cub scout cakes

Sometimes when you are married to the cub master you end up "helping" with things like pack meeting and arrow of light ceremonies and the likes. In his defense, he did bake all the brownies, I just frosted them. The beautiful thing about attempting to replicate a patch is that from a distance the embroidery looks like a bobcat, wolf, bear and a webelo (whatever that is; blue-peeled banana? corn on the cob beneath a blue moon?) Up close, it really is a bunch  of stitches and not very distinct. It makes it much simpler to replicate with icing; just a matter of creating the basic outline of the head and then back and forth to make the fur. I do wish the lettering were a little more even, but it got eaten even with irregular font size.

Or if it happens to be a sports-themed night, perhaps football shaped brownies are the order of the day. They're regular brownies (two batches) baked on a half-baker's sheet or a jelly roll pan. After I took them out of the oven, I used a cookie cutter to cut them out. I didn't really have a football shaped cookie cutter, so I used a small can, used a can opener to open both ends, and squashed the two sides to make the shape. Then it was just a matter of using a #4 piping tip to make the stitching. (I did the stitching on the side that was against the pan as it baked because it was flatter).That's what one does when her husband asks for help but she doesn't really have time.  I also bought ding-dongs; um. . . I mean hockey pucks for the dessert.

Tie Skirt

I know the concept isn't original. Perhaps the design though, is.
In most of the tutorials I looked up, the recommended construction technique was to unpick the back side of the tie, remove the inner core, stitch it together either in the creases or on the raw edges, and if you stitched it in the creases, re-hand-stitch (see how I hyphenated it to make it my own word) the back side of the tie. Sounded like a lot of work.

One site suggested sewing together the edges as you would any other seams with the fronts of the ties together and then pressing the seams.

I instead used a vine stitch from my mom's sewing machine (mine doesn't have anything so fancy, and slightly overlapped the ties.

The result was as I imagined, except at the top. Since ties are cut on the bias (this is where hind-sight comes into play) the top of the skirt was skewed.. I thought about wearing it anyway, but it was too much.

So I found a pair of jeans that weren't exactly the latest trend and cut them off just below the pockets. I like the flower embroidery below the pocket. Note: If you choose to follow this technique, make sure to leave the pocket lining (the white part) intact or you'll end up with really short pockets that don't hold much.

The last step was to stitch the ties on to the pants. I cut off the top of the original skirt, which resulted in a much larger opening. So I pleated the top by sewing the first 2-3 inches of one tie to the tie that was not next to it, but the next one over. That's a really confusing way to explain it. If you look at the picture, the blue and yellow striped tie is sewed at the top to a burgundy Tabasco tie leaving the navy Aztec looking one in between. The result is a pleated tie skirt.

If you buy all the ties, it is quite expensive. Even if you purchase them second hand, at $2.00 a tie it adds up quickly. I think this one had 30 something ties in it. Talk to all of your tie-wearing friends. It is likely that one or many of them will have a few hanging out in the closet that they no longer wear. You could try to match colors, patterns, widths, or you could have a completely random selection. This may look random, but actually each tie has a color in it that matches the tie next to it (you'd have to look closely on some of them).

I like the uniqueness of it, the length, and best of all, many of the ties belonged to my dad. Other than the fact that it should probably be dry-cleaned, I love it.

Winter Blues

I struggle in winter. The darkness, the cold, the lack of sunshine, everything is dead so I dwell on death a lot. And darkness comes early so I have more hours with my thoughts, hours that would normally be out in the sunshine working on some project or other. I keep myself busy, to be sure, but crazy sneaks up on me so I have to create my own amusement.

For example, Sunday, when I had a really bad hair day, I tried to focus on the fact that my hairdo looked like Popeye's Olive Oyle (What do you mean you don't know who that is? How old are you?) except she has inky black hair and I'm more of the brunette persuasion.

Or I spend long hours meditating on a fight between Superman and Wolverine and attempting to determine the outcome as well as what led to their disagreement (I don't exactly see Wolverine as a Lois Lane kind of guy.  Could it have been over who was in charge of flipping the burgers at the super hero potluck? Maybe Popeye was somehow involved?).

My favorite experience of the week came last night. I got a mysterious text from a man we'll call Frank Murray. His text said something along the lines of,
"Shayla,
This is Frank Murray. I need some information from you about Robbie Wilson so I can do the paperwork on his home loan."

I texted back with, "This isn't Shayla"

His response, "Sorry".

"Not as sorry as Robbie," I replied.

Ugly Christmas Sweater

The last real post I made happened in October. Then I realized there weren't that many months until Christmas, so my free hours were spent working on gifts, most of which I finished. There might be an unfinished pair of pajamas in the sewing room. While I like to imagine myself the dutiful mother/wife, toiling through hours and hours of homemade gifts because I want them personal and money is tight, truthfully, I may have spent some time on myself.

Every year at work (for the past two years) there has been an ugly sweater competition. As I work only part time, the first year I was unable to participate. This year it was held on a day I work and due to my compulsive/addictive tendencies, when I'm in, I'm all in.

 

 I started with a yellow cardigan. It was a hand-me-down from my sister-in-law and perhaps I wasn't as cautious with it as I should have been or maybe it came that way, but either way, there were stains in several places. It made the perfect Christmas sweater because I could modify it without feeling like I had destroyed something in its prime. After much contemplation, I settled on lettering "MOORY CHRISTMAS" on the front and then using wonder-under to iron on and stitch on presents over all of the stains. It was a good way to use up scraps of ribbon and Christmas fabric. In hindsight, I should have made the letters bigger. Maybe next year.

The back, of course, was blank; a blank canvas so to speak. Naturally I made it into a bearded santa-cow to go with the saying on the front.

Fearing it wasn't enough, I stitched tinsel to the cuffs and whatever the part at the bottom of the sweater is called. It's not really a hem, but sort of.

Accessories are a must and a broken strand of lights laced with dollar store ornaments became the necklace and earrings.

Still, I worried it might not be enough. There are some pretty hideous sweaters out there. Time to up the game. I spent several hours watching tutorials and creating smokey eyes and then translating the suggestions into a Christmas palate. (The stripes are wrapping paper covered in tape and then glued on with eyelash adhesive and the red sparkles are glitter glue. Probably not approved for use on skin, but I'm not dead)

The result was Hunger Games meets Christmas and I was quite satisfied, especially when it was all paired with leather boots, pleather pants, and battery operated lights woven through my hair. As you can see, the look was quite becoming, or if not, it was at least enough to take 1st PLACE!!!

Okay, so it wasn't so stellar by the end of the day and my eyes look my age. Closeups aren't ideal, but it is a detail worth zooming in on.

 

I also included some vampire reindeer on the door just to amuse myself. Most of my students didn't care for it or understand it, but as I said, it was for me.

Little Red Men

Little Red Men This is another story my great-grandma told us. I actually illustrated this one. Not necessarily the most artistic, but it is done.

Stone in the Road

Stone in the Road This is an illustrated book of a story my great-grandma used to tell us.

Rumplestiltskin

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