bits after the busy weekend

The weekend was so productive, two finished shirts and the pink dress, and then I had to go back to work today. I just really wanted to be back at my sewing table! It was a quick day though, and I was able to cut out yet another shirt at my lunch hour. Esme is wearing that shirt now, and it looks pretty good. It is a science experiment between a few of the patterns. So that is up four pieces of clothing since last week :) There is still more to make though.. and then I can repurpose the fabric from a few things and reserve others for only playing in the mud etc..

The little bits I wanted to remember this weekend:
Sunday I saw both the sunrise and the sunset. There was a lot of 'pink' there, too :) Esme and I played in the sand and I showed her how to make sand cakes with a bucket -- she said it was a 'dirty birthday cake - it dirty mumum! no birthday!' But after I made a few more of them she decided it was worth pretending and found some sticks to put in for candles. When we were out playing in the sand yesterday and when I was watching her today I was thinking: 'I did all of those things when I was little - I actually remember it..' I remember pouring soft sand on my knees so that it would trickle down to my feet, and then shaking it off only to do it again... I remember making several piles in a row and then smashing them etc.. It is like looking through a time machine. She has been really enjoying going through the five pounds of buttons or so that a friend at work gave to me. We empty one of the large plastic bags into a plastic tupperware and let her sift through them and look at all the colors, sizes etc... and her plastic horse dances in there for her because we told her she couldn't stomp in them. If she gets too wild with them she has to give them up and/or go to bed.. either way we put them away. Playing with the button box was another thing my mom used to do when I was Esme's age :) I bet if I closed my eyes I could still see some of them!

here she is playing 'birthday' with pencils stuck into spools and 'blowing out the candles.' She is getting in so much practice!





It's kind of cool and ironic that we have a Singer sewing machine sitting on top of another Singer - the *corrected* 1904 version which is still inside the wooden table. Esme sometimes points out the letters in the ironwork to me S-I-N-G-E-R.

I found this old blog picture showing the old singer before we put it away -- I was fiddling hard with the bobbin winder and never got it to quite work right enough to sew much. Mark had better luck with it, but agreed it was worth buying a new machine and keeping this one for antique value. This was in March 2007, and the new machine was bought for 79.00 in August 2007. And I've been cranking things out ever since :)


antique singer sewing machine from 1904 model 27-4 with a serial number beginning with 'B'