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Move over Gumball, now there’s something plumpier!
I threw caution to the wind, blew off work and painting to make a stuffed dog today! I don’t know what hit me. I was working on the eternal couch cover project (I’m always altering it, one of these days it will be perfect and then it will be so brittle from the sun constantly beating on it, it will fall to shreds and I’ll have to start all over again) and I just got this crazy hair-brained idea that I should make Baby Bug a stuffed dog. You know, since I’m on this seemingly endless dog kick these days.
Before you go complimenting my sewing, let me just say that I am not a very good seamstress. I am horrid, in fact. Part of it is my sewing machine and the other part of it is that I am just a hack job artist with no attention span to be a perfectionist. If you look close, you will find puckers and gathers and back-tacking where there shouldn’t be back-tacking, knots where there shouldn’t be knots… It’s a big mess. My Aunt Keren, the seamstress, will not be allowed to examine it closely. This, like most of my sewing projects, will put her many years of kind teaching to shame. I’m sorry Aunt Keren.
It’s not all my fault though. My sewing machine doesn’t like me very much. I know this because it makes rats nests with the bobbin thread on a regular basis. This might be because I keep my sewing machine in this canvas tote and every time I haul it in and out of the closet, I think I break it. The tension is whacky. I don’t know what the numbers mean so I don’t even know how to fix it.
The little spool thing that holds the thread is busted off. I have to stick a skewer in the hole, where it used to be, and let my spool of thread wobble around on the skewer unbalanced. It’s really amazing that I bother to sew at all.
All that said, I had a blast making this little stuffed puppy. I used to make these sorts of things all the time when I was a kid and I used to visit my Aunt’s sewing room. And then there’s the Lumpy Cat Ranch of course. I think imperfect sewing is my thing. I know Baby Bug is too young to really appreciate the fun of this but I think someday we are going to really have a ball. Or a puppy or a doll or a kitten… or a truck.
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back in the groove
Today was SUCH a better day. Thank you for all your kind comments. I don’t think I so much needed more sleep as I just need to time my caffeine fixes better. I could and should make a chart for myself, mapping out the direct relation between my coffee intake and energy level. I was crashing pretty hard these last two nights. No wonder I couldn’t eeek out a decent blog post.
It also helps that I managed to take some decent pictures today. I’m such a weak writer lately. I really rely on my photos and illustrations (which are waxing farther and farther apart because they just take too much time) to get me through a post. I would give myself a guilt trip about it but I’ve been exercised lately not to take blogging so seriously.
Today was a fun day because Baby Bug painted today. She wasn’t supposed to but I accidentally left a container of paint open in her reach. ( I knew it was going to happen one of these days) I thought I was in big trouble but amazingly I managed to guide her paint smudged hand to the back of my big white dog painting and she painted a pretty picture for me. She was sooooo happy.
It was really fun for both of us. We didn’t even get any paint on anything. How I managed to get the camera and keep her fingers off the patio furniture, I do not know.
