movie star spotting

They've been filming a couple of movies recently around Boston, though I'd never seen any of the filming happening. This weekend, however, filming of "The Town" came to a street corner near me. It's a movie directed by Ben Affleck and starring Jon Hamm, so I decided to see if I could see anything. And while a lot of other people got shooed away, I managed to find a spot just next to the crew where I was able to watch for a few hours.

And did I see anyone?



There's Ben on the left and Jon on the right. They were filming a shoot-out scene in the street. So lots of gunfire and screeching tires and the like. I was most excited to see Jon Hamm, as you might be able to guess from the next few shots.





And where I was standing was right next to this.



Both of them came by me at separate points, but I was trying not to be a pest and so I didn't say hi (for which one of the crew women scolded me later. "You should have said hi to him [Jon Hamm]. He totally would have said hi back!"). Oh well. Still a pretty cool way to spend a Saturday morning.

in stitches

More sewing!

The project that made me drag out the sewing machine again in the first place was a birthday gift for a friend. She's an astronomer, and I was going through my craft materials and found a pair of socks with stars on them. And they were just asking to be made into a sock monkey.



And this past weekend I decided I should make another box bag, this time for myself. So I did.





And the lining even goes with the doggy bag theme!

birthday blips

A few photos from my birthday...

Puppies playing in Harvard Yard



A cow grazing in Harvard Yard



A cupcake



And the birthday cake I made with my giant cupcake pan (devil's food with vanilla frosting, yum!)





Maybe some year I'll get my wish of finding David Tennant on my doorstep, alas...

thread the needle

I've actually been using my sewing machine again! I know, it's a freaking miracle. But I'd been feeling the urge for the last month or so, but I had to wait for the temperature to go down. Ironing while melting didn't sound fun. Here's what I've been working on.



I used this box bag tutorial to make the smaller of the two bags, which was pretty small. So, on the next one, I improvised by making the pieces as large as I could get out of the umbrella fabric and went from there. The one thing I had to really guess at was the cutting and stitching of the corners to form the box edges, but I think they came out pretty well. And I even remembered to add the ribbon loop on the second bag.



I'd picked up the fabric at Bazaar Bizarre almost two years ago with a particular friend in mind--and this was even before I had a sewing machine!--and finally I made her something from it. The bags were really not difficult to make and I had fun doing them. And this was also my first time sewing in zippers and using interfacing, so I'm pretty proud all around.