halloween ‘do rag

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My seven-year-old has dreadlocks. Sort of. He’s got very smooth, sleek hair, and they’re taking freaking forever to fully form. In the meantime, the two front ‘dreads dangle down in front of his face and in his cereal. They always needs to be tied back somehow…a bobby pin, a bandanna, whatever.

This coming Friday will be Orange & Black day at school to celebrate Halloween. I thought it would be nice for him to have a hair accessory that will hold his hair back & still keep the spirit of the day, so I’ve thrown this together for him:

The orange is some kind of one-sided fleecy stuff that’s got a bit of stretch to it, and the bats are cut from felt & hand-stitched on. I overlocked the top & bottom with black thread so that I wouldn’t actually have to hem it, and then overlocked the two sides together on the inside.

He’s at school right now, but I can’t wait for him to get home to see if it fits his head! It’s a little big on his younger sister’s head, but she’s smaller and her hair isn’t nearly as big as his. I’ll update with a pic of him in it when he arrives.

UPDATE:
We need to work on maybe folding those ends in, or maybe just overlocking it down to a smaller size. But all in all, it’s doing a good job of keeping those ropes out of his face!

before.

after.

danger: fabric sale ahead

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I should only ever be allowed to enter Fabricland with a set amount of cash, and absolutely no cards. Ever. Under any circumstances.

Popped into Fabricland yesterday to buy this:

$75 later, came home with this:

That is a $70 difference. Thank goodness my husband doesn’t know I’ve started blogging…so by the time he reads this, hopefully I’ll have recouped some of that cash.

The problem with fabric stores (asides from the obvious problem of my still buying retail at this point) is that everything seems SO cheap at first glance. The felt was on sale, 40% off, so why not buy 50 sheets? The netting was 50% off, so sure, let’s buy 11 meters! The interfacing? Well, it was on sale, but even if it hadn’t been, I needed it and am happy I remembered to get it while I was there. I go through interfacing like a crazy person. (You know, crazy people use a lot of it.)

I should point out that I wasn’t just grabbing random stuff, each of these things has a purpose. The netting is for crinoline style skirts, the felt is for hairclips, and the heavy fusible interfacing is for single-serve laundry hampers. (Hamper tutorial coming soon!) Oh…but the other interfacing, the medium weight, well…that was in the ‘ends’ bin, and at $1/mtr, I simply couldn’t resist. Nor do I feel like I should have, as it’s sure to come in handy. ;)

So. With the receipt safely tucked away in the ‘girlie’ section of my purse, it’s back to the sewing table with me.

hackers vs. assholes

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Once upon a time there was a little sewing blog. A humble blog with fewer than 100 posts, but a loved blog, with photos of projects, thoughts on the craft and even a few tutorials. The owner of that blog had big plans for it.

Then life got in the way. Children off to school. Mom back in the workforce, balancing schedules between kids, a husband who worked across town & just one car between them all.

One day, the owner of that humble little blog set aside some time for writing again, only to discover the worst: her blog had been hijacked, its database wiped clean, and all her writing gone forever. It was devastating. She put down her pen, set aside her creativity & set her logic to ‘techie fix mode’.

After that, she wrote two or three more posts. Her heart wasn’t truly in it this time & it was mostly crap – but an effort was being put in. She knew things would get better.

Until they got worse.

Logging back into WordPress one day, she found that her poor (even littler than before) blog had once again been hijacked & wiped clean. Hadn’t she learned her lesson about backups? Nope. Not with only a couple of posts on the site.

Let it be known that this is no family sewing site. I drink wine, swear, & sew, often at the same time.

I have a few choice words & phrases for the bastards that did this & no inclination to hold them back.

Mother-fucking unimaginative boors who have nothing better to do with their time & brains than tear down & destroy what other people create to share & love with the world. Probably spending hours sitting in their parents’ basement just looking for things to damage & delete & high-fiving themselves as “hackers”.

*Ahem*

hack•er
-noun slang
1. skilled computer enthusiast
2. computer user who tries to gain unauthorized access to systems
(Source: Dictionary.com)

I don’t see anything in that description about being purposefully hurtful or destructive. So let’s add a new entry to the dictionary:

hack•oser
-noun slang
Derived from hack•er + los•er
1. computer enthusiast completely lacking moral compassion and an ability to create anything worthwhile
2. a jealous motherfucker

The term ‘hacker’ brings to mind, for me, someone who explores, learns, & dissects computers, both software & hardware. While oftentimes what they do or get into may not be legal, I do not consider hacking itself to be malicious. Telling a hacker that they cannot do something would probably be taken as a challenge, but not one in which the point would be to tear down whatever/wherever that challenge has lead them. The assholes who chose to delete my words are the same people who give true hackers a bad name, and are the reason the words strike fear into the hearts of people. Omg…hackers! They’re out to get me! Bullshit. Hackers are out to learn. Assholes are out to get you.

I was having a hard time figuring out how to start my blog back up. There was no doubt that I had to talk about these events, so I figured making that bitter end into a new beginning would take me back to where I wanted to be.

If you’ve stuck through this post, I certainly hope you’ll come back for more. In future, you can even expect some posts about…SEWING! :)