Pretty Things

So many pretty things coming this way lately. Last weekend, at my boys' school fair, I scored some yarn at the silent auction.

I don't usually bid on auction items, silent or otherwise. This yarn, organically grown and dyed using natural dyes (onion skins for the yellow, indigo for the blues) at Shalom Orchard, was valued at $90 with a suggested minimum bid of $40. I can't buy $90 worth of yarn on a whim, no matter how pretty, so I walked on by. Later in the day I checked back and saw there was only one bid, for $10. (It's supposed to be a fundraiser, not a yard sale, but what can you do? The mitts I donated went for $6--somebody actually wrote down the auction-wide minimum bid of $2. You try not to be insulted, I guess.) At any rate, I couldn't let this yarn go for $2.50/skein, so I wrote down the suggested minimum, and nobody bid more. It's beautiful yarn, four 4-oz skeins of sportweight. That's got to be enough for a sweater, I'd think. Anyone know how many yards 4 ounces of sportweight is?

Things are a-blooming here. Check out this iris!

The kids and I went outside to draw and paint them, of course.

My niece was a little bummed that she wasn't eligible to try to win the giveaway book, so I made a few more in a different color. This gives me more practice, plus I'm interested in how the books hold up and under what sort of use.

One is for my niece, another for her mom (my sister), and the third, I think, will be a teacher gift.

Finally, last week (maybe?) I made a couple more cuffs.

I bought four fat quarters of coordinating fabrics (I have blue and green in this swirly print, too, and I can't wait to embroider it with some ocean-inspired doodles). The freehand on the purple was embroidered with some shiny rayon floss (you'll have to scroll down; it's listed alphabetically). As is my habit, I went ahead and worked with it and then Googled it, finding out how difficult it's supposed to be. Well, it's not the same as cotton, but it wasn't that hard. I knotted the ends and dabbed the knots with some tacky glue before I sewed it all together.

I used normal grey/silver cotton floss on the red and purple one. I was experimenting to see if there was a huge difference. It's not huge, but I do like the shiny rayon. I used the machine to sew these together, also an experiment. I still like doing it by hand, especially for the final closure. I was going to use buttons and a loop on these, and thought the loop would be more durable if sewn with the machine, but I like the snaps much better and I'd rather sew the loop by hand anyway, so I have more control over its length and placement.

June has exploded a bit on me, looks like, but I hope and plan to carve out some space to make more pretty things. How about you?