the peaceful peacock

Oh yeah, like I’ve had time to do that since the baby arrived.  This lit­tle num­ber is a project that I fin­ished before Annabelle made her early debut.  It’s a perfect-size-and-perfect-shape purse (can also eas­ily dou­ble as a dia­per bag with­out look­ing too diaper-baggy) that was made for the April Gypsy Road team chal­lenge.  It is also hang­ing on the wall at the Com­mu­nity Food Co-op as part of their Earth Day art show.  I whipped it up out of two old pairs of mater­nity jeans (ha! out you go!) and a pile of vin­tage scraps that I inher­ited some­where along the line.

The bag is fin­ished, but have I actu­ally got­ten it together enough to get down to the co-op to take a pic­ture of the fin­ished project?  Nope.  But you can go visit it upstairs in the cof­fee shop where it has a stun­ning view of the Bridger Moun­tain Range.  It will be there until the end of May and after that it might go into the shop, it might hold Annabelle’s dia­pers.  We’ll see.

It’s pretty slim pickin’s for crafty time around here with the two lit­tle beans, but I have man­aged to scrape out a cou­ple of things.

While my mama was vis­it­ing, she requested a roll for her oil brushes so she can eas­ily stash them away for plein aire adven­tures.  Inspired by the pen­cil rolls of Soule­mama fame and the cro­chet hook rolls from Coy­ote Craft, we paired up these two sweet vin­tage twills for a paint­ing acces­sory that is just a bit off the beaten path.  It has inspired a flurry of fab­ric match­ing and you locals will def­i­nitely be see­ing these at the sum­mer mar­ket this year.  But first one for my dou­ble pointed knit­ting nee­dles, one for my straight nee­dles, and one for my col­ored pen­cils.  I already have this one for my cro­chet hooks.

And given the weather around here (yep, still flur­ries of snow) my obses­sion with wool has not yet taken respite for the summer.

The newest in the line up?  Dye­ing old wool sweaters that have been felted.  Wool behaves a bit dif­fer­ently than the other nat­ural fibers , so work­ing with these recy­cled sweaters gives me the free­dom to exper­i­ment and hone my tech­nique before I begin work­ing with my rov­ing and hand­spun yarns.

Did I say hand­spun yarns?  Oh, yes.  It seems the fiber gods have smiled upon me and a spin­ning wheel will be arriv­ing within the next cou­ple of weeks.  More on that adven­ture as it unfolds.

For now?  I will attempt to con­tinue my work on a small inven­tory for our first mar­ket at the end of June!  But mostly I will be lov­ing and kiss­ing and shoosh­ing and hold­ing and rock­ing and chang­ing and wear­ing and feed­ing and encour­ag­ing and amus­ing these two beau­ti­ful, beau­ti­ful beings that I am for­tu­nate enough to spend my days with.

And I’ll be try­ing not to totally lose my mind while I’m at it.

It looks like the dou­ble vision is creep­ing into my sewing projects as well:

This is my new fire lotus applique design, fea­tured here on a pair of wrap­around leg­gings that will be in the next shop update (which is now Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 22, 4pm MST).

Per­haps it’s time to have my eyes checked?  Or maybe I’m just pre­oc­cu­pied with thoughts of two lit­tle ones underfoot…

Looks like mama’s brew­ing up some applique…just in time for the next shop update at that.