I’ve been sewing. SEWING!! What a long stretch of not sewing that was. I haven’t sewed anything since September.

I was procrastinating because I wanted to sew some Christmas gifts this year (actually I think that every year). And it seemed wrong to start a new project if it wasn’t a Christmas gift. But I couldn’t get to the starting point. The task is too daunting when I include Alan’s big family. Just counting the young people means 15 kids. FIFTEEN! Well some of the older ones I can leave out, they’d probably be happier with money. And my sister doesn’t want any gifts for her kids. But that still leaves 10.

Instead of running myself ragged making handmade, I thought I could buy handmade. I had the cutest idea: Bethany’s crocheted snowballs. I could imagine all the kids having a snowball fight. But Alan thought that was lame. Well he probably thinks me making the kids clothes is lame too. What fun is clothes for kids?

But I’m going to go ahead and make them anyways. I’m determined to make simple shirts made of knit material though I can buy them at a store for ridiculously low prices. And why are they so low in the store? Probably paid their workers for pennies a day, that’s why. But I digress.

This is the pattern I used: pattern 27 from Ottobre Spring 1/2008.

As usual, I started with a muslin first. I need to see how big the actual shirt would come out. I wanted something large enough for the older kids, and something the younger kids can grow into it. And, well, it’s quite large.

The sleeves are too long.

And of course with the material being a knit it stretches.

The sleeves just flop all over the place. Flip flop, flip flop.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea…

Project Notes
Pattern: 27 from Ottobre Spring 1/2008
Fabric: knit interlock
Size: 110cm

Oh my god we grew plants!!

Ok, not really. I’m soooo lying. We didn’t grow plants. We replanted plants and planted more seeds in between drawing with chalk. That’s a castle Isabelle drew.

She also drew a lollipop. And, yes, that’s what she says they are. I did not put the names to them. I drew a menacing message and when Isabelle sees it she says, “I drew that!”

Isabelle thinks gardening is so fun. She loves digging through the dirt with her little shovel and sticking the seeds in. In her rush to plant everything I cannot tell you how many times she knocked over the envelope of seeds.

Whenever we spilled seeds, it would be a mad dash to grab the seeds up before Isabelle started planting them willy nilly. Alan couldn’t make holes fast enough for Isabelle to plunk the seeds into the container. In the end I said, “oh let her do it”, the result being: a gazillion seeds in the too small holes.

Then at one point we gave her some dahlia seeds.

Dahlia seeds do not look anything like sugar snap pea seeds. Isabelle must have thought I was handing her pieces of dirt or something because she just tossed them into the wind. Luckily I had only given her 2 seeds and not an entire handful.

Once we finished planting her Wall-e tree she tried to go after my terrarium plants.

But that’s for another day (because I’m a dork and didn’t have all the supplies needed)

So, the grand experiment continues. We’re still waiting patiently for something green to come up.

Waldo’s test came back. It was a benign! Yay! Yay! Yay! So hopefully we’ll have many more years of him patiently playing dress up with Isabelle.