Here are some photos of my most recent accomplishment; a wedding sign in book. My younger sister's friend, Emily, is getting married soon and her mom wanted one of my books! Fabulous! I had a lot of fun cutting up the leather details, and I'm really happy with how the book turned out. I hope Jerrea and Emily like it, too. If you (or anyone you know) are interested in a handmade book, or in learning more about bookmaking, contact me by posting below in the comments section!! Thanks!

It's been two years since we've tied the knot. The most fabulous two years of my life. Christopher, you are my bestest friend in the whole-wide world. You're always there to calm me down when I have irrational fears, you're always there to cheer me up when I'm sad or ornery. You're so sweet and helpful with "the nelope" and around the house. I Still Love You, even after all of these years. I love you so dearly. Thanks for making my life magical.

It's incredible to think that it's been 3 months (yesterday) since Penelope was born. Honestly it has been one of the most trying times in my life, but not without its rewards. I love you, Penelope!! Thanks for being so sweet to your mamma.

Since Chris's Parental leave, I've had some time to myself to work on the projects that have been put on the back-burner. I have a ways to go to catch up completely (due to my growing list of projects), but it feels SO good to check something off my list. It was my sister's birthday 3 months ago, and about 6 months ago I promised that I'd make her an apron as a gift. I bought the fabric a couple of days before Penelope arrived, and just haven't made the time to start working on the project. I really like the pleated apron in Amy Butler's book, In Stitches, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. Instead, I ended up taking my own apron, tracing the outline and making up my own pattern as I went. I'm really happy with how it all turned out. I really like how the Michael Miller fabric works with the blue cotton; it's not super matchy-matchy.

My two weeks of parental leave have finally arrived, so I've been dreaming up all sorts of crazy ways to use this windfall of free time.  I'm finished wasting days off by just sleeping in, watching movies and reading the Harry Potter series.  I have renewed my commitment to adventure! One of the ideas that popped into my mind last week was to ride my fixed-gear road bike from Menlo Park up to San Francisco.  The genius of this little plan was that I could take the CalTrain back, thereby covering 50 miles of always-new terrain.  I'm not a huge fan of the out-and-back, so the idea stuck.  I realized yesterday morning that I didn't have any plans for the day, so I started to map out the path I'd take to get to the city. My plan was to take Skyline up past Crystal Springs Resevoir, San Andreas Lake and Lake Merced.  I would then hang a right and ride across the length of San Francisco to the end of the CalTrain line.  This path appealed to my need for bike lanes, a relatively simple route and CalTrain.  Only three details tripped me up. Detail One - The Detour Skyline has a one or two mile gap starting at the Southern end of San Andreas Lake.  This gap necessitates a detour through Millbrae.  Google Maps picked up on this detail, but I completely overlooked the change in altitude.  The moment I started the detour I realized just how high Skyline was and just how far I'd have to descend.  The descent wasn't so bad, but the climb back up to Skyline destroyed my legs, especially because it was all done with a 3:1 gear ratio.  For the unfamiliar, 3:1 is a great gear ratio for going about 18-25 miles per hour.  Any faster or slower than the 18-25mph range makes the bike increasingly inefficient.  One hill was so steep that I had to get off and walk because my body weight was no longer enough to crank the pedals. Detail Two - The Brake Lever My rear brake started to come apart on the Skyline descent.  My bar end brake had recently fallen out of the handle bar, so I'd spent half an hour in our garage trying to jam my break lever back into the bar end.  My failure to fix the problem became apparent when my rear brake lever fell out of the bar end about 30 seconds into the descent.  I could hardly fix the problem on the road, so I spent the rest of the ride with just my front brake and the fixed wheel to slow me down. Detail Three - Wind and Fog I spent probably half an hour dragging myself back up to Skyling Boulevard.  I crested the hill and hit the first gust of wind.  Then I hit a wall of fog.  Then I spent the next five miles riding through both wind and fog, trying to not get blown out of the bike lane or hit by a passing car.  To top it off, that part of Skyline has higher speed limits and, correspondingly, a ton of debris on the side of the road.  The climb had exhausted me and I didn't want to die, so I crawled along as slowly as my little front brake would let me. I would have turned back at the detour if I hadn't visualized my triumphant entrance into the CalTrain station so vividly at the outset.  I haven't done something quite this difficult in a long time, so I felt a special need to prove myself to myself.  It may be lame, but it gets me out of the house and has yet to kill me. I managed to capture the entire ride on my Garmin GPS watch.  See my ride stats here and the ride map below.

I know when to admit defeat. I thought I was making a pretty hot shirt, but it ended up looking like a tranny mess. Here's what went wrong:

• The lace and the cotton combined were too stiff

• The waist is too low for my torso

• The shoulders are too boxy

• The neckline is borderline matronly

It's a shame that it didn't work out the way I envisioned. Lesson learned. I'm desperately hoping that this would look better on someone with a longer torso, and if I puckered the sleeves a little. Anyone willing to try it out? Although my lace shirt may not have worked out as I hoped, the kimono that I made for Penelope a while ago fits her now and looks cute on! She looked just so adorable at church on Sunday. Now that I look back at that, I realize, it was not an easy project! The silk herringbone was really hard to work with, because it kept unraveling and I sewed a few seams wrong at the beginning, so I had to carefully unpick them.