Last rose of the season; Simplicity 3628 day 4; more cake; more corduroy

A post in 4 parts today:
part 1: The last rose of the season
So I thought the last rose of the season was last week? 2 weeks ago? But here, I present you with the last rose of the season. It had started to bud when it suddenly turned cold, but a warm spell the last few days has made it bloom, hurrah!


Part 2: the birthday jacket.
Tonight I finished the second sleeve hem by hand. I then tackled the jacket hem. I tried the instructions but the hem came out ugly. I used that as my starting point for a hand stitched hem. It's not great and it's starting to feel Becky Home Ecky but it will do for now. I definitely need more practice with jacket hems!


Tomorrow night is button and buttonhole time.
The pattern calls for three 3/4 inch buttons. Which do you like better:
3/4" brown:

1" mother of pearl:

3/4" aqua-ish


Then Thurs night will be the running stitches and Friday I'll wear it to work!

Part 3: cake story continued:
Yes, my coworker thought there was a lot of "left over" cake and that I must have baked a lot for there to be two whole cakes leftover in the fridge. We laughed about it again today.

I have learned that Sally's mom calls the cake "ice box" cake and makes it more of a log shape than a square like I did.

Laurie's mom would make it for Lincoln's birthday and called it a Lincoln Log.

Part 4: corduroy
Thanks everyone for sharing your corduroy love (or lurve for one Mary Nanna who is so deeply in love, it's lurve).
I wear cords almost every day in winter except when I want to wear a cord jacket (so I wear velveteen pants those days because a cord jacket and cord pants is just too much corduroy, even for me).
When I bought my new couch I contemplated buying a corduroy couch, but it didn't come in red, just brown, which was a bit too much like the corduroy couch growing up...take a nap and wake up with wale marks on your face! Good times.

Good night!

Hookipa to my Hawaiian living room (in progress)

Giveaway item update: Items will be shipped this week! Daisy: please email me your mailing address at kdburkhardt at yahoo.com! Thanks!


Elvis always tries to jump into pix

Ok, so I am overly excited by my new red couch, Cherry.
I have another element of red in the living room, which are the uli ulis I bought in Waikiki in 2006. They are currently under the tv set in the living room.


Was I really that lucky to stay oceanfront at the Sheraton Waikiki?

And that got me to thinking about the fat quarter I bought on Maui in 2008. So I removed the boring Manet print from its frame and threw the fabric in there, just as a mock up.



I am loving it! It's not even ironed or flat in that photo, but it's looking pretty good for being thrown in there. I was also thinking of maybe making or buying a Hawaiian quilt-style piece to hang over the mantle, but this is definitely working in the meantime.

I then rediscovered my test tube rack and test tubes from my flower show in 2002. I will get some fake flowers to fill the test tubes.

And then that got me to thinking about the wall behind the couch....wouldn't Diamond Head look great up there? A great big poster sized print of Diamond Head? (You can see Diamond Head in the picture of the uli ulis).


And how about if I recovered the accent pillows the couch came with, in the blue version of the hibiscus print over the fireplace?

And of course Elvis is already hanging out....

Holy cow, I might actually use my living room for its intended purpose: living! and with a favorite theme of mine: Hawaii!