This summer I seem to have lost my creative mojo. Is it too dorky to say mojo? Is there a better word for it? Anyway, whatever you call it, beyond cooking on the weekends and living on the leftovers and peanut butter and jam sandwiches during the week, I haven't done much of anything lately. In an attempt to remedy that, I decided to spend a little time in my little house studio this weekend. First of all, it needed a good tidying up. I cleaned up all around my sewing machine and ironing board, although I didn't quite have it in me to tackle the work table and closet just yet. Still, that little bit made all the difference.

I made a little garland from vintage book pages. There was nothing too it, I just used a big circle punch and sewed a long chain. I stacked three circles at a time and by folding the top and bottom circles, ended up with these flower-like shapes. I thought of doing something like this for Christmas cards last year but realized that there was no way I would have time to make enough. I think I'll do it this year and just start now, it's easy enough to make two or three at a time. I think they'll be fun wrapped flat around a postcard, and then the recipients can fold them open. See, already I have another creative project to think about. 

Another thing about this project that makes me happy is that I don't have to buy a thing. I have way too much junk, and I need to start using it or getting rid of it. I worked on two more projects this weekend that I started long ago. I think this will be the focus of my autumn cleaning-using stuff up and finishing what I started. So hopefully, I'll have lots to show in the coming weeks as I do this. The more I think about it, the more motivated I'm getting. Yay! 

As I was cleaning, I remembered that I had my grandma's thimble collection stashed away in a box, and decided to pull them out so I could enjoy them. As I was tidying up in the little house studio, I realized that many of them were tiny enough to fit on the ledge above the window. 

I love  being able to see them. She collected them when she traveled, and I know I gave her a couple as gifts when I was little, and I also have a bunch of just plain, utilitarian ones that she used when she quilted. 

I don't think I mentioned this book yet. See that little pink bunny in the middle? That's one of two contributions I made to this sweet little book of softies for kids (and everyone else, too!) to make. There's also a peeper pattern in there. It's only available in Australia, so I hope all you lucky Australians pick up a copy! As you can tell from the cover, there are some super cute things to make. I think I might need a pink stuffed submarine.

Things are hopping in my little house studio. Today I made this:

I followed this tutorial at Creature Comforts, so easy and so cute, I think! I used a bit of silk and raided my mother-of-pearl buttons to dress it up a little. It's light and comfortable to wear. I might have to make some more for gifts. 

I have lots more to share all week. Who else is making gifts this weekend?

Do you have this problem? I'm making and shopping for Christmas, and trying to stick to a tight budget, and then I find super cute things that I want, like this pincushion/spool, from this etsy shop:

Or this hat, for which I have a single skein of yarn that might just be perfect:

I don't have time for this nonsense! 
 
 

I had no intention of disappearing for three weeks, but I guess that's just what I did. I've been both busy and lazy. Well, not so much lazy, just worn out from the busy. And there was a bit of a cold somewhere in that time too. Last week I decided to enter a contest at Veer.com to win a MacBook Pro. I knew the competition was going to be tough, but I forced myself to try anyway. Veer is a stock photo/illustration/design site, so most users are professional graphic designers. So the contest was to step away from the computer and recreate their logo with real materials. Multiple entries were allowed, so I did three: a mini quilt, a papercut, and a candy mosaic. 

The winner was pretty darn cool, and the ten runners-up were also really great. I'm still happy I went without sleep and ate too much orange candy in my attempts. I do love my papercut one, although that was my first attempt at papercutting, and it was not easy. I want to try it out with different kinds of paper, because everything looked terrible when I tried to use a blade. I ended up using paper scissors in the end. I think I'll remove the letters from the quilt and turn it into a little doll quilt, I love the bright, juicy oranges. 

I've been doing a little cooking as well, and had myself a little tea party one afternoon, while watching Howard's End. You don't really notice the food in that movie unless you watch it hungry. I speak from experience. So I was prepared this time. One of my favorite scones ever are the ginger scones I would get at Teaism, when I lived in Alexandria, Virginia. So I used a cream scone recipe and added finely chopped crystallized ginger and they may not have looked like much, but they were just perfect. I recommend that you try this sometime. 

My former boss is an avid fisherman, and brought back a whole lot of yellow fin tuna from a recent trip. So I decided to use some to make fish & chips, but with a little Asian twist. I cut the chunk of tuna into fat sticks, dipped them in beaten egg, and then coated them with panko crumbs. Then I fried them in a little oil (maybe a half inch deep), turning so that all the sides got nice and brown. I made two dipping sauces instead of tarter sauce. The first was my usual wasabi cream sauce and the other with a spicy mayonnaise, which was simply mayo with some srirachi chili sauce (also known as Rooster sauce), and a little squeeze of lemon. Yum! It was delicious and really easy. 

Now I'm hungry, and we are out of bacon, so I think I'm going to get myself dressed and head over to the local diner for breakfast.