murder, she embroidered...

so we are some mega dorks around here. i loves me some murder she wrote or columbo on a lazy winter's day, and we have amassed a nice collection of truly bad tv mysteries. thankfully our mystery collection in general also includes all of the british-made poirot and marple collections too, and everything made by alfred hitchcock!

we just added season 6 of murder she wrote to our stash, and man, it's truly bad! the dad from friends is in one really bad episode, there are a lot of flashbacks and jewel theives, plus add in a cast of hollywood nobodies and misfits and enough '80s hair & makeup to fill the grand canyon and you're getting the drift.

a while back i'd sewn a stack of plain linen tea-towels and they've been collecting dust in a drawer for ages waiting for inspiration to strike. i've been meaning to learn to screen print up at blim on of these months, but for a quick and silly project i decided to embroider jessica fletcher's lovely busybody face onto one of them! yeah, so it didn't turn out so well...

i took a photo of her from google images, created an outline in illustrator, traced it onto my tea towel using a disappearing fabric marker and started to embroider. well, the marker started fading straight away, so i ended up kind of going freestyle. and the photo of her looked fine but somehow just doing her head lost the perspective and just looks odd. we've since washed this too, and of course now it's a little puckery and her chin looks more like she's got the mumps. of course, my basic embroidery skills may have also been part of the problem! the tea towel, however, is sewn to perfection! ;-)

funny though! cole either laughs at or slowly backs away from this when he sees it hanging in the kitchen... i'd back away, kid.

25/500

the first 25 pencil crayons of my subscription set of 500 arrived today!

looks like my first batch is set #5 and it includes a fine set of reddish hues, each with an awesome name, written in both japanese and english. fun names like 'plum crazy', 'scarlett o'hara' and 'little red wagon'. funny, i picture scarlett o'hara as a deep, rich emerald colour...

i'm not sure if i'll keep going until i get all 500 because, let's face it, that is a hell of a lot of pencil crayons, but i love the idea and the potential so much. and really - i need all of those colours. now... do i play with them as i go along, or wait until i get them all?

sock monkey toddler pants

is it even possible to not love a sock monkey? they're so... oddly, i guess. not uncommon anymore, but they seem both endearingly homespun and kitchy and creepy all at the same time.

i bought a few pairs of red heel brand socks ages ago, intending to make one, but i've never gotten around to it. yesterday i had a random flash of inspiration and became obsessed with the thought of a pair of sock monkey toddler pants... as soon as cole went to sleep, i hauled out the socks and started cutting and sewing, making them up as i went along, and voila:

these made me laugh so very hard, and it was all i could do to wait until morning to try them on him. oh my goodness:

the best part - the tail, of course. and the fact that they took only about 45 minutes to sew! working with the limited (and sock-shaped) fabric was a cool challenge - my initial sketch showed kind of a gusset/seat section and then separately attached leg segments, which is what worked really well. i tried to keep the overall look of an actual sock monkey - the brown legs, white feet, red bum on the tail... i made them up as i went, but basically make the bum part of a pair of pants using the bottom halves of two pairs of socks, the legs out of one sock top half each and use the spare white sock tops for the waist band. a scrap for a tail and you're golden.

i adore these pants. cole wore them out today for breakfast and again when we ran errands this afternoon and yeah, other folks seemed to enjoy the sight too. oh, and sometimes he notices that he has a tail and then spins around trying to catch it. cute overload.

random how awesome: mustasche glasses

am so drawn to this find that i spotted on the front page of etsy a moment ago: mustache glasses! glasses that make it look like you have a mustache while drinking your beer (or whatever). must have!!!

from the very talented bread and badger.