Honeybee*Hill

Today’s Sunday Stash pick is some red and blue repro prints from my stash. I absolutely adore 20s and 30s repro fabrics. They’re probably my favorite. I love the small patterns. They’re great for little patchwork projects and for baby items. I keep a few of my repro FQs in a little craft kit that I take with me. It’s just a little box with my yoyo makers, some hand-sewing thread and needles. I also have some yarn scraps and crochet hooks in the box now too. But anyway, I really like to just sit on the porch and make yoyos with these kinds of fabrics.

When I was in the hospital having the bebe, my friend Amanda sent me a package with some hex papers and some cute fabric scraps. I’ve been practicing with the cuuuute scraps she sent. The linen fabrics are harder to make hexes out of.

I think I’ll use these to embellish some pants for Sullivan. They seem to be boyish, right? I’ve got a few scraps of Heather Ross goldfish in bags fabric that I think I’ll fussy cut some hexes and use them to embellish a backpack for him.

I can’t do any sewing today though and I have to resist the urge to pick up my crochet hooks too. I have a paper to write and a few hundred pages of Don Quixote to tackle! Yikes!

What’s in your stash today? Happy Sunday!

I’ve still got half an hour left of Sunday — so this is my Sunday Stash post! I thought in the course of this post I’d also introduce you to some of my favorite flickr groups.

In case you have no idea what this Sunday Stash thing is about — it’s a group on flickr where members post a picture of a tiny bit of their craft stash every Sunday — and blog about it even. Of course it’s a great group to browse if you like drooling over pretty fabrics (like I do).

These pretty American Jane fat quarters I got in a swap on the Craft Room Destash group on flickr. This is a swap group where members post craft stuff they don’t want anymore or fabrics they have available for swapping. When you see someone else post something you want, you just ask them to look over your stash and see if there’s anything they’re interested in swapping for! It’s super fantastic. I’ve taken part in over half a dozen swaps with various members of this group and I’ve gotten some great fabrics I love in exchange for some great fabrics I probably wouldn’t have used otherwise. I’ve also traded craft books in this group. I have a whole set on flickr of craft things I’m willing to swap out — in hopes of getting new craft stuff of course

Most of my favorite flickr groups are swap groups, actually. I am doing THREE swaps in August. The first is for the A Little Fabric, A Little Chocolate group. You can see by the photos in the pool that this is a high quality swapping group. Every month we’re assigned partners and based on their flickr photos and a little survey, we put together swap packages for each other that consist of three fat quarters and some chocolate and extra goodies. This swap is always my favorite one. I was really sad when I didn’t sign up for July because I thought I’d be too busy with a newborn to do fabric shopping (I was right). It’s really great to get such a nice surprise in the mail and the fellow crafters I’ve met through the group have become great flickr friends of mine.

The second swap I’m doing in August is similar to the first. It’s for the Fat Quarter Swap with a Twist group. For this group we send themed monthly packages to our swap partners. The packages usually contain a few fat quarters, some kind of handmade item and extra goodies. The August theme is “shades of blue” and we’re required to send a blueberry recipe to our partners (along with the fabric and handmade stuff). I’ve done this swap for awhile now and I highly recommend it. I find the themes can be harder to work with, but I do enjoy the challenge of putting together a nice swap package.

The third swap I’m doing is for a new group I’ve just joined. The Amigurumi group on flickr is absolutely full of stunning inspiration — and since I’ve become mildly obsessed with crochet lately, I spend a lot of time looking at this pool. It’s a good way to find designers and bookmark etsy favorites and I’ve found some nice patterns — both free and for sale. I think that Amigurumi appeals to me more than making softie toys with fabric right now because I love making toys for Sullivan and it’s a different kind of activity for my hands — and it feels good to take a break from the sewing machine. There is an August swap going on where secret partners send an Amigurumi and extra goodies to each other. This is an international swap too. Looking at some of the swap examples posted it should be a really awesome swap. I’m sort of intimidated, but I just purchased some patterns on etsy to try and I’ve been practicing my tension and stitches by making toy eggs all week! I’ll review the swap better once I’ve actually taken part in it though!

I absolutely love swapping and I love swapping on flickr because it just seems more personal than swap-bot (in my experience). Of course, be safe and use common sense when giving out personal information on the internet!

I’ll post some of my other favorite flickr groups at a later time!

In the meanwhile, I’m doing fine and so is Freyja, Sullivan and Aaron. My mother-in-law is visiting this week, so we are busy busy! But I’m hoping to have some time to post some blogs and get caught up on comments. Four minutes till next week now! Happy Monday everyone!

This is a Japanese import linen by Kokka. Alice in Wonderland. I have a yard of this and I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with it yet. Probably a bag of some sort. Maybe I’ll keep half of it and swap the rest

In other news, we took the kids (that’s so weird to say “the kids”) to Dayton yesterday for a field trip to one of the metro parks and to Young’s Dairy. Sullivan got to feed the goats and he pretty much thought it was the most awesome thing EVAR.

