But I don’t wanna cover up my circus toile (sniff, sniff)

Ok, it is a tad girly, technically it matches, but girrrrrrrrly. So now I have this:

My mother helped me select these two fabrics that contrasted each other nicely. I was wanting some sort of trim to finish these off – and we all know that trim can get expensive (right Auntie Kandie?) so she talked me through this neat trick, I took some cording I had at home and covered it with contrasting fabric then sewed it into the pillow just like trim.

And for the finished project:

This concludes our session of Adventures in Sewing. Next time, pillows the sequel- sofa throws.

Now it is getting truly exiting. Brace yourselves, we have a burgeoning head of lettuce (about three bites worth) happily growing alongside some cilantro, which is also flourishing, I’ll have you know.

Now for my personal favorite… drumroll please… our “vegetable.” Somewhere along the way this plant lost its tag, but from the bar code we have deciphered that, at maturity, we will have a crop of “vegetable.”

Good to know. The center green thing that is positively thriving is a lonely refugee patio tomato, of THAT I can be certain (it had a tag.) However, the two spindly things on the outside, well, that can be anyone’s guess, but by the way that they are creeping, I’m going to hypothesize that maybe… possibly… they could be a bean of some sort? An Okra plant? Won’t this be fun? I’ll be sure to take a photographic essay of our journey together –so stay tuned.

Now for your daily dose of eye candy. I merged two birthday gifts today in a most delightfully brilliant way (um thank you, thank you very much). First, some really cute glittery rock star decals with my equally rocking, slicker-than-snot sewing machine- wanna know how I know it is rockin? Take a gander:

What, what?

Now from the side:

Boo-ya! NOW I’m ready to roll!

Singer Esteem say hello to the world. This thing is truly wunderbar. The first very important item of business was to fill out the warranty card, you know, just in case you monkey strength the thing and have to have something, er, replaced. (I didn’t do that by the way, but it has been known to happen to other appliances, like the Cuisnart.)

Then you can sew. Once I got through the basics I was ready to rock and roll, the Singer Esteem (don’t you just love that?) is a MUCH nicer machine than the one I inherited a few years ago, but in all fairness, it was a 50 year old dinosaur of a machine so it is like comparing apples to fossilized apples or something. my Esteem is light weight, easy to understand and it sews like buttah. I lined my rosebud bag and finished it last night! It took two tries, but I made lemons into lemonade. My first lining was much too small, so I made a second, better lining, and the first became a snazzy hidden side pocket see?

Notice the stripes in the pocket and in the bag go opposite ways, let us pretend I did that on purpose (I like the effect though) I also used my zigzag feature because that is how I roll. And here is the finished bag on the outside:

All in all, not a bad project. The actual knitting was done in a flash, then add about 2 hours to sew on all the roses, leaves and insert the handles and another 2 hours (give or take) to do a lining. I am very pleased with my new summer bag!  Hey, thanks Jenny for the pattern suggestion, and again to John and Margaret for the snazzy new machine and of course, I’d like to thank the academy…