Hello friends!
S has been counting down the number of days until her Christmas break, and we’re at 1 1/2! Are you ready for the holidays yet?
While S is looking forward to Christmas, we get to experience some excitement before then. On December 22 all of Spain glues themselves to their televisions for the Loteria de Navidad. We’re getting excited to experience that tradition, and we’ve even purchased a lottery ticket for the occasion. S picked out our number the other day on the way home from school, and Todd told her that it’s all on her now. If we win El Gordo, she’s going to get a big share in the big prize. And if we don’t win it will be all her fault! (She agreed with the first scenario, but not the second.) As I’ve mentioned before, the students from S’s school sing the winning numbers (there are a lot of winning numbers, so they take turns), and it will be fun to watch them. It will also be a good chance for me to practice Spanish numbers–hours of practice.
We’ve also made plans for a trip to Lisbon between Christmas and New Year’s, and we’re excited for that as well. I’ll be posting photos to my Instagram account if you’d like to come along. We’ve been invited to a lunch with the Portuguese sewing bloggers, and we’re looking forward to meeting some online friends in person.
What else? Are you traveling for the holidays? When you have a few minutes amid all the festivities don’t forget to create and add your 2015 Oliver + S sewing photo mosaics to the Flickr group. The mosaic maker is really easy to use to make them, and in January Rachel will do a 2015 post featuring your sewing. I can’t wait to see everything together!
OK, ready? These are my last picks for the year.
Pinterest Picks
This paper town is like a grown-up version of snowflakes! I’d leave a window decoration like this up much longer than Christmas.
This T-shirt reminds me of the Oliver + B Lunch Box Tee. This year I made a dress that looks similar using the Liesl + Co Bento Tee.
I love the proportions of this cardigan and dress. This is my preferred length for the Cinema Dress, but I hadn’t considered a longer cardigan to wear with it. With the shoes I think it would be perfectly appropriate for a fancy holiday party!
‘Tis the season for sweets, and the pretty colors and packaging of these bon bon-inspired soaps is just genius.
Wouldn’t it be fun to use our Straight Stitch Society Apples to Oranges Sewing Kit pattern to make a small bag for a little girl?
This pretty quilt has a contemporary Scandinavian feeling. Very pretty.
Weekend Reading
- In the future, will our clothing be smart?
- If you remember Esprit back in its glory days, you might also know that Doug Tompkins, the founder of the company who died earlier this month, collected Amish quilts and displayed the quilts in the company’s headquarters. This post about those quilts has been making the rounds. (Incidentally, I spent some time working in Esprit’s San Francisco headquarters but, sadly, the quilts were no longer there.)
- Spending the holidays with family? Here’s a little something to give you pause, especially when you start to feel like you’ve had a bit too much family. (I’m really going to miss my family this year!)
- Here’s a very straightforward scientific explanation of why rejection hurts and what we can do to combat those feelings.
- I stumbled across this article the other day and wondered if it’s true that living abroad increases your creativity.
OK, have a great weekend! We’ll be back next week, so don’t hurry off too quickly, will you?
Happy Holidays everyone! Looking forward to seeing all the creativity the new year will bring 😀
The rejection article really stuck out for me — I was just asking myself the other day why the warm glow I get from the love and admiration of people I deeply respect can be snuffed out like a candle by an unkind or thoughtless comment — from somebody whose opinion I don’t even take seriously! You see it happening and you know how silly it is, but it’s still hard to turn those feelings around, isn’t it?
Thank you for passing on the link about Doug Thompson and his quilts. I really admired Esprit as a teenager and young adult: it was one of the first brands I really appreciated in fashion. I am still drawn to that fun, modern, international aesthetic. I used to shop at the SF outlet on 16th and 3rd until it closed.