Hey Halloween is over! So a new banner and colors for November. Have a good weekend everyone!

If you are a skimmer please go all the way to the bottom of this post. *** Something there I WANT you to read. Yes you skimmers and lurkers. I want to link to you! Ok back to the regular post.

Sometimes I feel like I’m constantly playing catch up on my blog. Either that or I don’t have a single thing to say. It’s always feast of famine. Well right now, I’m up to the eyeballs in posts here. I sit down to write and a big sigh just comes out, siggggghhhh, thinking about all the stuff I want to say. And then I usually get distracted by Isabelle and just rush and write anything without any thought. And then when I go back to see what I’ve written I think it’s all so blah and boring and dry. Have I ever mentioned that it surprises me that people actually read what I have to say? There are some blogs where I just LOVE the way they write. I read every single word. I enjoy their stories and the way they write. I guess I just suck in the writing department. But that’s o.k. We all have our talents.

So anyhoo. Catch up post here. These pictures are from the pumpkin patch this past weekend. We’ve been trying to go for weeks and weeks. But it just never worked out, with us forgetting when we were out, or doing errands, or Isabelle falling asleep. Well this weekend everything went right and we got to go. YAY!

Isabelle had so much fun. She was wandering around the pumpkin patch while I tried to find six perfect pumpkins. Yes, you read right. SIX. See this is Isabelle’s third Halloween. The prior two years I’ve bought three pumpkins planning to carve us into the pumpkins. You know an Alan pumpkin, a me pumpkin, and an Isabelle pumpkin. But then for the past two years I couldn’t bring myself to cut the pumpkins. I like them, all squat and round. They make me happy. And if I cut them they will rot and go in the garbage. But uncut they stay around for months making me happy whenever I see them.

So Alan being the smarty that he is, thinks of stuff that for some reason don’t even enter my mind. He said why don’t you just get extra pumpkins. Then you can carve some and keep some. DUH! I did not think of that. See stuff like that, you know that makes so much sense, that anyone could think of, yeah that stuff, sometimes I just don’t think of it. Don’t ask me why not. I just don’t. So good thing Alan thought of it. So that’s why this year we got six pumpkins!

So there we were at the pumpkin patch. Me wandering around trying to find perfect pumpkins. Putting them in the wheel barrel. Taking them out. Finding new ones. And then putting those in instead. And on and on. Well Isabelle got into it too. Except she didn’t take them out. She kept piling them in, one after the other. A wheel barrel full of pumpkins. See? Six pumpkins doesn’t sound so bad now huh? Well now let’s see if I actually carve them. I mean if three pumpkins make me so happy can you imagine six?

Ok different subject. I’ve newly started reading oh my stinkin heck and love the idea of her reinvented blogroll. This pretty much sums up how I feel. There are soooo many feeds I am subscribed to. SO MANY. Right now the count is at 375. WHAT? 375? I can remember when I was at 300 and thought that was a buttload. There’s a lot of skimming I do. I do have my favorite reads and lurking spots. But my links list didn’t reflect that. I mean seriously would you click through 375 sites? So I had a short list up. Not really up to date and sort of neglected. Well thinking about the reinvented blogroll has spurred me to change what I have up now. I am impatient and cannot wait for OMSH. So I’ve changed it for now until her kick ass blogroll is working.

***READ HERE! So this is where, you, my reader comes in. I have a rotating readers blogroll in my sidebar now. I put in some of my regular recent commenters. It should show three at a time and if you refresh the page you should get another random three. So if you’re a reader and want me to link to you in my blogroll, comment here or email me and I’ll add you. I haven’t quite figured out what to do with my subscribed feeds though. I have just listed three of my favs like the reader blogroll but I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing. Well at least I have a reader blogroll. Yay! Step in the right direction. Oh and something else new too thanks to OMSH. I use feedburner for my feed now and found that you can subscribe to me by email! Ok ending this abruptly. Must stop typing now because it is soooo late!

You know when I mentioned I was wrastling seahorses? And then the sketch I made? What was that all about? These seahorses!

Alice from futuregirl.com asked me to test out her newest pattern. I enjoyed sewing them up so much. Even though I, ahem, didn’t follow directions correctly and screwed up the baby seahorse’s tail. But I think they turned out nicely. I like Alice’s patterns so much. They are easy to follow and satisfying. It’s joyful to make something so quickly and have this beautiful completed object.

For this photo I very moronically strung them up from this light that hangs down over the front door. I had to get up on tippy toes and struggle with the invisible thread that I not so wisely decided to use. It is very hard to try to get invisible thread over a bit of light when you can barely reach it. And then to adjust it to the correct height and tie it off when you can barely see it? Aack! I wish I had the sense to do it the way Alice did.

