Dine About Town

Today is the first day of Dine about Town 2009 for San Francisco.

If you don't know about it here is some info.

It's during - January 15 - 31, 2009
3-course, prix-fixe $21.95 Lunches & $34.95 Dinners.

They are usually at pretty nice restaurants that normally you would have to pay an arm

If you want to go to the website - http://www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/taste/dineabouttown/

Caution for those who plan to go - make sure you read the fine print about what days they are part of the dine about because it's really common to book a date and time that they aren't doing the dine about and you might go there and have to order off the regular menu which will probably cost more.

Every year me and my friends always do at least one.

It has changed over the years it use to be all of January was when you can go and now it's just the last 2 weeks but it's because they split it up... there is now two weeks in June that this also happens. That change happened last year.

This year they raised the price for dinner by 3 dollars. 3 dollars!? Okay to me that sort of makes no sense, and it sort of feels silly but I guess 3 dollars doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. ^_^ Also if they raise dinner prices, you would think lunch prices would rasie too but those stayed the same.

Today I'm going to one with a few friends of mine.

We are going to Seasons at the Four Seasons. I'll try to take pictures of the food. ^_^

The monster that came from the box

Okay I'm seriously going to try to blog more often I know I have said this before but really I'm on it this time.

I have been getting a lot of pillow requests from my family and friends and seriously pillow inserts are an arm and a leg, I have been basically been buying muslin and poly fil and making my own pillow insert. I did the math and they are super cheaper than buying the already made ones.

The cheapest ones I have found (16x16 insert) go for about 8 bucks. If I did the math right the cost of the muslin and poly fil run me about 2 bucks to make. Of course there is a trade off it takes me about 30-60 minutes from start to finish pillow insert to make it. Depending on how you value your time maybe it's not for everyone, but I have a good amount of free time still, well enough to still put effort into making pillow inserts.

I thought about making a pillow insert tutorial (since they are all the rage) but it's super simple I'm sure everyone who sews knows how to make one. ^_^

Before Christmas I seriously thought I was going to be in pillow insert making mode and bought this 10 lb box because that was the best deal, except I bought a ton of 16 oz bags at Joannes when they had that awesome after thanksgiving sale.

So after Christmas I kept bumping into the box and I sort of wondered what was in the box... see I thought there might be 10 - 16 oz bags stuffed in there... so what do I do? I opened it.

Let me tell you it's just one big bag and it expands fast! Within minutes it expanded about 3 inches above to top of the box. I couldn't close the box up again. Oh well. I didn't think much of it.

Slowly like a monster it expanded though...

Here it is at 3 days later.



Scary! It's almost twice the box size now.

It's pretty much looks like that still. I just thought it was interesting and wanted to warn people not to open a poly fil box unless you're ready to use it. *nods*

Catching up

I hope everyone has had a great vacation. I had a good time for the most part, it was very very relaxing. ^_^

Here is a picture of me at a gingerbread house party!



I made that cute tootsie roll crane on top. I'm trying to make a 1000 cranes... we will see how that goes. It's kind of a lot actually it means 3 a day till the end of the year and I haven't made one since this party! Bad Melody.

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I told one of my friends how I am making game pillows and he thought that was so cool and wanted to know if I can make some bubble bobble for him. So here is the result of that.



I think it turned out pretty well. Everything except for the black and white are from stashed fat quarters. He's going to give them to his mother that use to play with him when he was little... it's a cute story when he went to kindergarten they asked what his mother did and he said play bubble bobble. ^_^

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I got the hello kitty sewing machine!



It's super cute.



The only things that I don't like about is

1. it doesn't thread the needle for you (I know I'm so spoiled!)
2. it doesn't have a side thread cutter - I'm not sure what exactly this is called but it's that little blade that you use to pull out and cut your thread so you don't have to bust out your scissors.

Anyways this had the same thread tension problem!



I found it interesting that this bobbin holder opens from the side.

I did the same thing as with my other Jamone.



I think I have gotten pretty awesome at fixing bobbin tension now. ^_^ If only I can use this skill for good or at least more often, really the only then I can do is just blog about it and home someone that needs help will find it. ^_^

Ps. sorry for all the misspellings before! I was writing this on the fly and didn't get a chance to spell check it till now.

Print your own fabric

I was hanging out on flickr and someone had this lovely fabric posted



Isn't it super cute?!

Anyways it seems someone designed it and you can have custom fabrics made from

http://www.spoonflower.com/

I went over to check it out and yup that's right you can have your own fabric made though this website, I think that's pretty neat. Too bad I'm not that creative. Just posting this to let people know. ^_^

String Quilt Four Blocks Made

I started this the night I wrote a blog about it a few days ago.

I thought this was a perfect way to use my scraps. So I started with 6x6 in muslin and I planned on cutting it down to 5.5x5.5.



So you start off by just sewing two scrap fabric strings together.

Then you iron and then you sew another scrap fabric on both sides



Here is a picture of it being ironed after sewing a piece on both sides

So you keep doing this till you fill out all the muslin. Which actually took longer than I thought it would. I really didn't plan out these blocks, just whatever I pulled out of my scrap stash was added. Some of my strings were too long and so I had to cut them but then it was a prefect size to be added to another block.



Here it is befor I cut it. Looks really wonky. When I read the website they said the best string quilts are the ones that aren't planned and just done as people go, I wasn't too sure about that but okay I decided to cut to see how it goes.



Here is my four blocks right now. It actually did turn out pretty good. I actually over estimated the amount of scraps I have so this will be all for now till I create more scraps to make string quilt blocks out of.

I actually think this was an excellent way to use scraps that are string like. ^_^

String Quilt

I don't know if anyone else has heard of this... though I suspect they have since I'm usually the last person on the planet to know about stuff (or at least that's how it feels sometimes).

It seems the string quilt is a big deal these days. I found a tutorial about it here http://quilting.about.com/od/quiltpatternsprojects/ss/string_piecing.htm

It seems pretty simple. I'm going to try it out and let you guys know about. ^_^

Pac Man Pillows

I'm actually trying to make the whole set but this is what I have so far. ^_^



They turned out pretty cute. My blue will is going to look up and my red one is going to look down. ^_^