Tea for Two

Saturday, I left the kids with Scott for the afternoon while I went with a girlfriend to a tea tasting at a gallery near Five Points. I may not enjoy wine, but I do enjoy hot tea occasionally. Mostly, I drink Lady Grey or mint tea (in teabags) on cold mornings. At the tea tasting, I received a brief education on loose tea quality and proper brewing. We tried four varieties: a Chinese jasmine green tea, South African rooibos, Nilgiri from India, and a Chinese tea called Temple of Heaven Gunpowder. Admittedly, none of these appealed to my unrefined taste for tea. I'll continue to stick to my "poorer quality" teabags (with lots of sugar) for now.

I was raised in the South – we drink sugah in our tea down heah y'all.

Made with love

The inspiration, store-bought dress, borrowed from my co-worker. See how the checked fabric "drifts" diagonally? (look for the purple stripes.) This is because the top of the fabric went through the pleater at a different rate of speed, compared to the bottom of the pleated fabric. Instead of taking the pleating threads out and starting over, they just left them that way and smocked the dress.















Danielle's finished dress. I used smaller checked fabric. Notice the horizontal purple stripes. It took nine attempts through the pleater because of the drifting issue. There is a bubble over the left shoulder seam on the front I'm not very happy about (not readily noticeable from this picture). After so many times going through the pleater, I had to just quit trying to make it meet my expectations, live with it, and start smocking. I don't think it was going to get any better with more attempts. There are actually four seams that need to go through a pleater when making a bishop dress. Often, one (or more) seam(s) will buckle when going through the three rollers. I haven't figured out a way to totally prevent the buckles from appearing, but sometimes I can cover them up with stitching to make them less noticeable. I just hate the fact it's a front seam.















Cute bunny buttons I found for the back of the dress. I stayed up so late Saturday night/Easter morning; I didn't have time to do a proper hem. The hemline was actually barely tacked down – not that anyone would have noticed.


Scott actually helped quite a bit with this project. I'm not as creative as you might think. I'm very good at following directions, but not good at creating something from scratch on my own. He copied the pattern of the basket and a bunny on graph paper and then made a reversed copy of the opposite bunny so I wouldn't have to "think backwards" looking at his original drafted pattern. He's been a trooper this week, single-handedly taking care of the kids and house, allowing me to get the dress done.

I took Good Friday off from work to get the dress done, thinking I could finish the smocking that day and work on finishing the construction that night. The sleeves and detailing of the roses on the basket, bunny tails, bows, and eyes took a lot longer than I had imagined. I went to bed at 2:00 AM Saturday morning and still hadn't finished the back-smocking. (When you are making a "picture" with smocking, you have to have smocked rows on the back to keep the pleats together when you take out the holding threads.)

I was up at 7:30 AM Saturday morning to get ready for the Easter festival (remember my children are early risers and 7:30 was actually me sleeping in). I spent every spare moment I could on Saturday finishing the back-smocking. It was 8:00 PM before I sat down to my sewing machine for the final construction. I'm not going to admit what time I went to bed Easter morning, but I will say I started getting punchy from sleep deprivation and began rewording Matchbox 20 lyrics as I was sewing …and he said Baby, it’s 3AM, you must be crazy…. Yeah, I know it was much funnier at the time.

So was it worth it? Absolutely. My sister asked Danielle where she got her pretty dress. Danielle replied, "My mommy made it for me…she's a good Mommy." What better compliment could I have possibly received?

Easter Morning

Danielle had to line up all the eggs she found hidden in the den by the Easter Bunny on Easter morning.




In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it...
The ribbon was actually pink when I bought the bonnet. I cut it out and replaced it with lavender to match her dress.















Why is it that just around the time you think you have vacuumed all the pine needles left over from your Christmas tree, along comes Easter and you have to deal with colored cellophane Easter grass all over the house for months?



Flowering the cross

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

Saturday morning egg hunt. (Eggs are hidden inside the church sanctuary for the younger children.) I went to church at 9:30 to help hide eggs and set up the Bunny court.




I did my appearance as the Easter Bunny again for the Easter festival. Right after the egg hunt I slipped away to put on the costume. Danielle was a lot more receptive to me this year than she was last year.



Last year I did the bunny hop in the fellowship/dinning hall. Bad idea since I bumped into tables and chairs without my glasses under the latex mask. This year I "held court". It worked out much better.

Dead Sea Scrolls

Yesterday Scott, my sister, and I went with other members of our church to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Discovery Place in Charlotte. I certainly would not have hopped a plane to see the scrolls, but an hour and a half drive wasn’t bad. The fact we went as a group was even better because I probably wouldn't have taken the initiative to go otherwise.

There are ten scrolls, three replicas and a replica of the copper scroll on display at Discovery Place until May 29th. What I found fascinating is not only how tiny the actual scrolls are, but also how tiny the writing on them is. The fact the scribes used oil lamps and did not have glasses amazes me they could write so small. The entire experience was very educational and I encourage anyone who is interested to go.

I found it interesting to find out when the scrolls were discovered in the late 1940's, early 1950's, researchers were using a "new" material called Scotch tape to put pieces of scrolls back together which caused further damage. Whoops.

In case you haven't heard, the National Geographic Society announced this week the discovery of Gospel of Judas. This is the only copy of this religious text known to exist. All other copies were destroyed because early church leaders considered them heretical. A 2-hour special was aired on the National Geographic Channel tonight concerning the discovery. It will probably be rebroadcast.


Edit: After reading the May issue of National Geographic and finding out more about the Gnostics, Nag Hammadi texts, and Irenaeus, this discovery, although significant to some religious scholars, is not as earth shattering as it was hyped to be.