I spent the afternoon looking up ISBN's to check publication dates as a means of sorting hardcovers to go in either the fancy-pants "New Releases" section or in with the paperbacks. This is the glamorous life of a bookseller. I spend a lot of time with my computer. But, the really great news is that we got our first book shipment a week ago today. (However, it's entirely too small. We're placing another order ASAP.) Last week was the first week I went to the store to work every day. It was wonderful and awful and stressful and fun. The good does outweigh the bad and everyone is so excited and supportive. Just the same, it was nice to take the weekend off.

Our July 4th weekend was a blast. We hung out in John's hometown of Cumberland City (which is actually not a city, but a quaint, little town of about 300-350 people in 5 square miles) for a parade in the morning of the 4th. A picture of John and his mom and I watching the parade was on the front page of the local paper on Tuesday. Neat, huh?

At around noon, we met Sara and Chris back at our house and took them with us to a family get together at my great aunt's house. Sara, for the first time ever, got to experience the joys and terrors of swimming in a creek. It's mostly wonderful--all nice and freezing, cold, clear water. But then, suddenly your foot will land on a slimy patch of leaves (hopefully) and the water will be stirred up and... Well, it's a little freaky touching something slimy you can't see. I grew up swimming in creeks more often than pools, but all our L.A. apartments had pools, so I've gotten spoiled lately.



Charlie and Colton are about one summer away from being better swimmers than me. I have the buoyancy of a rock.

We hung out at my sister's house for dinner and then headed back to Cumberland City for the fireworks show the town has become famous for since John and I moved away. There are activities there all day on the 4th and when we got there my great uncle (brother to the great aunt whose house is beside the creek) was performing.



I hadn't heard him sing since I was a little girl. For a very short time, I took buck dancing lessons from a man I knew only as Mr. Spicer in Dickson. By the time I started, he was old and the other girls were supposed to teach me. All I really wanted was one of their flouncy red and white gingham dancing dresses, but that never happened. What did happen was that my cousins and I would dance in our jellies (which were louder than you'd think, compared to regular tap shoes) to the music of my great aunt and uncles.

This weekend, Sara invited us to a Murfreesboro Bluegrass festival called Uncle Dave Macon Days. It was super cool. There were tons of booths with handmade items for sale. Little areas of musicians were scattered throughout the area. And! Two Lincolns! Count 'em! Two Lincolns!



Any event with Double Lincolns walking around is inevitably going to have a high kitsch factor, but there was a feeling of genuineness and sincerity throughout the day. It was actually really lovely, in a way that made me homesick for another time. It was especially ironic when I, in fact, ran into one of the buck-dancing-in-jellies cousins...and she was competing!



In a way, I'm sad I didn't have the dedication to stick with dancing. It would be nice to be a part of the local heritage and keep something like that going. Maybe I'll sell a book on it?

I also ran into an old co-worker from L.A. I was very excited to see Stacey again. We worked together in the first bookstore I worked in. We were the two girls from Tennessee. She moved back into the area last year, too, and I was really happy to bump into her.



Here are a couple more pictures...



My new favorite picture of John. Mmm, deep-fried twinkies!



Sara and I by a waterfall in the Murfreesboro Greenway.

John put some more of our 4th of July pictures on his lj.

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I'm watching Pocahontas. I love this movie so much that I can't make objective observations of it. It's a cartoon based on real people, but, like, none of it is true. But I freaking love it. I remember seeing it in the theater with my grandparents and my cousin Megan. Megan and I were super-crazy into Pocahontas.

I've had the music from this movie in my head for two days, so it's a relief to finally hear it. Yesterday, Amy and I went to our store and put furniture together. Today, I stayed home and worked on our book order. My head feels fuzzy from overconcentration. (That isn't a word, is it? It is now!) As stressed out as I feel and as worried as I am, as I stood in my living room earlier, looking at my bare windows, I realized it has been way easier for me to start pulling together a bookstore than for me to make curtains. Which is why I still don't have curtains. That makes no sense. Why don't I have curtains?

Labels: sewing/crafting., work.

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I ran across this site where you type in a word and it returns the word spelled out in photos from Flickr. I'm sort of hooked.

Labels: me and the awesome things I like.

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Here's Mickey (John's mom) with the pillows I made for her for Mother's Day. She really liked the Route 66 pillow I made for my mom and asked that I make something for her. Their living room is a yummy sherbet green color and she and Gus love to fish, so I made these fishy, green pillows.



My sister has been telling me I should make a bunch more and sell them. Each one took about 2-3 hours, not including shopping for fabric, so I could make several in a day. Plus, if I didn't make each one unique, I could save time cutting all the fabric at once, since the measurements would be the same. I don't know if I'll do it, but I'm thinking about it.

Labels: family., holiday., sewing/crafting.

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That's basically everything. The only things not there are the things I gave away (the bracelet, the photo box, and the pillow) and those plastic bag wallet things, which I can't find.

Labels: sewing/crafting.

