Work in Progress Wednesday

The Basic Chic Hoodlie looks almost exactly the same as last week. This isn't due to lack of knitting. I'd progressed to where I needed to divide for the sleeves and body (knitting from the neck down), realized that I'd made a critical error way back there, and unraveled about 3 or 4 inches -- most of the first skein.

So, no picture.

On the sewing front, I'm supposed to be altering the sleeves of the girls' Irish Dance school dresses. We have a big whoopy-do rehearsal this Sunday, and everything needs to be just right, so I need to get the sleeves just right.

So far I've removed the cuff from the sleeve, and am starting to deconstruct the sleeve end:



Our Dressmaker Extraordinaire said I could do this myself. I didn't ask for this designation -- she just sort of said, "You know how to sew, you can do this yourself." Then she handed me fabric and gave me a 30 second tutorial. Part of me thinks this is very cool, and part of me is very nervous -- what if I blow it? what if I don't blow it, and she asks me to do progressively harder stuff?

AnnaBeth has been working on the Sculpey pumpkin stitch marker concept. She made the pumpkins from some Sculpey we already had, and I found the doodads we needed to make them into stitch markers at Hobby Lobby. Bonus: the doodads were 50% off this week.



I think I'll be in charge of bending the pins around the little rings on the toggle rings.

She also made some extra pumpkins



for use by the autumn fairies



that live amongst the Indian corn



in a village currently spread all over the family room floor, but sometimes appearing on the back porch.




Given the number of dead leaves used in this scene, perhaps you can see why I prefer the back porch -- less vacuuming of leaf-crumples.

There are some spring Flower Fairies in there, too, They're the pink ones. I used to be the type of person who made little Felt Wee Folk inspired by Sally Mavor's books, and so we have several sets for various seasons. They've spent quite a bit of time this week hurtling down the stairway in a shoebox. I think it's supposed to represent some sort of thriller amusement park ride. I know this is not how I pictured they would be played with -- good thing I've gotten over my inner vision of some cozy Waldorfy lifestyle, since my kids don't seem to conform to that vision.

Those days of making fairies are pretty much over for me, but I still have lots of little painted heads and pipe cleaners and embroidery floss around (the floss was from back when I used to be the type of person who did counted cross stitch, but then got transferred to the dollmaking box when that got to be my new interest).

AnnaBeth and Thalia decided to make some babies for their fairy families:



Not in autumn colors, but we are operating an integrated fairyland here.