Halloween decor

Hello everyone! I hope you've all had a lovely week. Seattle is definitely well into the fall weather, which has had me contemplating all my favorite kinds of cold weather food and decorations. 

Shortly after Sebastian was born, we joined a parenting group here in Seattle and we got together with six other parents with babies of a similar age each week for three or four months to share the challenges and joys of parenting. After the program officially ended we decided to keep meeting, but only once a month. That's been going on for a while, but next Saturday is our turn to host the get together and I'm planning to decorate the house for Halloween a little bit. Now that's not a prerequisite for the meeting, but it sounds fun to me, especially because I really enjoy decorating a house for various holidays and always wanted to do that once I had my own home. 

So, since my never-ending Rooibos muslin is still in progress, but without interesting pictures to show, I thought I'd share some of the cool Halloween decorating ideas that I've been collecting on Pinterest. 

Farm Tour Weekend

Last weekend we made our way to Washington's Skagit Valley (1.5 hours north of Seattle) for the Skagit Valley Festival of Family Farms. This is the fourth year we've been and we have so much fun every year. This year was no exception! 


Skagit Valley is probably best known for it's spring tulip festival, but autumn is my favorite time of year to go up because the area is so beautiful in the crisp fall weather with the grey cloudy skies setting off the deep green of the surrounding countryside. For a girl with farm dreams, this place is paradise! 

Sewing frustrations and more

Hello lovely readers! I hope your week has gone well. Mine has gotten better even though it was off to a rough start with all the sickness in our household. My brother arrived for a short visit from San Diego yesterday and it's been fun having him here. He's been able to enjoy some nice fall weather in Seattle, so we've gotten out of the hosue a bit, which has been fun for Sebastian and I since we spent the early part of the week cooped up inside recovering from illnesses. 

Partially it was being sick that has lead to my current (temporary!) lack of motivation in sewing, but it's also partially just the process itself. That is because fit is just such an annoying sewing problem. Of course, a garment that really fits well is awesome to wear. I know this because on rare occasion I will find something at a store that just feels like it was made for me. Unfortunately, I have yet to succeed with creating something like that for myself, even though that's a big motivation in sewing for myself! Part of that is because it's only in the last year that I've tried to learn more than my self-taught basics about sewing nice clothes that I really want to wear. I've made clothes before and some of them, mostly costumes in my earliest days of sewing, fit through sheer luck, but since then I haven't been as fortunate. I would spend lots of time and money only to make something that didn't fit correctly and I didn't like to wear. Even my more recent projects, like my jeans and shorts. So I feel like it's definitely worth it to create a muslin to test and adjust fit on a new pattern to ensure that I'll like and wear my final creation.

Unfortunately, muslin making is soul-sucking.

Ugh.

I found this through the JASNA mailing list a while back and I saved it because I liked it. This is totally the reasoning behind Dramione fics, no? Though I'm not so sure the "sensibility" fits Hufflepuff so much as (with most Hufflepuff things) the others seem obvious in who they belong to and it worked well enough to tack Sensibility on to Hufflepuff. : )

Anyway, I apologize again for the lack of a post on Friday. Blogger continued to give me issues throughout the weekend, so I couldn't make a proper post and I'm continuing the trend today. I've been feeling sick to my stomach all day long, so I'm not up to making a nice, long post. It's times like these that I wish I had a stash of interesting posts to use here so you all can have something good to read. I'll work on that in the future. 

For now, I'll just mention that I did finish my second muslin of the Rooibos and I think it will fit better, even though it will still need changes. The adjustments are just more in line with what I thought they would be, even though I haven't had my husband's help to properly pin it all closed to see. The size 6 with the extra length in the shoulder straps is probably where I should've started to begin with. I probably wouldn't have known I needed the extra length in the shoulder straps, but after doing this, I remembered that I had a similar problem with the Sorbetto pattern that I made up (a free pattern put out by Colette Patterns), so I think I may start with that when making muslins for future patterns by Colette. Also, it looks like I'll need a SBA like I anticipated with the first muslin. So I'll be working on that once I feel better. I'm hoping the adjustments will be limited to the bodice so I can just make a third muslin of just that portion of the dress.

I hope you're all having a lovely week and I'll be back on Friday with a proper post!

Ack! I am having so many problems with Blogger! It seems that they are doing updates to the layout today and it's not letting me post pictures and has taken me about 10 tries to get to create this little post. I'm going to try to post a real entry today, but I wanted to give you all warning in case Blogger doesn't let me. If Blogger is still giving me problems the rest of the day, I'll try again tomorrow to add a new post. Sorry everyone!

Peach Hand Pies

I love southern fried pies, but I didn't want to deal with the mess of frying at home. Plus, deep frying isn't exactly the most healthy choice. Instead, I decided to try to make baked hand pies with all the delicious peaches that are in season right now. (Yes, in Seattle, peaches are still in season!)

Rooibos Muslin

Hooray - I finished my Rooibos muslin yesterday. Although I have a love-hate relationship with muslins, I knew that this one would be worthwhile to make. I figured I would have to do a small bust adjustment (SBA) and perhaps lengthen the skirt since I’m taller than average. The muslin was going to be useful to figure out exactly how big an adjustment I needed to make in those areas. Unfortunately, it seems more complicated than that! As you can see in the picture above, I have pins everywhere! Well, actually it’s a bit hard to see all the pins in that bad picture, but take my word for it.