Zipper week

This week, I've been working on zippers. I think, it's part of my scheme to try and avoid dealing with the etsy thingy.

This is how I used to do zippers - not terribly pretty, eh?










Then I found these:









Looks much better, works on a zipper of any length, but has limited applications.

Then I found this tutorial and used it to make this pouch. Actually, this is my fourth attempt at this method. I messed up in various ways on the others, usually by sewing crooked seams. I simply cannot sew straight to save my life. Just as well, I am hardly ever involved in life-or-death situations and none of them ever involve sewing.
Anyway, back to the zippers: Don't these ends look nice?










This morning , between waiting for the electricity to come back on and giving the dog a bath, I dug out a kit I had ordered from here quite a while ago and learned yet another method to insert zippers. This one requires that you use a zipper of the exact right length which isn't always convenient, but it does make for a really nice, clean looking top edge:









So, this was my week - mostly. I also hooked up and caught up with a few former classmates in Germany after several decades.
What did y'all do for fun? :-)

All things etsy

Quite a while ago, when the sewn stuff started to multiply rapidly, I decided that selling on etsy might be a good idea. Life got in the way and I kept putting it off. On top of that, I always wonder if anybody really would want to buy anything I make and be happy with their purchase.
So, now I'm working on that etsy shop again. It has a banner (courtesy of my daughter), I worked on policy this morning, on writing descriptions, tried to figure out postage cost and took pictures. As usual, I went outside for that and, as happens a little too often for my taste, I wasn't happy with the pictures. The colors were off and no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get them right.
Then I remembered a tutorial I had seen somewhere for a cheap, homemade lightbox. Not having a big enough box handy, I just jammed a large sheet of posterboard under my coffee table, set up two lamps and clicked away. That, with a bit of enhancement, gave a pretty true color. I think I can live with the pictures. Now to work on the rest of it ...........

Before & after

It seems that these days, it's either feast or famine as far as blogging is concerned.
Little Jerry went to the groomer yesterday and, since I was looking for a rather radical haircut for him (I got one earlier this week), I took before and after pictures.


He looks a bit dejected in the second after picture. I would, too, if anybody took off all my hair - I still have plenty in front, just not so much in back. Sort of like Jerry.

Finally sewing again

Finally, finally, after a whole week, I got to touch the sewing machine again. I was beginning to have withdrawal symptoms. I made these:

They were made from this zipper tutorial and this tutorial.










The fabric I used was left over from this bag:









It is made from this pattern. I used one of my favorite lining fabrics and just about panicked when I realized I'd pretty much used up all I had. Spent a lot of time on the web tracking down more of it and, since it's an older fabric, I think I scored the last 2-1/2 yards there were. It's a big bag and I played with the pattern a bit to make a narrower version and came up with this:













There was enough fabric left over to make another one of these made from this pattern. I had a bit of fun with the lining fabric - courtesy of my daughter.
The bags were all made last week, I just didn't have time to photograph etc.

Wish you were here ..................

............ so you could smell the sweet peas.

Sunday, Part II

Afterwards, we stopped at the Marin Farmer's Market which is held next to the Marin Civic Center - designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Nice, big market, with plenty of interesting produce, bread and quite a few stands selling arts and crafts, even jewelry. And food. I don't recommend turning the Belgian waffles with powdered sugar upside down - really!

Sunday, Part I

Kate is visiting this weekend, multi-purpose. For one, she had her last eye check up after having had Lasik surgery several months ago - everything's fine. And secondly, she wanted to show us her brand new engagement ring. Yes, she's getting married next summer - in Colorado.

This morning, we took yet another trip to the beach. Rodeo Beach is new to her. I have them all well trained by now - everybody was looking for rocks with holes in them (yes, we found some) and beach glass (yes, we found plenty of that, too).

In addition, we observed the local wildlife.

From the garden

From this - all from my garden - along with some fresh eggs courtesy of a friend, home baked bread and a few other ingredients (not homegrown or homemade) to a nice, simple dinner. The eggs, along with penne pasta, the herbs in the pictures and lots of parmesan turned into this. Easily enough for two meals. Lettuce and beans obviously were made into a salad. Unfortunately, I don't have any lemons ready to harvest right now, so those were store bought. The zest went into the frittata, the juice into the salad dressing.
Almost makes me look domestic, doesn't it? I'm not, really.

Are we having fun yet?

One has nothing to do with the other. Really!
I was playing with the fun stitches on the sewing machine again and couldn't decide on just one, so the hearts are going on the outside, while the stars will decorate the inside pocket of yet another bag.



The lizard picture was taken a few weeks ago. Never found a logical place to use him or her, so here it is now.

Marin Headlands - again

More pictures of old military installations on the Marin Headlands, all discovered on visits to Rodeo Beach and thereabouts during the last month. Most of them a little hard to access. Especially the ones shown in the first pictures, we took the coastal walk last week and decided to climb a hill when the path sort of dead ended. Quite surprising to find so many falling down installations, most of them just small enough to hold one man and just about all of them very hard to access. I have no idea if there was easier access at the time they were in use, maybe ropes for handholds (because that would have been very helpful now).
The door into the hill is not hard to access, it's along the road leading to Battery Townley.
The last 3 pictures show Battery Townsley (again), this time from across another hill. That one is easier to get to, there's a road, but it's steep and I ended up with shin splints for almost a week. We were very surprised to see that there are actually two installations. We had only explored the one. I hope that doesn't mean I have to climb all the way up again.