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I did my last craft today. Well, not my last ever, but the 30 Days of April Craft Challenge of Death is over. The amazing thing is, I still had an idea for a project I never got around to making and I just bought fabric this week--some today, in fact--for multiple projects. I had a major fight with my sewing machine on Monday. I had to manhandle the thing to finish this bag. I had planned on a cute ric-rac accent, but when I had to sew the handles on by hand, I decided a plain, ric-rac-less bag was good enough for me. I was surprised the machine worked so well today, when I made this pillow (the small, black one):



I even used my fancy zipper/piping pressure foot (something that was way more exciting to me than it should've been). I can't account for what made the difference. I'm just happy it worked.

Labels: sewing/crafting.

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Even though I did have an artsy, craftsy evening with my nephews on Friday, it didn't really feel like I'd fulfilled my April obligation. As I sat on my couch, vegging out after the evening of babysitting, I noticed the castoff fingers I cut off the glove to make Georgia's head. (If that sounds bizarre, and I can see how it would, read my last post.) I always love coordinating toys and the idea of toys for toys, so I made a finger puppet that looks like Georgia. It tickles me.

Yesterday I made another little glove doll, but this time I had the right kind of gloves. It looks much more like an actual animal, but it isn't nearly as cute or endearing to me. To make up for it's institutional look, today's craft was a pink fleece scarf embellished with buttons. I haven't named it yet, but I'm leaning towards Irma (we watched "Irma la Douce" last night while I made it), but it sort of looks like a boy. By the way, Jack Lemmon is hilarious in "Irma la Douce".

Labels: movies., sewing/crafting.

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A few weeks ago, shortly before the April Crafting Marathon of Doom started, I found this video for making animals out of gloves on the Martha Stewart website. The girl who runs blog a check from time to time called Homemade by Jill made an adorable bunny using these directions. When I was at a grocery store with my mom yesterday, I saw a pair of gloves of $1 and instantly thought: "Glove dog!" Before April started and I became craft obsessed, I probably wouldn't have even remembered the idea of glove animals. But now...every free second I have, my brain is full of felt and glue.

Unfortunately, the gloves weren't the right kind. They had the thumb offset into the palm. You know the kind. Well, that made my project turn out a little wonky because I didn't have a straight side and had to overstitch to compensate. Plus, the head didn't turn out right. Partially for the same reason, but also because I had to cut off the cuff and then the whole thing was a little too small. But since I didn't cut the cuff off the one that made the body, when I went to sew the head on, it had a giraffe neck. To fix that, I folded down the cuff and stitched the head to the middle. The ears are pointing in odd angles, so it looks nothing like a dog, even when I fold them over, so I didn't bother pinning them down. So. It's a little alien creature. And I actually really like her.



I think the kicked-out leg makes her look saucy. I embraced her essential wonkiness and gave her mismatched, but super girly eyes.



I named her Georgia because I watched a few episodes of "Designing Women" (takes place in Atlanta, theme song is "Georgia On My Mind") and an episode of "Futurama" with the Harlem Globetrotters (constant whistling of "Sweet Georgia Brown") while I made her. I think she looks like she'd be into poetry and Elliot Smith.

Tonight John and I babysat our nephews with my mom. My "thing" for today feels a little like cheating: an afternoon of fingerpainting and bookmark making. I'm putting up pics in the gallery.

Labels: family., sewing/crafting.

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Yesterday my mom showed me her stash of old patterns and this afternoon I went over to her house and kidnapped the whole box when no one was home. Shocking! Don't worry. I'll give 'em back...

Here's one of the most awesome ones:



I love this for so many reasons. I love the illustrations, which isn't surprising. But more than that, I love the combination. Why a clown and a caballero? Is it because they both start with C? If so, did McCalls also make a "Boys' or Girls' Lumberjack and Lederhosen Costumes" pattern set? The possibilities of alliterative strange profession and cultural dress combinations fascinates me. (Especially since I can't think of any more.) But I love this pattern the most because my grandmother actually made it using the colors on the package. I didn't know people ever did that. Here I am in my grandparents' backyard in 1985:



Obviously, it was probably about 1987 or '88 when it actually fit me. It wasn't made for me, after all. By the '80's, I think maybe McCalls would've been selling Rockstar / Russian Soldier combos.

I scanned the image, printed it, cut it out, took the covers off an an ugly and unused journal, recovered the covers with fancy paper, stuck on the clown and caballero, covered the covers with Contact paper, punched out the holes, and put the covers back on. My inspiration came from this blog. Here's how it turned out:

Labels: sewing/crafting.

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I had in mind a somber post, but when I went to the NPR site to check out the story I heard on "Morning Edition" today concerning the rising price of crude oil, it led me to this instead: Environmentally Friendly Barbie Accessories made from scraps of Barbie clothes that would otherwise be thrown away. Like I needed another reason to go to Toys R Us, which is the only place to get the new B-Cause line of purses, diaries and whatnots. Unfortunately, I was given this knowledge in part through a story about poor Barbie sales and Mattel's loss of $45 million dollars last year. (Those recalls didn't do them any favors.)

Back to the subject of Earth Day, if I still lived in SoCal, I'd try to get one of these: Honda Clarity. I can't wait for them to be available everywhere.

Labels: political stuff., toys.

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