I’m pooped. And Isabelle pooped! No more duckie to worry about. She actually did the deed yesterday, about 12 hours after she had swallowed it. It was soon after I posted. I was planning to illustrate this post with me wearing sandwich bags on my hands. You know, poopy related drawing. But I’m pooped! Pooped, I say! Wonder how many times I can say POOP in this post. Poop, poop, poop! Bwa ha ha! Ok, I’ll stop now because…I’m pooped.

She was quite excited to see her duckie after he was all washed up. She was chattering on about him again. But I hid him. I don’t want him taking another ride in Isabelle.

So why am I so worn out? I’ve been busy writing and rewriting my newest post for label-free. It sure is hard to explain how I fumble around trying to sew Japanese patterns. I meant to post it last night but then Isabelle happened. Miss Trouble got her elbow stuck in her little red Ikea mammut chair. You can just make it out behind her.

I don’t know how she managed it. We were just sitting there and then she started crying and falling down. It took me a couple of seconds to realize she was stuck in the chair. It was so hard to pry her out and heartbreaking to hear her crying while I was doing it. I didn’t want to just force her elbow out so I struggled taking the thing apart and then fought to widen the slats just a wee bit to get her out. It just would not give. I actually wondered how come it was so hard, like where was that, lift a car from my child, superhuman strength?

Then this afternoon she was in the kitchen pulling out loads of paper towels from the rack. And just a few hours ago she was pouring water everywhere. So, no drawing. I have no energy for it. Instead I’m sharing these pictures of Isabelle FINALLY giving the homemade popsicle a chance.

Ok off to take a nap now. Poop.

I’m going to be cleaning up my website and moving things around. I don’t know how it’ll be working and what will be kicked up. So keep your fingers crossed and hope to see you on the other side.

Oh and I’ve turned off comments on this post. I don’t want to lose any comments when I pick up and move. And I’d turn it off everywhere if I could but I don’t know how. Yikes I’m scared. Seriously. Fingers crossed and toes too. Don’t want to lose four years of this sucker.

*UPDATE* I think I’ve got it figured out!!

I’ve been scarce around the internet, reading and writing.

On Thursday night my friend, Olinda, noticed my website was down. It happens sometimes. It’s the second time, that I know of, this year. It happened a handful of times last year. And a handful of times before that. It’s sort of frustrating. So I changed web hosts. Everything moved over without a glitch (I think).

Then on the weekends we’re usually out and about so posting is rare.

But the big monkey wrench in posting came when I was reading Mary at Confessions of a Craft Addict. She was saying her site had issues on Internet Explorer. So I opened up IE to take a look. And then being curious, I checked my site. CRAP. I knew my site wasn’t “up to code”. I just never fixed it before . But for some reason, now, I was determined to get it right. So that’s what I’ve been doing for days. DAYS! I’ve been looking at code so much, my head hurts. But I was determined to have it fixed. I couldn’t stop. Not even for a silly old thing like my head exploding.

But now it’s all fixed and it even validates! Well everything except the galleries. But I’ll fix that some other time.

So what’s that have to do with the picture of the shirt? That shirt is a prime example of how stubborn I can get when I’m determined to do something.

It was supposed to be a gift for my nephew. I bought organic fabric specifically for him. And I bought fabric paint. I had grand ideas for trying out freezer paper stenciling. But right away I knew I was on the wrong track and I should have stopped. But I didn’t, even with the obstacles in my way, I just barreled on through.

First of all the fabric is too stiff. I should have used a knit because the pattern is basically a t-shirt, except for where the snaps at the shoulder should be. But knowing this, I didn’t stop. I just kept going along.

And then I noticed I cut two fronts out instead of a front and a back. But…I kept going.

Then I thought the size seemed awfully small. But march, march, march. Must not stop now. I just figured, it was all screwed up, so why not just see how it comes out.

But I stopped at the snaps. I didn’t want to waste snaps on a hopeless shirt.

I then washed it a couple of times hoping that would soften it up and I don’t know…magically make the front piece into a back piece? I don’t know what I was thinking.

Project Notes
Pattern: shirt 5 from Japanese craft book ISBN 4418051244
Fabric: stiff as a board organic cotton
Size: 100cm

Oh and let me end with a random video of Isabelle because I know Olinda is missing Isabelle.

The video is from a couple of weekends ago. My friend, Lorraine, came down from Oregon and we went out to dinner. A whole bunch of us girls and Alan. There was live music and Isabelle was dancing and clapping. I couldn’t get any of the clapping on video but I did get a little dancing.

Which reminds me. I want to get a small teeny camera that does video as well (for when I always forget my big heavy camera). I’ve been looking at some super inexpensive ones that are 6 and 7 MP. Does anyone have any experience on how good the quality of the video looks like on those things?

I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I updated to the newest WordPress and saw that I could choose monster avatars! MONSTERS!! So I played around some more with my site. Now my hands hurt.

But anyways, back to the monsters. Each person has their own avatar generated for them. It’s always the same I guess. If you have a Gravatar, like I do, then that shows up instead.

Since I don’t know what my monster would look like, I drew one. You know, as if my hands weren’t hurting.

And if you want to look at what your monster looks like, comment and it’ll show up.

Oh I should add: I don’t know how long they’ll be up. Usually I find stuff like this fun for a while then I remove them. But for now there are monsters.

Yesterday I was trying to take pictures for my post on label-free. Isabelle kept getting in the way. She tends to do that a lot MORE now. She even asks for her picture to be taken and does a little pose. But she doesn’t know to say, “please take my picture”. Instead she says, “cheese!” She’ll say “cheese dog!” demanding I take a picture of the dogs. Or “cheese foot” wanting me to take a picture of her foot. Or “cheese daddy!“.

“Cheese belly!”

“Cheese hands!”

“Cheese, cheese, cheese!”