Lemon Tree Tales

LA Road Trip

Last Thursday, Steve and I jumped in the car and drove down to LA for my cousin's daughter's wedding. (I've since learned that she can be referred to as my 1st cousin once-removed. What about that, you learn something new everyday!) As you can see, the weather was perfect for a road trip. I love California! This is along the Pacheco Pass on Route 152 that connects the 101 Fwy to the 5 Interstate. These hills won't remain this green for too much longer. They'll get super brown as it nears summertime and fire season.

Funny how you can see stuff like this within an hour of urban life. Gotta love the basketball hoop mounted to the old barn. This was very near Casa de Fruta ... wow, an amazing place filled with all sorts of agricultural delights. We had to stop and buy some delightful Turkish dried apricots and some unsalted pistachio nuts for my sister-in-law. Apparently that's a very difficult thing to find so we loaded up on it. (We also stopped here on the way home and got yellow watermelon for the girls, Miss L & J.) Here's a lovely rusted truck just sitting in the midst of all those tasty fruits and nuts.

The actual stay in LA was a whirlwind of activity. We tried to see just about everyone we know in the short amount of time that we were down there: my mom, Steve's mom, my dad, my grandparents, friends, Steve's old neighborhood and neighbors (one couple is just amazing and we found out that they're 80+!) And of course we also saw a lot of my family at the wedding. (My cousin looked beautiful and it looks like she married a very sweet young man.)

After the wedding we managed to have a typical LA Saturday night. We went to some art/exotic car opening/nightclub party in Studio City where some model thought I was someone who could hook her up with a job.  :-)  It was far easier for me to just take her name and number than to convince her that I wouldn't be able to help her. Just your basic networking opportunity. Apparently there were a lot of D-list celeb types there too. But you know, I just didn't recognize anyone. It was just a lot of loud music, not the greatest DJ, but okay ... free booze and lots of exotic Ferraris, Lambos and Rollers. We got there a little too fashionably late so we left to go check out a sushi bar. Ohhh, this was very good sushi!!! I haven't had this quality in a long time.

Sunday was a very long but entertaining drive due to XM Radio's Blue Collar Comedy channel. Okay, it's fun to be a redneck every once in a while. One joke even mentioned Olathe!

Vivienne Westwood Exhibition

Last Wednesday, Rachel and I went to see the Vivienne Westwood Exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Very interesting to say the least. What I really got a kick out of was to see how her clothing improved in construction as the years went by. The first items were very homemade looking, but not in that skillful manner that we all love. No, this was more in the mode of an inexperienced school girl trying out her very first sewing machine. Her early punk outfits were more striking due to their anti-establishment angst. What really struck me as being inspirational were the later collections when she started to go to the Victoria & Albert Museum's fashion archives as her starting point. This is when things became fabulous. Pirate shirts are cut from rectangles of cloth in the same manner that Bluebeard's tailor would have done. Miniature crinolines, or mini crinis, wee tricorns, corsets and bum-enhancers change the shape of modern models. Throughout the decades, what you notice the most about Vivienne is her tongue-in-cheekiness. How else could you make the crown jewels out of traditional harris tweeds? And as Vivienne Westwood says, 'You have a much better life if you wear impressive clothes.' I may not have her impressive clothes, but at least I did find a site where you can design your very own version of a Harris tweed.  Have fun!

Sarah Stockbridge wearing Harris Tweed Crown from Vivienne Westwood's Autumn/Winter 87-88 Harris Tweed Collection

Photo by Nick Knight 1987

I heart Featherweight

Ah, I think that I've just discovered my newest desired item. It's a Singer Featherweight Freearm 222 sewing machine. Apparently this one was only manufactured in Scotland for the UK and Canada market. The reasons why I like this particular model is that:

• it's portable and only weighs 11+ lbs
• it has a drop feed dog feature so you can do free-motion stitching with it
• it has a removable sewing bed for freearm access
• it's a little workhorse and will never let you down
• it's ADORABLE, just look at it!

