling purples and blues. (it's sort of getting there) Now that I've come to my senses I just hope I can keep these plants alive and in one piece until Fall. But back in the throes of gardening excitement I dragged the family to American Science & Surplus in search of some sort of industrial looking windmill-y like object that I could put in the garden as the perfect little cool modern fairy type of thing. Yeah, didn't really find anything like that but I did find these cool glass fruits. I can't resist a bauble. It's the sort of thing the 10 year old Hillary would have gone crazy for. I think I'm going to start packing these things up in little time capsule packages for Phoebe to open as she gets older. How excited would I have been if one Summer day when I was really bored, my mom whipped out a box with old paper dolls, tiny little re-ment sets & plastic raspberries in it!

Picnic Fairy Stitchette up in the Shop

The Picnic Fairy Stitchette has made her way to the shop this morning.

I'm kicking around some ideas for what I'm going to do with my finished embroideries this time. I think it'd be so cute to make some sort of picnic basket cover out of them but I don't have a nice basket yet. We'll see. Maybe I'll make another garland or apron.

So a note on the pattern: all the detail in the samples I made up is not on the pattern. This way you're free to add detail but don't have to get all teeny tiny nitpicking if you're not feeling it. The gingham pattern on the wings is not on the pattern. That I did with criss crossing running stitches. Same with the details inside the squares on the quilt. I think that's it. Oh, I did some dots on her dress, those aren't on the pattern. Again, a running stitch. Everything else is done in my usual split stitch or backstitch for tiny details. French knots for the eyes and dots. Oh and detached chain stitches worked well for the watermelon seeds. More info: I stitch mine up on muslin with half a strand of DMC floss (3 out of the 6 threads) and as I mentioned before, with whatever needle is on hand, you know.. the one that's not too big or too small. Shoot me an email (hillarylang at gmail) if you have any other questions. Thanks!!

phew.

The 4th of July is exhausting. So much excitement! The Langs can hardly handle so much fun all at once. We're a little tuckered out. Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!

more vintage doll clothes

I've added the rest of my mom's old dolls' clothes to the vintage doll clothes pool. Since we've determined 80's are vintage maybe I'll add my old Darci doll clothes. Get ready for disco glam!

vintage-ish? fabric

I found these in a display of fat quarters in a funny little yarn shop that sold some fabric too. I asked if they were new because I was getting a not-so-new vibe off them and the owner said they were the ends of old bolts. Many of them are VIP prints by Cranston Print Works Company. I love these, especially the  tiny little prints. There were a bunch of VIP prints in the treats I second-handed this Winter and those were definitely vintage-y. So I have no idea what kind of date is on these. I'm thinking 80s? That's vintage-y.