A bit of bees...

 Recently Mom purchased a honey extractor for Dad, since the gravity method was messy and inefficient.  We recently had a hive collapse and had some partial frames of honey left.  Rather than leave it out of the other hives to cannibalize, we opted to extract was there was of honey.

 

 This is one of the frames from the honey super of that hive, and the following picture is of Dad breaking the seals on the honeycomb.  High tech, that there fork. :)

 The frames inside the extractor...

 And here is the extracted honey, complete with tiny bits of wax stuck to the sides and in the honey at the bottom.

 Also with the extractor, we purchased some filters that fit inside 5 gallon buckets, and here you can see the honey coming out the spigot at the bottom of the extractor and going into the filter.  All said and done, we got approximately 3.5 inches of honey in a 5 gallon pail from a honey super that was at maximum only half full.

Finally! Corset Pics!

So, it has been a while...life got rather busy for me.  I had taken a part time job in the floral department of the grocery store where I used to work, and it was good.  2 days a week was fine with me.  Then I was spotted by the owners and within the month was back in the bakery doing cakes.  I was not all that happy with that, but it was still only 3-4 days a week.  Then the other decorator quit, and I'm back to a full time job.  Grrrrr.  So my crafting time and motivation has been well and truly shot in the behind.

Anyway, while the corset has actually been done for a while, I have been procrastinating pictures due to the fact that it's rather involved to get on and off.  So, without further ado, the Laughing Moon Silverado corset.

 Pieces cut and the outside fabric and coutil basted together...and there is nothing better to make you feel fat than an un-sewed corset laid out on a table.

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 The pieces are all sewed together, and the busk and grommets inserted.

 Finished and laced corset (and yes, I actually made bias binding because all Joann's had was crappy dull poly-cotton binding)

 And here is the finished project as worn.

New Dress!

Well, finally finished an outfit.  This is from Vogue pattern # 8701, and I made the dress and the jacket from the pattern assortment included in the envelope.  Previously, I had included some in-progress pictures in the 365 project that ultimately failed.  Here is a couple links to those:  fabric, cut out pieces, jacket body progress, sleeve and lapels, and lining progress.

 Overall, it went together well, although I'm not entirely happy with the lay of the lapels, but that could be due to the fact that the whole jacket is done in bottom-weight fabric, and so all those seams are conspiring against it laying completely flat.  Oh, well.  Such is life, and I'll remember to avoid making a jacket with sooo many seams out of heavy twill!  The dress was quite quick to sew, but there was a small problem with the instructions for lining the cap sleeves.  There was no way known to physics to be able to turn those pieces right side out again following the directions, so just wound up taking the underarm seam out, turning it and sewing them back together again before attaching the sleeve.  Small problem, but quite annoying.  One nice thing about the skirt, though, is that I got to use my mother's new serger that she received for Christmas this year.  I serged all the edges of the skirt before I sewed the pieces together so I could avoid having to french seam or sew bias binding on them to keep the fraying away.  Also, it made it easy to hem the skirt.  A simple running catch stitch sufficed, and made it possible to only turn the seam once instead of twice to avoid too much bulk.  The lining was just turned twice and machine sewed.  Yah, yah, I'm lazy.  Sue me. 

Anyway, enough chattering by me, here are the finished pictures (after church, so I'm a little wrinkled, sorry folks).

For historical sewers...

A blog I follow is offering a giveaway for a 1910's blouse pattern from Wearing History.  It looks to be a very pretty pattern, so if you're interested, here is the link.

Good luck everyone!

Hmmmm....

Well, I do believe I have fallen off the bandwagon of 365:Project.  Oops.  Sorry, everyone, but I guess it was just a little too boring for me, since very, very little seems to happen here.  I mean, how many pictures of yarn, sewing, or flowers do you really want to see if you are not looking for a crafting page.  Sheesh, I was boring myself.  Anyway, since my interest really isn't in it, I guess I'll just switch to something else.  Probably something more crafty, but less regular posts, since no one really wants to see socks progress an inch at a time.  So, until I actually have something substantial (hopefully soon, since a dress project is close to an end), I'll catch everyone later.

365 project: February 28th, 2012 Day #59

Pretty new yarn....t'was on sale, so we got enough for 2 afghans (1 for me and 1 for a gift) and a few more pairs of socks! :D

365 project: February 27th, 2012 Day #58

I'm taking a belly dancing class with my sister, and this is a shot of my brand new jingle scarf/sash/shawl thingy.