Blog | Sesame Seed Designs

I'm gonna be a spinner!

Apr 19th, 2009 by Casey

Look at my newest toy! I love her already. Apparently so does Sesame.

It’s an Ashford Traveller and I bought it from a really sweet family who used to own a bunch of sheep but they’ve sold their land and haven’t had sheep for quite a few years. They were sad to be selling their spinning wheels but they took a lot of time and showed me how to use it and even gave me a bunch of wool from their sheep.

So I spun some. It’s not great but I’m happy because it’s the fist yarn I’ve spun on a wheel and it’s not completely ugly. (I did take a drop spindle class a while back but maybe I shouldn’t tell you that lest you think I should be a better spinner than I am. I never did it enough to get good at it so I feel like I’m starting all over here.)

I fully realize that what I’m about to say could totally change in the next few months so just bear with me and try not to laugh. I don’t really want to spin wool. My drive for getting the spinning wheel is that I really want to spin the fiber from my angora bunnies. Right now, that’s kind of it. I know, angora is slippery and hard to spin and I should learn to spin with wool first. Okay, I will. But I’ll still try the angora, since I have a free supply and can mess up all I want.

It’s heavenly. I can’t wait until I can spin it well.

On the chicken front: Our chicks are getting big! They are pretty much fully feathered now and I hardly recognized them after not seeing them for 8 days. This is what they looked like a few days before we went on vacation. They were 4 weeks old then. the still had puffs of downy feather around their necks and they were small!

Today they turned 6 weeks old and they got their first outside adventure to celebrate. They were very reluctant at first, what with frightening green grass and all, but eventually I dumped them out of their box and seemed to enjoy it. It was so cute to see them pecking at the grass and flapping their not-so-little wings.

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Tags: chickens, Spinning

Posted in Create, Family, pets, Spinning | 3 Comments »

Easter Adventures

Apr 15th, 2009 by Casey

12 hours in the car with a toddler isn’t so bad. Maybe it’s just my amazing trooper of a kid but I’m tempted to even’ say that the drive from Portland to the Bay Area was fun. I realize that sounds crazy but crayons, knitting and books on CD go a long way- 600 miles even.

Here are some highlights from our Easter and Grandparent extravaganza:

1. We were able to find a happy vegetarian, organic breakfast place when we stopped in Medford, OR on our drive down. I never would have guessed. (Of course, Sesame mostly just ate butter.)

2. Stop #1 was Mill Valley, CA to stay with Mike’s parents and Sesame tried her hand at dying Easter eggs.

A few eggs were smushed in the process and she did taste the dye but we managed to get a bunch of pretty eggs at the end.

3. She got the hang of the Easter egg hunt pretty quickly, though at first she pointed to the eggs and wanted someone else to do the hard work of actually picking it up and putting it in her basket.

She sure spent a lot of time admiring her pretty eggs!

4. Grandma Diane made a fabulous coconut cake for an early Easter dinner.

Okay, the cake was for dessert, not dinner, but it was the highlight. Thanks to Grandma, Sesame got her first taste of cake batter and loved it, of course.

5. We met my mom at Traintown and waded through a sea of a thousand excited toddlers. Here are the 2 grandmas together on the train. The best part was the petting zoo but we were too busy feeding the animals to take any pictures.

6. Off to Napa to stay with my mom for a few days and Easter egg hunt #2, this one actually on Easter.

Sesame got smart this time and didn’t let the basket hold her back. She set down her basket in a central location and then ran back and forth from egg to basket. Yes, I did make her dress. It’s the same pattern as this one and I’ll share some better pictures another time.

7. We visited a friend’s chickens and had fun feeding them pretzels and trying to catch one so we could pet it.

Mike was the successful chicken wrangler.

You know you’re in Napa when the chickens have wine boxes to lay their eggs in.

It was cool to see adult versions of some of the same breeds that we have. I can’t wait for ours to grow up!

It was a fun trip and now we’re tired.

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Tags: chickens, Children, holidays, travel

Posted in Celebrate, Children, Easter, Family, Holidays, Places, Seasons, Spring, travel | No Comments »

Felt Orange Slices

Apr 5th, 2009 by Casey

I’ve been making a ton of felt food to give to little Sesame for Easter. She loves playing with her toy kitchen but she doesn’t have any food to play with! That needs to change. There are lots of great pictures and some free patterns for felt food on the internet (as well as a ton of awesome patterns you can buy.)’ I’ll share all the resources I used, and show you all the cute food I’ve made, once I get it all finished. For now, I have a tutorial for you so you can make felt orange slices too.

Most of the time that I’ve working with felt, it’s the recycled sweater kind but for this project, I used regular craft felt.

Supplies:

orange and white felt

white embroidery floss

orange thread

stuffing

This picture shows the pieces I used to make 3 orange slices. You only need one piece of each to make one slice. The shapes are pretty simple so I don’t think you really need a pattern. The white circles are 7 cm in diameter and the orange circles are 6 cm. (I like the metric system and it’s more accurate so there you go.)’ The orange peel pieces are 9 cm point to point and the width is 2.5 cm at the widest point.

Sew the orange circle to the top of the white circle. Don’t worry if it’s a little uneven, or not perfectly centered. This is fruit you’re making so a little wonkiness adds realism.

