Monday, November 24, 2008

Big sky view, new airplane, and a blue scooter

Our friend Chuck arrived last night from NYC and is staying with us through Thanksgiving. One brave vegetarian to risk Thanksgiving on a cattle ranch.

This morning Lu and I drove Chuck around the ranch some and showed him one of our favorite views of the San Francisco Peaks. Then Lu promptly fell asleep for her morning nap.





Last night I finished sewing the first of my "Women in Aviation" series of organic onesies. This is a Lockheed Vega, about a 1927-28 model I think. Similar to the Vega 5B flown by Amelia Earhart on her famous transatlantic solo flight, but hers had slightly different detailing over the front wheels; a sort of space-age, aerodynamic cowling over the wheels.

This is another 'round the corner' design which crosses the side seam under the left arm.



I really love these organic onesies I got from Zee Spot. Super soft with fantastic colors. Kind of makes the 2 and a half month wait worth while. I'll remember to place a much bigger order next time now that I know how long it takes.








Here is the back detailing with the babyracer logo done all in green instead of the usual rainbow of colors. I thought it looked a bit more demure for this particular onesie.















And here is the completed blue version of the 'round the corner' vespa. I think I'll try it on the organic onesies next.


Coming soon: Organic Bamboo Christmas Scarves!

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Blanket stitching, fish faces and pink vespas!

Today I learned the blanket stitch, a useful stitch for joining two pieces of cloth at a seam. I really like it. In fact I liked it so much I used it to make my tri-colored draft excluder snake for our back door. Stew showed me the stitch before he left with Lu to go feed the weanlings at the ranch HQ and I had it done well before he got home.








I filled the snake with Pinto Beans, mainly because a 15 lb. bag of them was soooo cheap at Sam's Club







Here is the finished snake curled up on a bar stool at our breakfast bar. Menacing, heh?












When Stew and Lu got home, Lu made some fish faces.



















And I finished my 'round the corner' pink vespa onesie. I think it turned out pretty cute. Working on a blue one too. Next project: antique aircraft designs and organic onesies!












Monday, November 17, 2008

Guitar Designs and Guitar Lessons

I started work on some new designs for the babyracer.etsy.com store including this one of Stew's DiPinto guitar.




I think it turned out pretty good. I'm working on a scooter and some antique airplanes next.











Tallulah wants to play the big guitars now. She has a small, pink, acoustic guitar we got her last Christmas, which she still plays some, but she sees us playing the bigger guitars and wants to have a go too. She always wants to turn the volume all the way up!













She also really likes using a pick now. If I give her a guitar without a pick she makes little strumming motions at me until I get a pick for her.



Here you can see her
strumming back and forth!



Friday, November 14, 2008

Early Christmas

Stew and I ordered a tiny pink drumkit for Tallulah for Christmas, and predictably when it arrived yesterday Stew immediately ripped open the boxes, put on the heads, tuned it, and set it up for Lu to try. So much for waiting till Christmas. But she absolutely loves it!!! She kept trying to get into it and help while Stew was setting it up so I took her out to hang with the horses. Horses can distract her from anything. Once it was set up, Stew put her on the stool and away she went, banging rhythmically on every drum except the kick drum because her feet can't quite reach the kick pedal when she sits on the stool.







So Stew took her off the stool after awhile and taught her to use the kick pedal while standing up. She took to that right away too!

















It looks like she is right handed, hitting more often with the right, but she's also really good at hitting two drums at once!













She was so excited about the drum kit that she absolutely refused to go down for a nap, which made her a very grumpy girl. Even when she was too tired to sit up and play, she still held onto the sticks.















Take a look at this move- both sticks in one little hand. What a grip!

















This morning when she woke up, the first thing she wanted to do after getting a fresh diaper, before even getting dressed or eating breakfast was get back to her drum kit. Here she is singing while playing drums. Hopefully she'll take after her Dad more than Phil Collins, as far as singing drummers go.
















She even managed to get one foot up on the bass drum while she was playing, very casual. I guess I can always decorate the kit for Christmas instead of wrapping it.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

What's in a name?

So I thought I was being pretty clever using the name babyracer for my handmade craft clothing project. It's a play on our band name, boyracer, and also indicates that I'm mainly making baby clothes, with a little nod to babyphat- my thinking being that instead of being the super rich, ex-model, ex-wife of a famous hip hop star going into the world of high fashion clothing, I'm the relatively poor, super modest, wife of a not-really-very-famous underground indie icon (Stew of course), hand-stitching individual band t-shirts and clothing items for kids. And while the etsy store http://www.babyracer.etsy.com/ was available for my taking, unfortunately the equivalent address for my blog here on blog spot was already taken by someone else, so I've made the address babybabyracer instead. Looks like I'm not the only one to think the name babyracer is pretty cool.

But anyway, here we are. My very first blog post on my blog site. I tried doing a blog for a bit on my myspace page, but never figured out how to put pictures on it. My cousin Colleen keeps a blog here on blog spot and is always putting up great pictures of her son, so I'm going to try posting my first photo in a blog now! Oh, there it is! That wasn't quite where I meant it to be, but it's a start. We just bought Lu her very first cowgirl hat the other day and here she is wearing it. She didn't take it off for hours.

Let me try the photo thing again.

Okay, I'm having some trouble getting the image to be where I want it to be in the text, but I'll keep working on it. Anyway, here is Lu modeling one of the babyracer hoodies I'm working on now, while playing with her reflection in a very dirty mirror that is propped up in our back porch, waiting for a wall to become it's home. I wish I would have washed it before taking this picture. I'll try to remember to go wash it when I get home.
Lu and I are in town today. I got called up for jury duty, and was actually pretty excited to go do my civic duty, but the whole jury pool was dismissed after a couple of hours because the trial was delayed for some reason that they were unable to explain just in case we end up back on the jury for this same trail at some future date. It was all very mysterious, and a little disappointing. But at least I had the rest of the day to get things done! Mainly posting off 555 LPs for mail order, picking up Lu's Christmas present from the UPS depot (it's a real pink drum kit in a very small size with a real kick pedal and everything- shhhh, don't tell her), and a trip to the fabric store for some Christmas supplies. What fun.