French seams and my sewing dreams

A few weeks ago I made the leap from my mending and button sewing skills to hemming a pair of pants (thanks, mom!). This past weekend I took it a bit further and sewed a purse! As you can see from the picture, the seam along the opening is not perfect, but I'll get there eventually. I'm just happy it resembles a purse at all. I spent an entire day on the purse by creating my own pattern and following instructions from a beginners sewing book. At one point I had to remove all of my stitching and start over. Needless to say, when the purse was complete, I was elated. I am one step closer to my dream of being a master quilt maker. One step at a time...

Lazy weekend

Getting crafty

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine wanted to practice making headbands for a craft lesson she was leading through the North Park Craft Mafia. I decided to make some with her. It was pretty simple for this Basque girl with zero sewing machine skills. We basically followed the directions on this Altered Cloth link. The link explains how to make a headband using ribbon and two ponytail holders (elastic bands could also be used). The only sewing required is some hand stitching to secure the ponytail holders in place. Easy!

We took it one step further from the ribbon and made some out of fabric as well. After figuring out your desired length and width of headband, cut the fabric to those measurements but cut out about double the width you want when the headband is completed. Then fold in the edges of your fabric and create two creases to achieve your desired width. Next, glue the fabric in place with fabric glue. It might help to iron the edge creases into place before gluing the fabric. Then sew the elastic on just like the ribbon headbands. You can also add embellishments of crystals or fake flowers if you are feeling fancy. It really is easy!

Comfort station

I've probably lost all three of my readers due to the fact that I haven't posted in several weeks. Don't worry - I know you are beside yourself with concern - I am going to try to keep this blog going.

A couple of weeks ago Dave and I finally participated in a Volunteer San Diego project. I believe we signed up with them over a year ago but never made it a priority until now. An opportunity came up to paint the comfort station, a.k.a. public restrooms, at our local Kate Sessions Park. I realized that morning that I've never painted a wall before. Supposedly, my rolling was too quick and I was spraying myself and anyone near me. I think I figured it out, eventually, but I did come home with paint on my glasses and clothes. Here's hoping nobody ruins our hard work by tagging up the building any time soon. Overall, it was a fun morning and we will definitely volunteer some more.

My neighborly neighbor is mad

Despite my neighbor's willingness and ability to cause harm, I'm thinking that the "alley scum" in possession of the shovel probably has the odds of winning an alley scuffle showdown.

High-five!

Things Anne and I learned during surfing lessons last weekend:

1. How to catch a party wave. Not much of a party when you aren’t skilled enough to keep the boards from crossing onto each other after about 7 seconds on the wave. More like a party that gets broken up at 10:00pm then an all-night rager.

2. Ocean water forced up your nose at ungodly speeds makes all the food you eat for hours afterward taste like you are eating off of a salt lick.

3. Board shorts stay on when falling off of your board. Bikini bottoms don’t.

4. If you are waist-high in water and everyone around you is in knee-deep water then you are probably going to be swallowed up by a rip tide. Swim parallel to the shore, people!

5. The sting ray shuffle. Our surf instructor immediately negated this safety tip by letting us know he never does the ray-deflecting shuffle. And given how much effort it takes to drag an eight foot board against the waves, we didn’t pay much mind to our footwork.

6. Surf instructors are single-handedly keeping the high-five alive.

Sharing is caring

I saw a story on "60 Minutes" over a year ago that really inspired me. It was about a micro-lending organization called Kiva. The founder was on a trip to an African country, Kenya I believe, when she came up with an idea to help the impoverished communities she was seeing. The idea is simple, loan relatively small amounts of money to people trying to take their businesses to the next level and hopefully that will allow them to move further out of poverty. After thinking about making loans for over a year, I finally decided to log in.

My first two loans went to a jewelry maker in Peru and a photographer and tortilla maker in Nicaragua. Both recipients are hoping to make a better life for their children and hopefully these loans will help them with that worthy goal. Once you loan to a person you can see which other lenders were also moved by that particular story and decided to give to them as wall. Kiva has over $12 million in ended loans with only a 1.6% default rate. Sounds like a safe investment to me.

So if you are wanting to give back to the world but aren't sure how to, check out Kiva's Web site and see if it's for you.