Petit Lapin au Chocolat: The aftercraft

My version of soft trees from the Little Birds pattern. I used a vintage Pendleton wool plaid shirt (and its buttons) from my friend Violette Crumble and an old red sweater I felted this weekend. The bows are made from strips of the plaid shirt. I sewed the trees by hand, because Lily was sleeping, and I was not to be stopped.

Thanksgiving was lovely and exhausting. I cooked for eight hours on Thanksgiving Day, which was luxurious because I never get to cook with abandon anymore. On the menu: broccoli casserole, roasted pumpkin, mashed rosemary potatoes, lima beans, poached pears, and pumpkin chiffon pie (an old recipe of my partner's mother, who was down from Vermont). Everything was divine, and there were barely any leftovers to gnaw the next day. I spent the rest of the weekend baking banana bread and waxing catatonic in my chair.

Tonight I am home alone with Lily, and I plan to make another little tree, this one out of strips of fabric, and affixed to a base. It's an experiment, inspired by a Christmas ornament my sister gave me last year.

Random day of the year resolution: Learn to take better pictures.

Thinking about starting a business, as I wrote about below, is daunting. I seem to be frozen in a state of indecision / fear / self-deprecation / apathy / inability to perform simple mathematical equations. Everything has derailed from my own indolence. And when I see people who aren't any smarter or more talented than I am running successful businesses, it aggravates my (inflated) sense of entitlement. Why shouldn't I have my own business? If it's because I know how to use apostrophes and quotation marks, I can fake it! Why shouldn't I be running a craft group for "mom's" and "baby's"? Or more to the point, a language immersion playschool for small children?

Clearly, I must stop making these soft trees and get back to my business plan. But not until I've finished that stocking...