Two Posts for the Price of One

Ok, here's a two for one post.  Last weekend we went to Bob and Jenn and Zhora's house for a night of ballet, tomato soup, aggressive balloon swatting, magnetic stone gaming, and Valeria June dancing.

Sarah and Zhora set the tone for the evening with some dancing and lots of high energy play.

After a wonderful dinner of tomato soup and chicken sandwiches we played some magnet game that everybody got in to.

The magnets were a little noisy as they crashed together.

But we all had a good time anyway.

After that, it was back to balloon swatting.  Bob won this game when he swatted the balloon into the pencil behind my ear, which elicited giggles from the girls.

This is just a little picture of a Hot Wheels car that was sitting around at the end of the night.  I slapped a little vignette action on it to make it pop!

In addition to the wood, I've been playing around with a little bit of leather.  Originally this was going to be a pair of chaps.  But chaps are complicated and I'm short on tools, so I thought I'd play around a little bit and just get used to working with the leather.  Some sheaths and wallets came out of this work, but I wasn't really pleased with any of those.  Then I hit upon the idea of making a shop apron.  Starting with a few odd square feet of leather, I managed to find enough to cut out a roughly aprony shape.

Using webbing came naturally, and the grommets were both aesthetically and technically pleasing.  Pockets are always handy, so I added a couple of those, too.  Everything had to be hand stitched since we don't have a sewing machine or anything.  Hand stitching is like hand crafting in woodwork, very gratifying and very time consuming.

I love working with the carpenter's pencils, but they don't sit well behind my ears and I'm forever searching for where I set them down, so this pocket was a no brainer.

The clasp is actually a piece of horse tack.  Don't know if it'll ever come in handy, but I think it looks cool.  I also sewed a hammer loop on the side, which I'm sure will come in handy.  Ready to finish up my little end table project now and get on with the kitchen table.

Cheers!