This is a mobile blogging test.

This has been a super crazy week!  As everyone on the planet has to know by now, Cdale was hit by a freak-inland hurricane last Friday that totally destroyed half of the town.  David and I were spared any damage to our house…but our neighbors were totally not as lucky (see 2 images below).  We ended up going 5 days without power, and we still haven’t gotten our Internet back (which is why I am blogging from the SIU student center basement right now.)  This whole event has really put us behind on workshoppe production, so now David and I are trying to get as much stuff as possible done before the OMGcon.

Since the power has come back on, I have been sewing like crazy.  I managed to do some jewelry stuff in the dark, too.  David has been working really hard on a satchel he is designing, and I’ve even got some pics of what Kit has made.  Productivity is fun!

The top bag shown here features an embroidered zeppelin that I managed to do during the power-outage.

I really like these!  When you take apart a lot of watches (like we do) there are so many tiny parts that seem like they just wouldn’t be “pretty” enough for jewelry….but I think they look super cool in these tiny glass vials!  I have strung a couple of these on leather necklaces and have already named them “Industrial Eyecandy”…cause stuff like this is just fun to look at.

This is my first attempt at a steampunky necklace.  It features a salvaged optical lens, a salvaged watch crystal (used as casing for watch part) and a cool watch face turned charm.  The chain is also recycled…it’s from a broken bracelet.  The only “new” things on this piece are the two charms.

Kit has about 6 of these leather neck pouches made up…and they are pretty cool.  He has come up with some cool ways of latching them shut.  They are too small to put anything substantial in…so they are more for looks.

This morning David and I woke up to a cold house and a rainy sky…but I didn’t care cause Sunday is puppy day!  For the last month or so David and I have been going to the local humane shelter every weekend to play with the doggies there.  Today, we played with our favorite pup, Ernie.  We are so in love with this dog, we wish we could bring him home.  He is an expensive little thing though…so we will probably just have to settle with playing with him on the weekends.

He is sooo cute!  I like his ‘action shots’.

After returning home, we spent most of the day lounging around the living room watching the rain come down. We decided to dedicate ourselves to working in the workshoppe for 2 hours…and i’m really glad we finally did. Kit and David got a lot of peg board put up, and I can finally get to my sewing desk.

We ended up eating lasagna around midnight, and I baked some latenight cookies to power us through a couple more ours of Oblivion.

Since returning from Florida, I have been neck deep in moving.  David and I have finally finished cleaning/moving out of our old place, but we aren’t even close to being moved in at the house.  Everyone keeps asking for pictures of the house…so here are some outside shots.  The inside is just too much of a wreck to photograph…maybe in a week…or two.

We put up one side of our clothesline today. It was really cloudy, but the wind was so strong that all of the clothes dried in less than an hour. I look forward to line-drying this summer.

This is the front of the house. It’s about 95 years old, and the walls are stone a foot deep. It’s what David calls a shotgun house…cause you can see through the entire house while standing at the front door.

This is Kit being creepy in the attic window. We totally plan on putting Rose (dressform) in that window and back lighting her in red for Halloween.

David and I have been playing badminton in the yard. We love love love living out here.

We are still working on getting the workshoppe set up.  We spent hours putting up shelving yesterday…and will spend some time tonight clearing a place for me to sew this evening.

We are still waiting for our landlord to fix some appliances in the house.  The dishwasher hasn’t worked since we moved in…and two days ago it began leaking all over the kitchen floor.  He immediately came over and turned off the water…but it’s not fixed..and the water that had already flooded into the machine is still leaking out…  We also still haven’t gotten our new drier.  I would like to mostly line dry…but a drier would be handing for rainy days.  Oh well…just gottta wait I guess.

We’ve been in Florida for 3 days…and it’s really made me realize how much I have missed these trips!  When we first got down here we spent a nice warm night with our old friends Jackie and Joe.  The next morning we jumped up had a lard soaked breakfast, and headed off to St. George beach.  St. George Island is half developed and half wildlife refuge…so it’s the good, the bad and the ugly all on one little 5 mile long island.  We drove into the refuge and spent 3 hours lounging on the nearly deserted beaches.

We spent yesterday at the Wakulla Springs State Park. It’s a beautiful wetlands area fed by the largest freshwater spring in N. America. Our friend Jackie is a park ranger there, so we got kush treatment (free boat ride y’all!)

After hanging around the park for a couple of hours we headed out to another area of wildlife area, St. Marks Lighthouse. We saw sooo many gators! I will post some of those pics later.

Look! A lighthouse!

Today we are leaving N. Florida for the southern Florida’s developed hell of a city, Orlando. My grandmother lives about 30 miles south of there, are our goal is to get there by tonight. I sure will miss all of these wildlife refuges!

Tomorrow, I will be heading out to my parents house for a night before we begin our journey down south.  I’m pretty excited about this trip.  I haven’t been on a trip down to Florida in 4 years!  My swimsuit is bought and my bags are packed.  I’m usually not so hot about swimming in swimming pools…but I love going to the beach.  I feel kinda bad because David has to deal with all of the moving stuff while I’m gone.  Our subleaser couldn’t come sign the papers today because he was in a car accident (*eep* he is ok though!), and we haven’t seen the new lease yet.  I have a list of questions to ask the guy…like will he mow the lawn? David will have to get both of these done while I’m gone, ’cause we plan on moving into the house the day after i get back!  Tonight is my last night in my apt!  *tear*  I hope this whole process stays as smooth as it has gone so far.

