Ophelia and Thomas

Thomas is a pleasant fellow who has a thing for sugary pastries. He eats them for breakfast every morning, thinks about them most of the day, and at night he dreams up new carbohydrated-concoctions not yet out in bakeries. When he is old enough to use the oven he will make these concoctions a reality. Until then, he makes detailed sketches in his loose-leaf notebook and he colors them with scented markers. His latest involve various takes on the "whoopie pie".


Ophelia does her hair up nice and tall. She is inspired by both French and 1950's fashions. She calls this do, the double beehive. She is very modern and artistic as well. She has a teeny, tiny camera, the size of a pencil tip that she puts behind her ear. She uses it to capture people's reactions of her hairstyle as she walks the street. She then develops the film and scribbles on the photos with a black permanent marker. She is making a dark and mysterious statement that she can't articulate yet. She is pretty sure it will make her famous.


I have whoopie pies on the brain. Last Saturday the family and I went to the Farmer's Market and bought some pumpkin whoopie pies from an Amish couple. 50 cents each! The Starbuck's equivalent would be around five dollars, I'm sure. They were so delicious. I have been thinking about them all week. I have always been a little envious of the Amish, but this has taken that envy to a whole new level. Not only do they get to lead quiet, simple lives---but they have whoopie pies sent to them straight from heaven.

I am now the proud owner of a Japanese sewing book. I have been admiring the things Meg from Elsie Marley makes her children from Japanese sewing books and so I jumped on the chance to buy one from the Little Sprout shop. Otherwise I wouldn't really know where to get one, but Little Sprout's Sara blogged about getting rid of some and put them up for sale in her cute, cute shop. All the directions are in Japanese, which I am okay with because I am more of a picture learner anyway.


Just by glancing through the book I had a major revelation of the softie variety. Like a fool, I have been spending all my softie-sewing years (2) stuffing legs before sewing them on. This in general makes the entire shape of the form a teeny bit wonky. But, as pictured below, there is this genius solution to that problem: Leave a space for stuffing the legs, turn them right-side-out and then sew them into the inside-out form flat. Now I feel a little bit wiser.


The leaves are staring to turn. October is pretty great as far as months go. With Little Walter around I feel this urgent need to establish traditions. I didn't grow up with too many. In fact, my mom had a fake Christmas tree that we decorated once and then would push into a closet with a garbage bag thrown over it during the non-holiday season. When Christmas came around we would take off the garbage bag and scoot it into place. Badda-bing, Badda-boom. I guess that is sort of like a tradition in its own way. It makes me smile when I think about it, so that works. But I want to be a tradition extremist, so I need to hurry up and get my apple orchard on so that Walter beans and I can make some homemade applesauce.