Now I think that I should sell my Juki serger and save money to get one of these beauties. I've only used the serger a couple of times in the last ten years or so. And the featherweight would be ideal for carting to the sewing circles and doll classes that I like to attend. Hmm, I may have to check out thrift stores the next time we're in Ireland or the UK.

[EDIT]: I've since been lucky enough to get one of these beauties since this original post. You can read all about it here.

More Mermaid ATDs

Steve flew down to LA Saturday night for a Formula One race party. (First race of the season ... interesting, but different sans Michael Schumacher.) These little mermaids kept me busy until 2am. Yikes, didn't realize it was that late. But I was having so much fun improving on the original version. These ones have pretty and shiny papers for the shells and are much more sturdy due to thin papers being spray-mounted to cardstock. Their faces are tiny! Only 7/8" long by 5/8" wide. Here's an extreme closeup of Mermaid no.4 for a better look at her face (she's the one in the center). It's hard drawing them that tiny with colored pencils. Next time I'll sharpen them more often.

Get'yer Monkey Here!

I've had some people ask me where I got my sock monkey embroidery designs for the quilt. They're just quick little sketches that I drew directly on the quilt using the purple fade-away marker. But I thought that some of you may want to use them for your own personal projects. So here they are in a file for you. Download sock_monkey_embroidery_designs.pdf  Give me a holler and show me when you're finished. I'd like to see what everyone does with them.  :-)

Artist Trading Dolls

I found a new type of doll art ... Artist Trading Dolls or ATDs. They're a variation on ATCs. Judi of Art Dolls talked about this ATD group that was formed on yahoo. Luckily I joined before they closed the it. This is my first attempt at designing a foldy ATD. The first picture is the card closed (it's the standard ATC size of 2 1/2" by 3 1/2"). Then the shell cover is opened to reveal part of her. Next we open her tail and arms. Finally her head is pulled up and you have my first ATD .. Mermaid.

Get this monkey off my back!

Yay! I finally finished the sock monkey quilt for my friend Tina's new baby boy Noah. I machine quilted a simple grid pattern, but then decided to take a cue from Pink Chalk Studio's baby quilt. So I hand quilted a little something in each of the four corner triangles. What could be more appropriate than the sock monkeys in the form of See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil? And I left the fourth corner to embroider the baby's name and date of birth.

And here's the label that I blanket-stitched on the quilt back. Hmm, after seeing it again I think that I should have layered a piece of white fabric under the label so that it wouldn't be so sheer. The binding is machine stitched on the front of the quilt and then whip stitched by hand on the back.

My friend Trena was kind enough to let me borrow some of her rubber stamps so that I could make this little monkey card. Trena's into scrapbooking and making lots of adorable cards. I just had to keep it theme and color coordinated. Well there you go, I've finally been able to check this off the to-do list and get the "monkey" off my back, so to say.

And the envelope goes to ...

... Connie of Clothmatters! Thank you to everyone who's been stopping by the blog and wishing me a happy blogiversary. I've had so much fun this past year. Here's to another creative year of crafts and meeting more bloggy friends! Connie please email me your snail addy so that I can mail out this little tape measure. (And thanks go out to my husband, the person who gets to draw the names whenever I have a little raffle. Luckily he thinks it's funny.)

Swap goodies ... Redwork!

Look what Dorie of Tumbling Blocks was sweet enough to swap with me! This adorable little mama and her three kitties. Mama has a little pocket in the bottom of her skirt for the kitties to snuggle in when they're sleepy. Mama's eyes are the tiniest red buttons ... perfect! Go check out Dorie's first version of the mama cat. And here's a closeup of the redwork embroidery:

Now that Dorie has received her package I can show you what I sent to her:

I found these great birds of North America embroidery patterns from the Martha Stewart Living website. Seeing as how Dorie has a little bird on her banner I thought she'd like this. I also found out about shadow redwork while looking at the different sites. (It's just white on white embroidery.)Turns out it was the perfect technique for the signature. The white fabric is a cotton handkerchief that I bought at a little shop in Dingle, Ireland a few years back. And the felted sweaters from a while back came in handy for the back of the pillow. The rib knit worked great for the opening. And just a few goodies to go with it.