Late last night, Nate was preparing a lesson he had to teach and I didn’t want to go to bed yet, or clean anything, so…

I decided to make a sock monkey. Now, in the world of knitting, people are knitting their sock monkeys. I’m not. Am I bad?

Anyway, as I’m sewing up the bottom of the monkey last night, I saw this.

My first reaction was, “oh no!”

My second reaction was, “wait, I can totally fix that.”

My third reaction? “How on earth does a non knitter make one of these?”

Maybe I’m beyond clutsy, But I encountered about 4 of these dropped stitches in the process of making my monkey. A quick little surgery with a couple tiny crochet hooks, and we were fine.

Additionally, since hand sewing and embroidery are NOT on my list of skills, I was pleased to realize that since I was working on a knit fabric, I could totally mattress stitch the body parts together. (I realized this AFTER the mouth was attached. Hence, I have a bearded monkey. Or at least a monkey with a 5 o’clock shadow).

While sewing last night, I toyed with the idea of giving the monkey to my little niece who I saw become very attached to a little boy’s stuffed monkey at a playdate yesterday morning. However, aside from the fact that all three of my girls were positioning and vying for it this morning before it was even finished, Clark has laid claim.

I’ve been playing with my sewing machine and serger for quite awhile now. I really need to clean my house.

a purple cotton test-run and 1.5 hours later…..

I love my serger.

So, here it is.

It was supposed to be a very neutral moss green. The alpaca on the right is sort of, kind of close to the color it’s supposed to be, but when you open it up, it’s mint green on the inside. And I even scoured it first.

However… it carded into the most lovely, complex, heathered version of the color it was supposed to be. I’m very, very happy with it.

The photo is a bit bleached out. I have a hard time getting good pictures of dark colors.

It’s a very high color saturation, which means it took all of the dye I had to dye it. Initially, when the colors separated out I decided I wouldn’t buy that color again, but I like it so much, I want a sweater out of it for myself so I’ll totally get more. I have about 3 pounds of the dyed fibers to card and put in my shop (if I ever actually HAVE a shop).

Because of the complexity of the base, I’m going light on the tweed. I don’t want it to look messy. There are four colors of silk going in to make the tweed, but in very small amounts.

It spun up heavenly. I’m looking forward to carding it.

Here we are. All stuffed and ready to go for the first day of school.

and Abby’s, with velcro.

She was scared of the serger, and while she did almost cut her finger on the blade… twice… she did really well. I think she’s a natural. Veronica still needs to sew one. She took my sample (the flowers) but we haven’t made her second bag yet. Liv and Abby have each made two and would like to make more. Birthday presents? I think we’re going to sew some drawstring snack bags in the near future, too.

What else can I think to do with the serger??? We’re having too much fun!

I have a doctor appointment today. Another in two weeks. Then we’re on to weekly appointments. How did this happen? Summer kind of ate up my pregnancy. I’m almost out of time.

I wonder how many blog posts there are out there with that title? Oodles, I suppose. But at least it’s not the norm ’round here.

As you can imagine, we’ve been cramming a lot of summer into the last couple weeks of it. Nothing overly exciting or exotic, but we’ve been doing fun things. Drama camp (parent run) took all of last week. We did an indian spy play. The script was written by a seventh grade boy, with dance numbers and everything. Our family was able to contribute the music and some sari suits for the ninja princesses thanks to our recent obsession with Bollywood movies and a friend with indian relatives. My excellent sister-in-law, who is a dance major, helped choreograph the dances.

Yesterday, I helped the girls sew fabric lunch bags. It took me awhile to figure out how to construct them. On the serger, of course. I patterned them after the typical brown bag lunch sack, making them a bit bigger.

It killed me to create so much garbage last year. Three girls’ lunches every day is three brown bags, three capri sun pouches, and about 12 ziplocs in the trash, 5 days a week. So THIS year, they will each have two or three fabric sacks they sewed themselves, from fabric and notions we already had. (How’s THAT for “green”)?

I’m probably going to pick up a few of these, some of these, and then I’ll try to use some of those disposable-yet-reusable containers whenever possible.

The girls will have to do their part by emptying and rinsing their containers every day. Something they’re not good at. The number of old, moldy half eaten lunches that we dug out of school bags last year was appalling.

Today, we just came back from Jetty Island. It was our first time going and I am very tired. Cool place, though. I’d heard there is no shade to be had anywhere on the island so I finally broke down and bought a Sport Brella which I’d been eyeing all summer. (They’re on sale at Sports Authority right now).

And it was cloudy the whole time.

For a while there, I thought we might end up using it for rain.

Nope.

We did still manage to use it. I set it up and stood in front holding up my beach blanket so the girls could use it as a changing room. I don’t really care, though, I’m glad I have it. It’s the coolest thing ever. Earlier in the summer when we were looking for shoes for Abby, Sports Authority had one on display. They had two full sized camp chairs set up under it, with a large cooler, and there was still room. The fact that a 10 and 11 year old girl can both change clothes simultaneously under it without fighting or bumping into each other is also worth mentioning. It sets up in less than a minute and you can stake it to the ground like a tent. I’ll use this thing everywhere.

Ok, done with the commercial.

So, I’m in bed, ’cause I’m tired, which means I don’t have access to pictures to post. Theoretically, when the girls are back in school (starting tomorrow), I’ll have time to post regularly again. However there’s only 5 1/2 weeks ’til baby comes, and I have a lot to do…