Made with Vintage

I love vintage fabrics. I love vintage anything really, so long as it's not dirty and falling apart. But I have a special attraction to fabrics (and keeping the text / textile connection alive, to paper too). Table cloths, old upholstery, napkins, and stray yardage - just can't pass it up. Here is a new pin cushion I made with the sweetest vintage fabric of all. I am already hoarding a little belt I made for my daughter with it.


What do you think? Could you just sleep on this sweet thing?

I made the ETSY Front Page

It sounds absurd. I have two beautiful kids and a loving husband, and a rewarding job I don't hate. But the highlight of my Thanksgiving holiday was making the Front Page of etsy.com. I grouped together a bunch of items based on their loveliness (I curated.) And then a site administrator showed up in one of my comment fields, and shortly thereafter, my curation was on the main splash page. Isn't it lovely?


Everyone else seemed to like it. I am reading over people's compliments like old love letters. Every time one of my items has made it to the front page (three or four times total), I've gotten about 300 views in 30 minutes. This time, I got 10 views total. Yet I am so proud.

I am also proud of my son and daughter. But that is so very different, of course.

Ithaca Update

Ok. So we're stuck here. Not like we were planning on leaving the area, necessarily, but maybe buying a different house in a handful of years. Maybe five. But no. We're stuck. Like a lot of people I guess. Better stuck than a cardboard box. Which I would just cut up for crafts anyway. But the worst thing is the money mistakes we made, that had we been smarter, we'd be sitting pretty now.

Regret isn't healthy. So moving on.

Pillow Box Talk

I am in love with pillow boxes. Isn't that romantic? All I want to do is make them. All day long. I have been cutting up cereal boxes and hanging file folders like mad. Upcycled, recycled, recraft, repurposed. Whatever. It's cool. It turns a so-so gift into a buried treasure. What..is...in....here...?Wha?...Ahhhh!! But I'm having some difficulty with finding a piece of recycled cardstock large enough to make a pillow box for my pin cushions. This I believe would be the thing finally to get them to sell. No one wants them without the custom-sized, handmade pillow box wrapper. No one. But I believe in the potential of the pillow box. I have 15 pin cushions. Anyone want one in a gift bag? I don't want to steal anyone's images anymore (new pride in myself - artifact of new patriotism - pretty cool) so can't offer you a pic. Owell. Then here's a gratuitous baby June shot.

Oh say can you see?

a.k.a. Jose, can you see? A herald of things to come. I composed a post in my head on the way to work while listening to reports on last night's election results in the U.S. As with most times I hear Obama speak, I get the chills and tear up. (This by the way seems to make my mother craaazy. She seems to hate the idea that we would look up to a politician with sincere hope in his leadership. She's not a cynical person, but during the campaign leading up to this election, she has seemed resentful about the fact that so many of us are not cynical.) But my post was about last night's spontaneous outpouring of good will about race. I can't believe I just said those words all in a row: outpouring of good will about race. It was an unexpected joy last night to witness the joy of black America in the election of a black man. Looking back, it is a wonderful thing that Obama ixnayed the aceray subject so early on. It prevented us from making race a negative issue, for now all we have is pride in ourselves for our own risk-taking, and exuberance in the good fortune of our neighbors and the long-awaited arrival of boundlessness for their children. I hadn't realized last night, in the presence of new possibility, what that absence must have felt like for them.

Feeling Patriotic

This is my most patriotic pin cushion.

I am actually feeling very patriotic, for the first time in a long time. Perhaps it's my age. Aren't you supposed to feel anti-establishment from about 18 - 35 years old? Well, now I'm pushing 40. It could be my age. But I don't think so. After two months of kindergarten, I finally thought to ask my son about the pledge of allegiance - and was relieved down to my soul that they still ask public school students to learn it. I recited the pledge of allegiance myself for the first time in centuries. I even kept the "under God". How's that for liberal?

I miss my old phone number.

So I am considering signing up again with Vonage. I can't recommend AT&T for rural upstate New York. Maybe I'll try the local phone company and hook up a phone to my wall. Everyone's worried that if there's an apocalypse, phones won't work because of cable outages, electricity outages, cell tower destruction (?) etc. You mean my phone in the wall will work? I want a big old red one with a clear plastic dial. Like the Gotham City Commissioner.

Ethnography of a Lost Land Line

Today my husband cancelled vonage. This was in order to save $30 / month. After he emailed me to let me know he cancelled it, I panicked. I am panicking now. What will this mean? And reinstating the land line isn’t going to resolve my panick. Why not? I also loved my telephone number: 330-0660. When are you given a number as good and memorable as that?

So I thought it might be helpful to record my thoughts, emotions, and experiences as we adapt for the first time to a completely mobile telecommunication.

In addition to the loss of the number, I was originally anxious about what the switch to individual mobile numbers might do to the relationship with our in-laws. Would my in-laws and I stop speaking, as they naturally deferred to my husband’s cell number? My 5-year old son has just learned to answer the telephone himself. Will he answer our cell phones now? I just called my 85 year old grandmother to get her to update her address book with our cell numbers only. What will happen the first time she gets that terrible, harassing noise that says our former number is out of order?

My nerves are already shot. Will I be able to adapt? Or will the $30/month not be worth the hbp?

Dude, WTF?!

The farmer's market in Trumansburg is every Wednesday from 4-7pm, mid-June until Halloween. Although I've sold a few belts (9), more often than not I sell NOTHING. Goose egg. The taxman will never believe this is a business, and I can forget about writing off my $600 Bernina "sewing computer". But a surplus of inventory is not always a bad thing. I have loads of things that I think someday my new daughter will like, and that in the mean time I can give as shower gifts. If you'd like a little pin for the child in your life, let me know. I'm selling them for $1 to go on the leftover belt that hangs from your loop after it's already been threaded through your jeans. For adults, there is a WTF pin, for $2.

Farmer's Market Opening Day

Trumansburg Farmer's Market opened last Wednesday! 28 vendors, including Wiley Cricket, a collective of Blue Hair Knits, Roundabout, and Wonders, all etsy sellers. At the market, I have postcards, notecards with envelopes, children's belts, and burp throws.