November Lull

Just a long slow and a somewhat boring and blah lull here at the end of November.
It seems like I spent the entire week after our trip to Seattle just catching up on chores and caring for sick children and this past week was a continuation of that.  Sawyer came down with another ear infection.  He has never had two ear infections back to back, not even two ear infections in one year.  

We finished up our homeschooling co-op Fall Term with our last class and a party.  (Only the 3 older children went because of the sickies).  People with home business were invited to bring in their items and set them up on a table.  I wasn't going to do but at the last minute brought my trees, clips, color wheels, wands, felted bowls, etc.. and set up a table.  No one bought anything.  Sigh....

We have missed several days of homeschool due to sick children.  Sawyer slept an entire day, from breakfast to dinner.  I decided to do school this week even though I had scheduled it as a vacation week.  On Sunday, I put together a little mini unit on Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, and Colonial Days.  I didn't have my wits about me to get to the library for books but each child had an activity packet with things like color sheets, word searches, Thanksgiving math, etc.. and I found some online games, activities, and video clips.  

After a long couple of days, here we are at the start of Thanksgiving break (Wednesday-Sunday) and Phil is lying in bed with a fever and a sore throat.  Noooooooooooooooo!  

So...something nice to report!  I dug out the serger sewing machine that was gifted to me (thanks Kathy!) and Phil spent several hours figuring out how to thread it and use it.  I think he got it all adjusted.  I have yet to use it and he will need to teach me how to thread it because it is quite scary!  

Excuse the terrible pictures - it has been dark with no natural lighting and I haven't felt particularly inspired to take pictures.

Here the serger is all up and running.

What am I going to do with it?  Well, quite some time ago, I found a tutorial on etsy for turning recycled sweaters into hoodies and coats by cutting and serging various sweater parts together with the seams on the outside.  It looked like so much fun and I loved the results.  Well, I decided to buy the tutorial and then went sweater shopping.  I was actually quite horrified at the amount of money that I spent (the rest of my "fun" money) on sweaters...because this is a bit of a risk but I am hoping that during Christmas break, I can try my hand at a sweater tunic.  

Cotton sweater to experiment on.

A big pile of wool sweaters.

This is the first chop shop experimentation (Phil sewed LOL).  We took this oversized thick t-shirt type shirt and cut and sewed up the center and then cut and resewed the arm holes.  I think we are ready to try our first one.  

Other good things...  I took an early morning (6:00) very dark and pouring down rain walk with a friend.  It was lovely as all our walks turn out to be.  (Thanks Jenn!).  

I had a friend commission a crochet shawl.  It is a little scary to do commission work.  I want it to be perfect and I want people to LOVE the final product especially when it cost a "pretty penny".  Buying  the 5-10 skeins of yarn that it takes for a larger project (this is a lovely silk, alpaca, and wool blend) really adds us as does the hours of stitching. I am on my 5th skein of yarn into the project with an estimated one more to go and have about 12 hours into it so far.  I will post pictures once I get some decent lighting.

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