I have been job hunting lately, and I have a few applications sitting my table.  I’m sending off for my substitute teacher’s certificate, and I put in at Jo-Anne’s Fabrics.  Today, I picked up at application for Arnold’s Market, a small locally owned grocery store near our new home.  I have a friend who has worked there for 5 years that I am putting as a reference…so I hope I have a shot at becoming a checker there.  He wants me to apply for the butcher’s department (he’s a butcher), but I don’t know if I could deal with the dead meat smell.

I finished my latest wallet today.  I haven’t been doing much in the workshoppe, and was determined to get this finished before I left for Florida.  It’s not as elaborate as my other wallets on the outside…but it is more functional on the inside.  Now that it’s done I wish I had put some more flair on it…oh well.

So….this morning David and I got up early, showered, and cleaned the house…because we had our first walk through in the apt!  And he totally loved it!  YAAAAAAY, he said that he was ready to sign a sublease any time!  This means that we are like 99% sure we are getting the house…that 1% is just a buffer for tragedy.  I am so excited!  This lifts a huge weight off my shoulders.  The guy was super nice, and he a med student who is doing his internship at Carbondale Hospital.  He was so laid back, and nice, and funny….yayayyayayay.

In other news….I made a mini top hat.  It’s not finished, but I decided to get some pics of it up anyway.  I need to feel like I haven’t been slacking this past week.  I have been so excited about this house that I haven’t been in the workshoppe.  I made this hat to go with my costume for the con.  I didn’t mean for it to look “Alice and Wonderland”-ish… I’m actually not really into that whole look, but I really liked this fabric.  I plan on putting some feathers in the brim and a long train of black lace out of the back.  It took me about an hour to make this…I’m thinking of making more to sell at the con.

Good news on my crazy front.  I no longer think the house is haunted!  Ok…maybe only a few people knew that I thought the house was haunted… It turns out I’m just more claustrophobic than I originally thought.  The attic space that I totally felt a bad presence in is totally Kit’s favorite place in the whole house…he wants to make it his room.  haha.  Here are some pics of the house.  We are advertising for a sub-letter starting today, since our landlord gave us the Ok.  Woot for spontaneity!

Really nice living space…too bad we don’t get to keep the couch.

Everything in the kitchen is new!  Waaaaaaaaaaaah.

Kit is chatting it up with the landlord.

Fireplace?!?!?  It still has wood in it from the last tenant.  We are just dying to light it up!

Kit’s favorite room….that crazy boy.

Last weekend David and I took a Graduation/Anniversary trip to Louisville, Ky.  We were primarily going there to see his sister and stay in a swanky hotel, but we ended getting do do a little shopping, too.  Our first night there we ate with David’s sis Betsy, her beau and their friend.  Betsy took off work on Monday, and we spent the whole day antique/junk shopping ( <—David and My favorite kind of shopping).  The next day Betsy had to go back to work, so David and I went shopping at a couple of craft stores and then checked into our hotel for the night, 21C.  That night someone broke into our car and stole all $200+ worth of materials we had just purchased for the workshoppe.   I was going to write a longer post about this weekend and trip…but every time I sat down to do so I started feeling so sick about the whole situation that I had to stop.  The trip overall was really great.  So now it’s time to move on!

In sewing news, upon returning home I sewed for 2 days straight in my anguish.  I ended up making 4 pretty cute cosmetic bags out of some new fabric I picked up at Hob Lob. I really like these bags, and they are relatively easy to make, so I think I will toy around with making them a little more stylish.

On Saturday, Dad came to Cdale and “dragged” me to the 6th annual protest of the Iraq war in town. I say “dragged” because I really didn’t want to go at first, but of course once I was there i was glad I went. That seems to be how it always goes. I am just so anti-social that the thought of going anywhere in public and talking to strangers makes me feel tired.

The newest of news on my front is that David and I may be trying to move into a house soon….like really soon. We found one out of town that we kind of fell in love with…and the rent is decent…and we have no idea if it’s worth the stress of finding a someone to sublease our current place. We are going back out there today to show Kit the house. I really really hope it’s not haunted.

This Saturday the boys and I headed down to Paducah Ky (home of OMGcon) and did a little antique shopping.  Of course…we were not looking for actual…you know…antiques.  We were checking out stores for old hardware/broken thingy-ma-bobs to use in our creations.  We made out like bandits!  Well…not real bandits…because we actually paid for things.  But we bought a lot of cool stuff.  The three of us went in on buying several skeleton keys, and David and Kit loaded up on radio tubes.  Our biggest score (in my opinion) was three working pocket watches!  Most of the stores were selling watches for between $80 and $100…but we scored these for $10, $11, and $12!  The $11 one is mine..and it keeps the worst time…well…I should say that it doesn’t keep time…but I don’t care!  I ticks and makes me feel super Victorian!

I picked up some nice lock faces and we were all happy at the end of the day with our loot.  We struck out at craft stores on some jewelry finding items…but we will find everything we need eventually.  We have so many projects running in the workshoppe that I can’t really document them all.  Kit is making small leather neck pouches, David is still working on his chess set and some leather wrist bands, and I have been knitting some wristbands and sewing some more bags.  We have also been putting together necklaces.

Today I finished a steampunky pocketbook I had been thinking about. It turned out nicer than I thought it would…and that’s always nice. I plan on making a few more with different fabric combinations and more elaborate inner pockets.  On bottom are some pics of a steampunky pencil case that I finish a couple of weeks ago but never photographed.