Tags

When I was a kid, my mom made a lot of my clothes. She mostly did it because she loves to sew, but her talents also came in handy as I was a freakishly tall child who couldn't find longer dresses. Anyway, my mom had these sweet little tags that she'd sew into the collars of my dresses and tops, and I loved them. They were a deep red on a white background, and the font was very elegant. I always thought they made my mom's creations very professional-looking.


Since I've been knitting a lot of baby blankets, etc, I started to think about using these labels myself. I tried looking at a few fabric shops, but all they had were tags that said, "Handmade by _____." I wasn't interested in these at all since handwriting would definitely fade. So I went over to Etsy...this site is quickly becoming my go-to for anything and everything handmade or one-of-a-kind (sort of like what AbeBooks is doing for my literary needs)


After a brief search, I found these personalized tags made by Remember Wynn. They're lasered onto the tags (which creates a lovely effect), and the shop owner is really nice and easy to work with. They came much quicker than I expected too (this seems to be a trend with almost everyone I encounter on Etsy).


Here they are. I'm super happy with them. :-) And I can't wait to use them so I can get some more...I'm thinking light blue next time.

A Love for Hard-to-Find Books

On Monday past I was pretty down (February is always a rough month for me; this one more than others). So in an effort to cheer myself up, I bought a lovely little used copy of My Life in France by Julia Child. It was important to me to get a copy with the original cover, so I went to the old standby Abebooks. 

I kind of came across this site in an odd way-through a recommendation by my dentist. We often talk about books since I was an English major and am now in library school, and he was an English minor back in the 70s (card catalog conversations are also the norm). He mentioned to me once that his grandfather was a writer in Russia (I believe he wrote some novels), but all of his books were all out of print or hard to come by. So in his searches, he found this abebooks site and was able to locate all of his grandfather's books-and one was autographed! Some of them are in Russian whilst others have been translated into English, but for someone who never really got to know their grandfather, seeing this side of the man would be invaluable.

Yet Another Book Recommendation

About the time that the movie Julie & Julia came out (the "Julie" being one of the most unsympathetic characters ever...but that is a topic for another day), I decided to go to the library not for Mastering the Art of French Cooking (aspic doesn't sound like anything I'd like to eat) but instead for the memoir My Life in France by Julia Child. I didn't really know much about Julia-save for the fact that she was quite tall, and my mom did a Dan Ackroyd-esque impression of her cooking after having too much sherry.

What I found when I read this book was one of the loveliest, funniest, and most determined women. And I think the thing I like the most about her was her enthusiasm for life. She had the normal but frustrating problems that we all do (apartment is too small, people are mean, I'm not good at this but I want to be), but she enjoyed her life. And I thoroughly enjoyed reading about her life. I hope to do so again soon.

Also, I think that we might've gotten along...this is reinforced by the fact that I didn't like the "Julie" character (even Amy Adams couldn't redeem her for me), and according to the J&J book and the movie, Mrs. Child herself wasn't a fan either.