I separated the white embroidery thread in half and used 3 strands. All six strands looked too bulky to me but you can decide for yourself. Sew 3 straight lines across the orange piece as shown.

Fold the piece in half as shown so that the white lines form the orange’s sections. Hold the peel piece in place and begin sewing it down. I started sewing it towards the end of one side, as shown, because that allowed me to leave a good spot open for stuffing it later.

When you get to the point of the peel piece, fold the circle piece down and keep on sewing.

I sewed the pieces together using a simple whipstitch. Easy-peasy!

leave an opening and fill with your stuffing of choice. You can use poly-fill, fabric scraps, or my material of choice- tiny pieces of felted sweaters left over from making my etsy items. Make sure you get the stuffing all the way in the little pointy corners, then finish stitching it closed.

Enjoy your soft, fuzzy oranges!

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Posted in Patterns & Tutorials, Sewing | 10 Comments »

Baby Slingin' a Baby

Apr 3rd, 2009 by Casey

Sesame is more and more interested in playing with her dolls lately so I whipped up a super simple ring sling for her to use. I chose a ring sling so that she won’t outgrow it any time soon and I hardly had to do any measuring. Unlike the clothes I make for, she loved it immediately! So far she’s carried around 2 of her dolls, a teddy bear and a little stuffed puppy (not at the same time) and she’s getting pretty good at putting them in the sling herself.

This only took me about 1/2 hour to make and I’ve written up my instructions below so you can make one for your favorite little person. I used velcro to attach the fabric to the rings so that if she pulls hard enough, or get it stuck on her, it’s easy to get it off. She’s still pretty little and having a closed loop of fabric around her neck would make me nervous.

Supplies:

1 piece of fabric about 20 inches by 45 inches (add a few inches if you’ll be turning under the edges and seaming)

2 metal rings, 1.5-2 inches in diameter

A couple inches of velcro

**Please note that this sling is only meant to hold a doll, never a real baby! I know you’re smart but I feel like I have to say that anyway. The rings I used came from a hardware store, but you could find some at a craft store. Slings for real babies use specially tested rings and have really secure stitching to make sure it’s safe. This sling has none of that.**

Finish the edges on all sides. I used my serger (the 1st time I’ve used it without any frustration, thank you very much!) to do a simple rolled hem. Of course, you could could turn under the edges and seam as well, but then you’d want to start with a slightly larger piece of fabric.

Gather one short edge to make it smaller. I did 2 accordian folds that meet in the center as you can see in the picture, then pinned it into place.

Cut your velcro pieces and pin into place. My pieces are about 3 inches long and the strips are 2.5-3 inches apart. I sewed 4 lines across this edge, catching each of the long edges of velcro in the seams.

Thread the end with velcro through both rings and attach the velcro. The picture shows the 2 seams that show on the right side of the sling.

Fold the other end in half horizontally and thread through the rings.

That’s all there is to it!

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Posted in Patterns & Tutorials, Sewing | 3 Comments »

I Have Chickens!

Mar 29th, 2009 by Casey

Mike and I have talked about getting chickens for a while and last Wednesday we decided to go look at baby chicks tojust’ see what was available near us and to find out a little more about them. Yeah, right. We both knew it was pretty likely that we would come home with some birds. Our first stop was Pistils, where they only had bantam chicks but we stuck around for a while because Sesame was thrilled by all the “bebe bock-bocks” and we got to see a brand new little baby hatch! I’m mad that I didn’t have my camera with me because it was so cool to see the little chick peck it’s way out of the shell. We left when Sesame molested the shop’s dog and got bit on the face. She only got bruised but it was still traumatic for everyone.

We got these 3 little girls (hopefully! we are only 90% sure) at Livingscape Nursery. They had so many different kinds of chicks and the employee was super nice and helpful. If you’re in Portland, I totally recommend going there.

This is Buffy, a Buff Orpington. Yes, I do realize that her name is a little obvious. Mike started calling her that early on and I never meant for it to actually be her name. By the time we started thinking of “real” names we discovered that Buffy had stuck and nothing else really worked. This is what she’ll look like when she grows up. orpingtonbufffemale

This is Wynona, a Silver-laced Wyandotte. When Buffy had an obvious name, I decided that this little girl may as well too. So far she’s the spunkiest and I think she’ll be the boss as they get bigger. (I have a slight fear of birds with their sharp beaks and claws and their flappy wings. I’m being brave with these cute chickies but to be honest, I’m a little scared of Wynona. Yes, I know how wussie that sounds.)’ She’s going to be so pretty when she’s older! studio_slwyndthn_0195_l

Last but not least is little Oolong. A note about her name:’ I really like theme names and originally wanted our hens to have names that all related to each other. We tossed around pop stars, tv characters, Buffy the Vampire slayer characters (Mike’s favorite) among other ideas and then decided to name them after teas because it’s a little strange and there are lots of cool names to choose from. They were going to be Chamomile, Gen-Maicha and Oolong but that’s when we discovered that Buffy had to stay Buffy so it all fell apart. Oolong still worked though. She’s a nice little chick and may just be my favorite. She’s an Australorp, though there’s a slight chance she’s a Jersey Giant. australorp-hen

On a totally unrelated note, check out this cool moss! We have tons of moss growing on our patio and before we clean it all off, Mike and I are using some to make a moss terrarium. I love the different colors and textures. More pics when it’s done.