Still on the mend here. I’ve got a few precious days left before Aaron goes back to work, then his mom is coming out for a visit to lend a hand and then we’re traveling out east to my sis-in-law’s wedding! Crazy busy the next few weeks.

I have some new cloth menstrual pads in the etsy shop though. I’m still waiting on Freyja’s cloth diapers to arrive and I started drafting my own pattern for a new kind of diaper. I’ve got a small and regular size worked out. I need some covers to test them myself first, but maybe I’ll be introducing HBH cloth diapers soon! Having a wee baby in the house makes me mildly obsessed with baby things.

I don’t have any pretty pictures of her (seriously, she sleeps all day long!) but here’s a photo of my fam at the metropark that makes my heart melt because of the little arm sticking out:

Have a fun Monday!

Well now it’s Sunday, July 5. And yes, I’m still pregnant. Let’s just get that one out of the way at the start. On Thursday I was up at the University and I saw Aaron’s boss. He said that if my belly were on TV, people would think it was one of those fake pregnancy bellies because it’s so big and round and out there. I told him that there’s a chance Aaron would be back at work on Monday (we got a long weekend because of the holiday). Argh. Well now I have no doubt he’ll be at work tomorrow. There’s absolutely nothing going on in my uterus. It’s like cricket sounds in there. Punchy hasn’t even dropped yet and is still kicking around in there like she just don’t care.

Of course in the meantime I’m swollen and miserable and (as Sullivan would say) BIG (but he would say it with both of his little arms thrown into the air).

And this was a holiday weekend. And I live in Indiana. And I can’t think of anything that Hoosier’s treasure more (other than basketball, of course) than fireworks. In the town I live in there are at least three or four firework stores. Like, big outlets devoted entirely to peddling small explosives that people set off in their backyard. We bought some on Friday from a family friend’s store — small things like bottle rockets and sparklers and a fountain. Sullivan loved it. He kept asking for more after each one would pop and he’d ooooh and aaaah. Last night the city’s official fireworks got rained out (it was really only drizzly), but Aaron and Sullivan walked to the nearby park to sit on top of the slides and watch everyone else in town set off fireworks — big ones that explode in the sky.

Since I can no longer sit close enough to my sewing machine desk to reach what I’m sewing, I spent the weekend learning how to crochet amigurumi. I’m mildly obsessed with kawaii cute (like, if I weren’t 28 and married and an old mom, I’d totally have a Hello Kitty bedspread or something) things, so this was a craft I naturally gravitated toward.

At first I wasn’t sure how the pattern I was following could possibly become a cute pink bunny. Cute pink brassiere, maybe, but eventually it did work! And it was surprisingly easy. I tried to make a toad yesterday but it turned out awful and I unraveled it. The one thing I can say about crochet — it’s a lot easier to rip out stitches than with sewing!

I joined Ravelry and am finding tons and tons of patterns I want to try out. I already broke the one rule I made for myself when I decided to learn crochet last week — that is, I bought three more balls of yarn (to make the amigurumi) and another crochet hook. This brings my total yarn stash to 7 balls of yarn (I used an entire pink one for the bunny) and two crochet hooks. Not bad. I can still restrain myself. I don’t know enough about yarn to spend lots of money on it anyway.

Here’s my Sunday Stash (since that’s what today’s post is supposed to be about):

It’s Anna Maria Horner’s Good Folks. I originally bought these with the intention of doing some kind of quilt, but I’m honestly not much of a quilting girl. Oh sure, I love the look and idea of making quilts, but frankly, I’d rather make clothes, hats and bags. I think these fabrics would be perfect for an awesome gift for a really good friend who has been so helpful during my pregnancy (and I don’t think she reads my blog — and if she does, well, she can just be excited and pretend not to know I’m going to make her an awesome gift). They’re all so beautiful — I just picked five of the dozen that I liked the best (and it’s really hard to choose). When I lose my baby bump, I’m going to get some yardage to make some dresses (for me, of course!). I actually sort of love all her fabric collections. She just might be my favorite designer.

Awesome husband who is awesome made four loaves of zucchini bread (I’m sure the recipe will land on his blog later, since he was really excited about this giant zucchini he found at the farmer’s market) and I’m drinking coffee and I have this distraction as well, trying to explain to me that the leggo configuration in his hands is a truck and truck is nice and mommy see? truck!

Since I’m going to start playing Sunday Stash, you get two blog posts in one day! You lucky readers you (all 10 of you!)!!

Robert Kaufman – Kitchy Kitchen and Tiny Tulips. I wish I had more tulips actually. These are destined to be pot holders in my kitchen. Or embellishments for tea towels. I haven’t decided.