I Love Swaps

In a soaping forum I frequent, I've participated in several swaps. The one I'm doing now is a Medieval Stillroom swap. I gave this a lot of thought and decided to make my dream pillows for this swap, so I had to make a dozen of them. Then I got carried away with the packaging, like I always do, and used a magickal render I did a couple years ago to explain the dream pillow. Here's the front (with the illustration) and the back, which just shows the fabric I used. I love the way these turned out. :D

My daughter left in the wee hours of the morning with her band for Disney. The kids are performing at the Disney parade at 1:00, then they have the rest of the day to play. Tomorrow they go to Tampa to perform at the Tampa Bay Buc's halftime show. So she's gone all weekend, which is hard to bear. I miss my girl when she's not here.

Dream Pillows

I'm pretty excited about these, after all the research I've done on them and getting just the right organic dried herbs and flowers. Ta-Da! Finally, my Restful Dreams Dream Pillow is in my shop. More are coming soon!

It hardly seems possible that our kids have been back to school now for a week. The house seems strangely empty and quiet. We went to watch our daughter, who is on the dance line at school, perform at half-time at the Friday night football game. Her hairpiece came off in the middle of the kick line, but she just waited til they were done, threw the hairpiece into a pile of pom poms, then resumed dancing! That's my girl. She can handle almost anything. :)

Fabric Shopping

I did a lot of work weeding and tearing out old flowers yesterday, then planted a bunch of new flowers in the container garden around our lily pond. I've made a little album of the photos, including some of our brilliant bromeliads, at Flickr. You can see them here.

I'm gearing up to begin making Dream Pillows, filled with soothing herbs and flowers. I went shopping for fabrics yesterday and really got into the idea of matching colors and patterns to the dream blends I am making. I spent an hour admiring different batiks with soft, watercolor patterns.

I bought a yard each of 4 different kinds and I couldn't honestly say which one I love best. They are all so beautiful. I'm in a Medieval Stillroom swap with some other crafters and I'm making some solid perfume and dream pillows as my contribution. The dark purple batik with gold, pink and sage swirly dots and stars is going to be perfect for the swap.

I love swaps. I know it's crazy, I already have a ton of bath and beauty products I've made myself, but I am always eager to try what other people make. Right now I have 44 sample bars of soap sitting in a box, plus the delightful stuff I got from a Harry Potter swap. I have 7 different bars of soap going in my bathroom. I need to muster some self control about swaps.

Later on, after I do my yoga, I'm going to be working on a digital character I started a couple months ago but haven't finished yet. She's called Mitsouko, and she's almost finished. For some reason I'm just stalling on it. I need to get busy. Here's what she looks like so far.

Ah.....Lavender

I just received 3 lbs. of dried Lavender de Provence flowers from PoPkO. I have to say that this is the most fragrant, heavenly lavender I've ever bought, and I've bought plenty of it over the years. Fabulous product and service, I'll definitely be buying from this fellow Etsy seller again!

Still Crocheting...

Eep, still crocheting little flowers and pairs of leaves for my sachets. Crocheting takes almost no time, but attaching the leaves onto the flowers and weaving all the loose ends in is what takes so much time. I still have 24 more flowers with accompanying leaves to make. I'm just taking a stretch break now and then back to the Size E hook.

At night I've been reading up on dream pillows, online and in books. I'm fascinated by the way that some herbs contribute to sleep and others can disturb sleep, and that very fragrant herbs are not necessarily good for sound sleep. I've been studying herbs for many years and still find it a fascinating topic. I hope to be adding Dream Pillows to my shop soon. I would love to find some old fashioned herb or botanical print fabric to make pillows.

Sewing Away

It takes me about 5 minutes to sew each of these little cotton sachet bags for a special order I'm filling. I could probably do it faster, but I make french seams, which means twice the work. I think it's worth it, though, to do a really nice job and make sure the seams stay intact. So it's going to take me about 5.5 hours just to make the little bags. Then there's the crocheting of the little flowers and leaves, stuffing with lavender and adding a bow. I'm going to be happy when all the bags are made. I'm just a little over 2/3 done now.



What a disappointment today. I just found out that the Tropical Fairy Festival, which I'd signed up for, has been cancelled.

Being Busy is Gratifying

I am so happy today because I got an order for a lot of my Lavender Sachets for a christening next month. I have a week to make them all, so I've got to get busy. I've already been to JoAnne's Crafts this morning (thank goodness for 40% off coupons) to get my supplies and ordered 3 lbs. of divine Lavender de Provence dried flowers. Mmmmm...it's going to smell so good in my work room for the next couple of days.