New Creations for 28" Barbie Best Fashion Friend

A gathered long sundress, and a cute peasant crop top and denim pencil skirt.
I'm really pleased with how these came out!

Glamping, Anti-Rodent Style

For those of us who are not giant fans of having small fuzzy critters scrambling over our bodies while we sleep.

There's a GRAND new invention called the Privacy Pop!  Here it is--

It's come down to $129, which is closer, but still out of reach of the rest of us.
The rest of us can handle plopping $18 for a "pop-up changing privacy shower tent" on ebay, especially when the need is urgent, as a sojourn in a rat-, black widow spider-, scorpion- and ant- infested place looms in our immediate future.
Like this-- (not the exact one I got)


This kind has a built-in ceiling and an open floor.
Perfect!

I stitched a piece of salvaged screen into a square frame of fabric, and stitched that to the bottom.

This is not the best looking job, I know it!  But you should have seen me trying to wrestle this giant spring-steel framed thing around under the sewing machine!  One of the steel springs has to go UNDER the presser foot and then a child has to hold up the rest of the contraption while I stitch.



"If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid."
 

And it worked GREAT.  Because I went by car and there was extra room, I hauled along my featherbed-- yes, someone gave me an old-fashioned featherbed, that's feathers in a bag that you sleep ON, or rather among; and if you've never experienced this bliss, I can only recommend you listen to a song by John Denver-- so each night, I popped up my tent, shook out my featherbed very, very well to evict any rattlesnakes that might have gotten in there, crammed it inside the tent, climbed in and zipped up that zipper and zipped the world OUT.



View from the inside.

While I was sleeping peacefully, the contents of my backpack weren't so lucky.  The mice got in there and had lunch.



Didn't discover this until I got back home. 
EWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!

Art for My Bare Walls

I had wanted one of these Vibrant series of jigsaw puzzles when I saw them in the store.  So many lovely designs, but Mt Shasta was my favorite.  No money for that sort of thing. Then I was walking by a garage sale and picked this one up for 50c!





Starts off easy enough, but later bogs down in a purple slough of confusion.



I had this puzzle to this state once before, then gave up because "I don't have time to do jigsaw puzzles" and scooped it back into the box and donated it to the church garage sale. 
Then I volunteered at the church garage sale and brought Mt Shasta home again. 

With a dedicated place in the living room for a puzzle to be spread out, you'd be surprised how much puzzling gets done while listening to kids or talking on the phone. 

Here it is glued to poster board and up on my wall, about as close to fine art as I'm gonna get.

 

Then a magnificent idea struck for how to get some more!

In fact, the famous A READING FROM HOMER. 



I snagged the huge "original" size jpg from Wikimedia here,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Lawrence_Alma-Tadema,_English_(born_Netherlands)_-_A_Reading_from_Homer_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

A little judicious trimming plus a white border in Photoshop make it a suitable rectangle, and I printed it out 12 x 18" at Costco on matte paper for a cost of four bucks.

I just picked that up tonight and I'm delighted with the results.  It's close enough to ART to hang above my cozy little bed. 

Curvy Barbie Progress!

That Curvy Barbie pattern that I'm "famous" for-- well, only a year and a half late, here it is!  


There, isn't that cute??
 http://www.janelwashere.com/crafts/BarbieCurvy.html

Check out Miss Blue's hairstyle!  I had to do something, couldn't fit dresses on her with all that hair down her back.
I tried to hold her between my knees and wrestle with her hair, tried a dozen and some times, could not get the hair and the bit of lace to cooperate, started to get frustrated...  finally I ran upstairs to get somebody to help me, then held the doll between my knees and wrapped the hair around to demonstrate what I wanted to happen, and it went just right! 
The hair ended up where it was supposed to go and I stuck the pins in it, and it was elegant and secure, while my would-be helper stood there watching.  
Well-- "Thank you!!"

28" Barbie Best Fashion Friend

Meanwhile I fell in love with something new.  I spotted this big lady at Walmart and, at a moment of weakness, paid real money for her... well, twenty some bucks  :-)

She's 28" tall!  Not quite a My Size Barbie but close.





I recouped the price of her by selling clothes, and I'm gonna make more, and I'll get the pattern up SOON. 

Here's what I made for her! 

Not Mountains, but Not Little Hills

Every now and again I get to do something fun. 
Every now and again I organize my photos folder.  Here we go! 

Soooo... I drove down to Cali and here's the photos of my sorta vacay.
On the way I stopped at Riverside Park in Grants Pass, where I've been before.  It's so pretty! 

The sign says you have to be under twelve.  Bummer. 
But luckily I came at the playground from a different angle and didn't see the sign until I was already all played out, and nobody yelled at me. 

Don't I look under twelve?

That sort of thing right there is why everybody yells "Smile!" at me.
Maybe I should.
I'll make a note.

I did some wandering around in Yreka. 

 

The playground is my favorite place in any town. 

Went to Greenhorn Park!

And climbed, if you want to call it that, those hills, which are a challenge for me at this point, esp in 98 degrees which I'm not exactly used to any more. 

But there's a lovely view from the top, down at the valley with I-5 and Mt Shasta in the distance.

Look at those two pictures. They're basically the same composition, but in one the crowning blob of white is just a little cloud, and in the other it's Mt Shasta.

The next day's bathroom selfie at church, because I still had mountaintop glow on me, or at least it was still in my head and I liked myself for once. 

See, I'm smiling now, because mountain!
The mountain is where we need to live, and why should we ever come down?

Then I went to Medford and went up Table Rock. 

Here's a couple from Wikimedia because none of mine are this cool.  And wowwww, the view from the air! 

Here are the ones I took.

Heading up there. 
Looking at where we're going.

The prettiness on the way

Almost there!

The top and the view from the top.

Very aware of rattlesnakes and poison oak-- which I'm not aware of usually-- I'd just had my consciousness raised.  This horrible-sounding stuff was pointed out to me, and I took a photo of it for reference!

It sounds nasty.  In fact I did not enjoy the trip back down at all because I had to GO and I'm a girl, and that poison stuff was everywhere I looked, so I basically ran all the way back down to the reassuring concrete restroom.

Oh well, fun was had!

It was a journey of a thousand miles, or almost.