Getting There Is Half the Fun

We took a vacation.  We went to Tulsa for Thanksgiving and saw as many people as we could - it was a blast!  It was awesome from the very beginning, though. 
We took the Max to the airport, and I passed the time by finishing up the binding on a quilt.  This got the attention of a lady who has been quilting for more than 50 years, and we talked almost the whole way there.  She was the coolest!  She told me about how she used to live on the Baja peninsula with the natives there.  She lived in a teepee and was a midwife.  She said she was the hit of the neighborhood because she had a generator and therefore a fridge and a sewing machine. 
She also told me that she was allergic to an ingredient in anti-venoms and has unfortunately had several run-ins with poisonous creatures.  I was reminded once again how great Portlanders are when she told me about just having to wait out a brown-recluse bite that was "way crazier than any of the acid trips" she'd ever done.  Then she continued on talking about her loving husband, six kids, and grandkids.  Ahh, the quaint charm of Portland's elderly!

Size Matters

I finally finished my Vernazza-yarn hat!  It took soooooo much longer than it should have because, as it turns out, size matters.
I found a pattern I liked online, found a place that could decipher crochet language for me (I  was a little rusty with what "Rnd 3: dc next st, Fpdc same st" meant), and started crocheting.  But since my yarn was skinny, I made a tiny hat.  Our second niece was born two weeks ago; this hat would have been too small for her.  So I undid my tiny hat.
I started again using both balls of yarn at once, so I was working with twice the thickness.  I made the hat again.  It was still too small.  Not comically small anymore, just too small.  So, I undid most of the hat and added several rounds to the top before remaking the band, which I also made bigger to make up for my still-too-skinny yarn.
To get to the point, I'm so happy with the result!  So much, in fact, that I am wearing the hat right now, which is a little silly because I'm inside, at my desk, typing on a computer.
Here it is (with the perfect button that I found in my mom's button jar):

For the Birds

I have this thing for bird fabrics right now.  Or really any product with a bird silhouette.  Whenever I picture the sewing room I will one day have, it always has yellows, greens, and blues and birds, birds, birds.  I went to a "Handmade Holiday" open house at Modern Domestic and saw this:

I tried to be nonchalant about taking the picture on my phone, so it's kind of a rough photo, but you get the idea.  I think it's awesome and would be so easy to make!  It gave me something more to imagine in my future sewing room.

They also had cute appliqued stockings that looked like they would be fun to make with a group of friends:

Don't you wish you could just stay home and be crafty all day?  I certainly do!