Makin' Stuff

I'm nearly finished with altering a dress I snagged a few weeks ago. I ended up hating it after I took it home, but I really liked the fabric so I decided to change the shape of it. I was putting the finishing touches on, including a drawstring waistband, only to discover the cord I bought for it is too wide for the drawstring tube! Arrghh! So I'll have to wait to post pictures until I can get more suitable cording. In the meantime, I thought I'd post pictures of more stuff I made.

I whipped up this tea cozy a little while ago. The bottom green polka-dot fabric was a scrap from another project (a coffee press cozy), and the rest of it I cut from a linen shirt salvaged from the $1.00 section of Goodwill. That stuff is great for practicing embroidery on! I don't know why I'm crazy about tea cozies (and coffee cozies) lately. Probably because they're simple and quick to put together and they can look like anything you like.

Look at my tomatoes!! Not bad for a patio garden, huh? There are about 8 on that plant right now, and the biggest one is almost the same size as my fist. OK, I have small hands, but still, I think it's pretty decent for a patio tomato plant! I'm trying to wait for them to turn, but looking at these pictures has me fantasizing about fried green tomatoes...mmm.....

These aren't really my project, but I thought I'd share them with you guys anyway. This is K's bonsai collection, not including the larger one he keeps indoors. We found a great bonsai nursery at a plant festival in April, run by the nicest older couple. The husband shapes all the trees and experiments with soils and things, and the wife creates the little landscapes around them and chooses the pots. I swear, it was like looking into a mirror of the future of us, haha.

I think this one is so neat. Bonsai trees that produce flowers and fruit just blow my mind. Can you see the little green fruits? We have no idea what kind of tree this is, and neither did the couple from the nursery unfortunately. I still love the look of it.

This little guy is cute, too. K is wanting to start experimenting with different tree shapes, so he got the two little juniper starters to play around with. In the background is one of the pots he bought at a flea market in Osaka. It's not the most beautiful pot in the world, but it has such a neat story behind it because it's from our first trip abroad together and K actually haggled in Japanese (which he does not speak hardly at all) with the owner of the stall for it. Haha! I was proud of him :P  He was too shy to order food in Japanese that whole trip, but he didn't let language get in the way of a good bonsai pot!

Have a good weekend~