croque-choux

"Maman, je t'aime"

Mother's Day was Sunday here. This is what I got:

- an adorable handmade card from my son
- a lovely exotic bromelia plant from my daughter
- a cool book off my wishlist from the DH
- a migraine headache

Well, 3 out of 4 isn't bad...
I even managed to drag myself into class Monday morning (this week: InDesign). More on the Embroidered Purse book later. I didn't even get a chance to go through it yet because my head was imploding on Sunday.

Lovin' these Websites !

Totally fun website(s) of the day: artpad.com, via kao-ani just added to my sidebar- smile and wave if you love pixels! (^.^)/"

Here be dragons

Yes! One last jab to the finger and... I finally finished my needle felted dragon! I was stuck on the wings for the longest, not knowing how I should felt them, but I just improvised and it looks okay. I added a touch of 2 other greens and a tiny bit of Angelina fiber to the wings. I found just the right beads to fit in the eye sockets this morning. This dragon is actually the first thing I started to needfelt, and then I put him aside for months and made this bear and this cat softie instead. If you like these, then you should really see all the cute creatures that Marieke has been felting, or alternatively go over to Flickr and tag search "needle felting". So he won't feel left out, here is a picture of the dragon I made with Fimo last Summer thanks to this great tutorial.

Lundi Linkorama 2 (Monday LinkMania)

After reading Hillary's fun post about retro beauty makeovers and reading the comments, this really got me thinking about eyebrows for some obscure reason. I did a little surfing and found these links:
1) At last- the secret to stunningly beautiful movie star eyebrows! (I can't believe somebody invented this...)
2) Embrace the monobrow- celebrating the unity of the eyebrows
3)"Mommy, why do we have eyebrows??"
4) And my all time favorite eyebrow man, Simon Templar aka Roger Moore. I actually talked to him once, light years ago ('79? '80?) because his chauffeur was parked in front of the place where I worked and he asked me to give his "boss" a message telling him where the car was waiting. I almost died. ANYway, homeboy is definitely Mr. Eyebrow-high brow, as you can see here. Note the groovy music. My 6 yr old son has the Simon Templar eyebrow thing down pat (he's never seen the show)- it's really cute! He says they're his antennas.

And now back to our regularly scheduled postcard swap

More mailbox fun! As I mentioned previously, I'm participating in a fabric postcard swap, PC4fun:Round 3 to be exact. Here are 6 postcards that I received recently. They're all so different and creative! If you'd like to see the other 3, check here and here.

Postcards, they're all here

There's been a lot of postcard action going on behind the scenes here, but what with the classes I've been taking I didn't have time to take pictures and blog about it really. I'm going to remedy this right now. I received the last of the 10 postcards from Myra's postcard swap, so here they all are! Many thanx to:
Christy, Snowbear,Holly, Amanda, Melissa, Pam, Hanna, Marieke, Karen, and last but not least Myra.

An exotic weekend

Well, the weekend is almost over and turned out to be kind of busy. I've planned some time for sewing and crafting later on though!
Let's see... yesterday we went to this museum to see the Pharoah exhibit that people have been lining up for ever since it opened. The expo ends soon, so we decided to go and thankfully there were no long lines. I don't get it though... The expo was very nice, but not worth all the hype or waiting an hour in line. No picture taking allowed either, unless you ask for permission which explains why I'm not posting a photo or two. The only thing I did take a picture of was the inside of the huge shop across from the museum. I thought this piece of furniture was awesome, and the wall hanging next to it is actually a big appliqued quilt! From far away I thought it was woven or printed because it's so intricate.
On the way home we passed through my old neighborhood in the 13th quarter, also known as Chinatown here, to stock up on some goodies. My son is very fond of little banana cakes sold in many of the shops, but I think they're Vietnamese or Thai. Hey and look what I found near the almond cookies- these little green tea flavored marshamallows from Japan! I only hesitated for a nano-second ("2 and a half Euros...? oh well!"). They turned out to be yummy, but I'm totally intrigued by these instructions I found on the back of the package. Am I supposed to add water or something and put these in the microwave or what?? I wonder...
That was Saturday anyway, and half of Sunday was spent taking my son to see the latest Starwars movie. I hate waiting in lines, epecially movie lines, but it was worth it. Still this was nothing compared to the huge lines I remember seeing on Hollywood blvd. in the 70's when the 1st Starwars came out! That one is on TV tomorrow, so at least my son won't be confused now that he's seen all the prequels.

Stop and smell the flowers

Woohoo! I'm off next week- no training classes and no hustling back and forth to Paris- so I'll have time to smell the flowers I hope. I stepped out into my yard and discovered that the peonies I planted a couple of years ago finally decided to bloom this year! I had almost forgotten what color they were supposed to be, so it was a nice surprise to see these pure white flowers with a touch of blood red in the centers. They smell wonderful too. Oh yeah, and my Charles Rennie Mackintosh roses are in full bloom. I really love this shade of pink, but I doubt that my camera does it justice. If you'd really like to see some lovely flowers, check out what's blooming chez Kim this month. I love her flower photos!

Feeding the stash

It's been awhile since I've bought any fabric... I promised myself I would only look at the kimono fabric for sale on eBay, until I found a deal I couldn't pass up that is. They're just small scraps, but pretty and cheerful. Something to brighten up my stash. Luckily, the one on the left turned out to be chirimen silk.

Postcard swap update

Here are the postcards I made for the swap Myra organized. I would've shown photos of these earlier but I didn't want to mess up the element of surprise :o) Well guess what boys n' girls: the surprise is that the cards were late. I hope that the people who get these will like 'em and not be pissed off at me for the delay! I kept hesitating between making fabric postcards or paper postcards, so I made a few fabric ones and the rest with paper and fabric. The froggy cards were inspired by one of my Japanese craft books. As you can see, I'm also trying to finish up a 3-D version in felt for my son. Tomorrow I'll try and post pictures of the cards I received in exchange. They're all so different and pretty and I love them all!