I took Kat McTee’s Spangled Felt Calendar class at the Stitch Lab before Christmas. I love everything about the Stitch Lab, and this class was my new favorite. Kat designed and screen printed the felt calendar designs on wool felt and we got to choose between woodland, peacock, kitty, or spaceship motifs.

As you can see, I went with the woodland scene and bedazzled the heck out of it with felt cutouts, sequins, beads, pom poms, and a few stitches.

I used a tiny bit of felted wool so my fawn could be a white-tailed one.

My prickly hedgehog.

I couldn’t resist adding the gold sequin leaves. 2011 is sure to be a sparkly year.

Ben and I are celebrating Valentine’s Day at the Alamo Drafthouse with their Gone with the Wind Valentine’s Day Feast. Five southern-inspired courses with drink pairings will hopefully sustain us for the nearly four hours of Scarlett and Rhett. The Valentine’s Day Feast is becoming a tradition for us – last year we saw Casablanca and the year before it was The Notebook. Despite his best efforts, Ben loved The Notebook and sobbed right along with me at the end.

Happy Halloween!

Here’s the bracelet I made. Ben calls it the “creepy doll bracelet.”

I thought mine was looking okay. But then I turned it right side up. Poor Igor got a broad sloping shoulder and an itty bitty neck.

Then we did contour drawings of our hands. Not being able to look at the paper makes for an interesting drawing. Spooky.

Our last activity of the night was drawing our feet. Our teacher giggled out loud at the giant scale I chose for mine. “I guess that’s how you see them,” she said.

They’re not dainty, but they get me where I need to go.

He looked smashing, of course. Here he is getting ready to sing Tom Waits’ Little Trip to Heaven (On the Wings of Your Love) at our reception. I cried. It was wonderful.

But I wondered – how hard could it be to make a bow tie? Ben loves to wear them whenever he has the opportunity to dress up, but he can never seem to find bow ties that suit him in the stores.

So I enlisted the help of the multi-talented Becky Joiner at the Stitch Lab, bought some fabric, and whipped up a few bow ties just for Ben.

I love this out of print dandelion fabric.

The automatic buttonhole feature on my snazzy new sewing machine is awesome. Now I need to work on placing them in a straight line.

We found this cool fabric at Britex in San Francisco. I’m still dreaming of that lovely store.

I loved stitching this little bird.

Jaxon models the bib.

I decided I needed more stitching instruction and signed up for Rachel Hobson’s hand embroidery class over at Leslie Bonnell’s Stitch Lab. I was one of only four students. Rachel first gave us a thorough lesson on tools of the trade, materials and resources, and methods for transferring patterns. Then she guided us through the stitches shown on my sampler below. We learned the blanket and back stitches (shown on the sun). The french knot (ooo la la!), chain, split, and satin stitches make up the top of the flower. We also practiced the stem and lazy daisy stitches (on the stem and leaves) and the herringbone stitch for the grass.

Rachel’s class was wonderfully fun, but it wasn’t until the next morning that I realized the calming effect stitching has on me. I finished my french knots while waiting in my car for an early meeting to start and instantly became relaxed.

Shortly thereafter, I purchased a couple of iron-on transfer patterns from Sublime Stitching and became totally hooked. The repetitive motion of the needle popping through the fabric, the freedom to choose whatever stitch and color you like, and the instant gratification of creating something beautiful in a couple of hours – I’m now a total junkie.

I decided to strike out on my own and embroider Ben’s band logo on a kitchen towel. I taped it up on the window and traced it with a water soluble pen.

And then I stitched.

And stitched. Here while watching Play It Again, Sam. A pretty awful movie in my opinion.

Here’s a Sublime Stitching pattern for some of Daniel Johnston’s famous Austin artwork.

I love that juicy satin-stitched mouth.

My new creations are all kitchen towels. We now have a few more than our tiny kitchen drawers will allow.

I’m going to move on to napkins now.

Handmade Nation is one of those movies you begin rooting for before you even step into the theater. You know it won’t be widely distributed or nationally recognized. Most of its promotion comes from the genuine enthusiasm of bloggers and fans of the people profiled in it. And then there’s the fact that the Alamo lended its imprimatur by hosting the film’s Austin premiere, often a good sign. We attended a similar screening of Gary Hustwit’s Objectified at the Alamo a few weeks ago, and we were expecting something along those lines.

But most important of all, Eliza is a big fan of a lot of the people profiled in this movie, especially Austin’s very own Jenny Hart, the crafty genius behind Sublime Stitching. Eliza has become pretty crafty herself lately, and she has a lot of these folks to thank for bringing this stuff back into the public consciousness and her own.

So I do feel bad. But here’s the deal. For a movie dedicated to the virtues of doing things yourself, it’s a problem when the movie itself feels like it was pasted together by a one-eyed toddler on a sugar high. It doesn’t exactly help the cause.

The camera work literally made us sick: The perpetually shaky handheld shots, the jerky pans around rooms. I looked over at Eliza at one point and she had her eyes closed. “I’m going to have a migraine,” she groaned. This was a movie about objects, things you want to get a good look at, things you want to soak up and study. It was frustrating when the camera wouldn’t slow down long enough to get a clear, focused shot of anything.

And then there was the singing saw, which was a constant part of the soundtrack. While an interesting novelty once in a while (The Hoff couldn’t stand it for even ten seconds), the singing saw gets a little grating after an hour, particularly when it’s the same song over and over. And it was.

So I do feel bad. I wanted to enjoy this movie. But I also call ‘em like I see ‘em.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXQZOxFwK8E&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Step two: Wait.

This little beauty appeared in our bathroom while I was away on business. (Doesn’t “away on business” sound like something a secretary in Mad Men would say?)

At any rate, I’ve asked her to make one for me that says “Thug Life.”