Actually no. I haven’t taken them down and they are quite pretty hanging there. Think Alan will mind if I keep them up?

And on a different subject. I’ve solely been using Flickr for my pictures this past week. How’s that been working for everybody? No problems?

This is dress 6 from ISBN 4418061371. Even at the smallest size, 100cm, it’s too big for Isabelle. I made it knowing that, so I don’t know why I was so bummed when it didn’t fit. I wish I had used a different fabric. A striped fabric would have shown off the design way better. But I didn’t have any striped fabric and I was in the mood to sew. And when the sewing mood strikes in the middle of the night, you use what you have. In this case I had plenty of this cute clothes on the line fabric.

Maybe I will try to figure out how to make a smaller version, in some stripey fabric, and actually correct the mistakes I made. Like the neckline. I did the facing all wrong and then didn’t fix it. I don’t know what I was thinking. And the front bottom piece was supposed to be one uncut piece. But I couldn’t quite tell that from the directions and once you’ve cut the fabric you can’t very well uncut it. Oh well. This post will be my reminder when I try this dress again.

Ok. Now onto the pictures of Isabelle NOT wanting to wear it. A LOT OF PICTURES!

No I don’t want to wear it!

NOOOO!! Take it off!

Whoo throwing tantrums is hard work.

Maybe they’ll take if off if I look cute.

Take if off NOW!!

Yay! Finally! Off with the horrid thing.

Why doesn’t she ever like wearing the clothes I make her?

Oh and on a completely different subject. I’m trying something out. All the pictures from this post are on flickr. Did anyone notice if it took longer to load?

Some more bloggy stuff: a new look for October.

I got my first ever Japanese fabric!! Happy happy happy!! (Actually I got it about the same time as the hussy but only took pictures today)

And I did some bloggy stuff. That’s why I’ve been scarce around the internets. When I’m in research mode I don’t keep up with email or blog reading much. Yes oh so boring bloggy stuff. It makes me happy when I figure out something for my blog. And if you don’t want to read the boring bloggy stuff about gallery pages, stop reading here and enjoy this happy dance inspired by the way Isabelle dances.

You’re still reading? So, interested in the bloggy stuff huh? Ok. So seeing as you’re interested I’ll keep talking. Er, you know what I mean. You’ll keep reading…

So anyhoo, I figured out how to use Wordpress to make a gallery of my unfinished and finished projects! No, that one exclamation point is too calm. It doesn’t convey how happy this makes me. Imagine me jumping for joy. I CAN USE WORDPRESS FOR A GALLERY!

See, before I had to copy and paste and move cells around tables. I didn’t have an easy way to do it, especially since the new projects were on top. If my new projects were on bottom no problem, I could have added a new cell easily. But on top meant everything needed to shift. Do you get what a pain in the ass that was to do? To shift things to the right by one cell meaning with a three column gallery the third picture in the first row would become the first picture in the second column, oh god just talking about it is making me cringe. And not to mention that I needed to make a new project page for every new project. Yes thanks to my obsession with the nice and orderly on here.

Sorry went rambling on there for a bit. Are you still reading?! So figuring out how to make a gallery was a big thing. It involved figuring out how to make a category page for my “pictures” that looked different from the rest of my blog and used 3 columns. To make everything line up all the pictures needed to be the same height. So I had to make new thumbnails of some of them so they’re bigger than before. Then I had to hide that category from showing up in my dropdown category list. I also had to exclude those gallery posts from the other areas in my blog so you wouldn’t see it in the archives or single pages. Whoo I’m tired of typing. See how involved this was? Ok on I go. I had to figure out how to make the previous and next navigation still work while skipping the gallery category. And I utilized the new tags system that Wordpress has to link each project with all related posts. Oh the one thing I couldn’t figure out is how to exclude the gallery posts from my feed. But that’s ok. I’m ecstatic about the rest.

So what does that mean basically? Well, now when I have a new project for the gallery everything is automated. I just write a new post, check the box for which gallery I want, and I’m done. DONE! See why that deserves a happy dance?

Wow you got all the way to the end? Ok well just for that here’s a picture of Isabelle, eating ice-cream. Another happy happy happy for me.

Last month I figured out how to change my headers based on date. And last night I finally put it to use on my blog. I know that doesn’t mean much to you but I was so excited. So excited I made Alan sit down and click through my archives. You can see all my old headers just the way they were way back when. It was one of the last things I wanted to fix when I moved over from Blogger. And the solution is so much easier than the way I used to do it too! Yes boring boring blah blah for you but it makes me happy, so a happy dance it is! (a weird little happy dance that was scrawled out super quick and now I realize that skirt is too short but who cares if it’s not accurate. I don’t really dance like that. I just like drawing weird funny little dances.)