Lots to report

The latest news...Please welcome my nephew Sawyer Morgan, born yesterday December 28th, after about 36 hours of labor. My sister is a trooper and gave birth to this beautiful boy. He weighed 9 pounds 6 ounces and measured 22 inches long.
I met him briefly at the hospital, he is only a few hours old here. We will travel back up north this weekend so that the girls can meet him too.

Preparations for the holidays...
Here are Sofia and Maia in their ski clothes (well, the new stuff anyway). Neither had a suitable jacket or boots to wear in the snow so I had to go searching and found these at Lands' End at reasonable prices (if I had planned ahead a little better, I would have tried to find something on ebay). They had a great time sledding. Skiing wasn't as big a success this time due to bad weather on the day we went, but more on that later.
The annual xmas card production was so much fun. I did this card using Illustrator and then printed using the gocco printer.
And finally, some Christmas twirly skirts for my favorite little skirt wearers. They loved them. Some minor adjustments need to be made (Maia's is a little big around the waist), but overall they were fun and easy to make.

I'm going to get back to unpacking and laundry for now but hope to post soon about our journey up north to Truckee/Tahoe-Donner and the Bay Area. Happy New Year!

Big twirly skirt

Here we are in December and I'm full of things to talk about, but have little time to write about them. I'm down to the crunch time of gift making, card making (yay!), and cheer spreading. I refuse to get cranky about all the stuff I "have to do" because I love doing all of it, but some things have to give, like this blog. So I will tell this quick story and hopefully catch up with the rest later.

A while back I saw a skirt at Whole Foods that I thought looked really fun. Now I don't know about you, but I was having trouble with spending $68 on a skirt from the grocery store, even with all its sustainably-made credentials. But still, it was cute, so I kept looking at it and finally said to myself, I could totally make that. It was a dark gray, heavy jersey cotton. Enter my trip to LA.

Last Thursday I went to downtown LA to the garment district. I had tried to find some cotton jersey fabric on the internet - ordered some samples from a store in New York, and 4 weeks later, I got the samples but they weren't what I was looking for - I thought, this is silly, it's not that far to LA, so I went. I found exactly what I was looking for - a dark, gray, french terry - and it was organic, too. Bonus. Oh and surprisingly inexpensive.
So this is what I ended up with - it's my "I'm 38 years old and I can wear long twirly skirts if I want to skirt". The waist band is about 7 inches and tapered at the back with elastic to hold it up. The skirt is a full circle from one piece of fabric with the middle cut out. I haven't completed the hem yet. I was going to leave it unfinished but the fabric doesn't roll uniformly due to it being a full circle (get it?). Anyway, I'm going to afix some rolled fabric to the hem all the way around to get that unfinished look.
Here I am trying to photograph myself twirling - it didn't go over too well but hopefully you get the idea. I found a pretty pink heather jersey cotton at the same shop in LA and I plan to make a couple more twirly skirts for my favorite little skirt wearers. Better get busy, eh?