I've been busy with wedding family stuff, and fighting with my sewing machine to try and finish three vertical hip bags that my cousin ordered before she had to go back to Sask.
Note to self: No more cheap machine needles... >.<
I'm also going to go ahead and blame my sheer exhaustion due to pregnancy + toddler for my procrastination.
I have been getting things done though! My berry bags are complete I just need to take some decent pictures on my shitty camera and post them to etsy. However, I did have to change my design. I got really frusterated with the fused plastic insert that I was making them with. They just never turned out right, and the shape was a bit awkward. So, scratch that idea (I now have to come up with something else to use all these bloody bags for!
So I redesigned, and came up with the same bag, but perfectly shaped/sized to hold a 4litre Ice cream pail. I figured, who doesn't use an ice cream bucket to go out and pick blackberries with? So this is a more stylish, and comfortable way to do it. Plus it makes a cute little bag to keep knitting stuff, or anything else you may find fits in it.
The pics here make it look a tad awkward, but i promise its not at all (most definitely not as awkward as trying to pick berries one handed with an ice cream pail balancing you as you reach as far as you can into the prickles without getting killed. Note: This may just be me :P )
The new pictures for etsy will be better! This was late last night...In designing this bag, (and don't ask how I came about this.. :S ) I also came up with a pattern for clothtoddler training pants from t-shirt scraps that I can't use for bags, hats, dresses and prefold diapers. So this will be another thing that will be added to my etsy after I get the time to sit and make, make, make! Oh how i wish i had the time every day :(...and not at 11pm when I would rather be cuddling on the couch with Hubs watching a movie and drinking tea.
But he has been really busy too! He has been carving away and getting ready to open up his own etsy making hand crafted organic body jewelery. Using bone, antler, wood, and soon, stones. As well as leather and other items for necklaces, etc. Bone Rattle Organics will be open soon.
I'm so very excited for winter this year. Winter brings baby, and more time with M. As well as our art binge, where we spend all our free time working on art and sewing and jewelery to sell online, and have a selection to sell at the winter and spring markets. This is what both of us have been dying to do for a living and are only now starting to be able to.
M. just got an evening job at a gas station a couple nights a week, and once mowing slows down he will still have an income through out the winter. So I can actually get childcare subsidy and be able to get a baby sitter so i can work a couple days a week as well. Then hopefully he will have enough hours to go on EI when we are ready to leave.
OH btw! I havent mentioned anything yet.. we're only just starting to inform people of our plans.
Hopefully this spring our little family will be moving down the coast a bit to the sechelt area (were looking anywhere from madiera park - gibsons). Mostly we are just both pretty done with PR. Itchy knees, I guess. I doesn't really feel like home anymore, and we just can't settle here. When we were staying down there for a couple days, it felt right there. There's tons of family and a couple of our closest friends. Plus much more going on in the way of arts and crafts. PLUS we can get to van or PR and only have to pay one way (coming home). It's still a plan in progress but we're pretty excited about it.
Other things I've been working on:
Made some dipes for H. We've narrowed our stash down to just flats, but we have been folding our flat diapers into rectangles instead of the oragami fold for the past few months because it's quicker, they fit her better, and we can double up easily for night time. I had a bunch of scrap flannel and some super soft fleece kicking around my stash so i made up a few "pre-flats" (half way between a prefold and a flat diaper). They fit her well and absorb a lot. The fleece also keeps her feeling dry and lessens her bum rash. (We're still working on her diet and what she can/can't have...it's a slow process :(...).
The flats i have will be altered to also include a strip of fleece, making a moisture wicking pocket for extra liners. The fleece will be in a position where it will work for oragami fold, or just folding into a rectangle. We have always had to fold an extra liner into the flat for miss H. so this will make it a bit easier, and we can reuse our diapers from the get-go with the new babe.
