the girl's got it bad

Oh yes, the Goobergirl is a confirmed fiber junkie. She flits about happily from project to project, usually listening to a good book-on-cd while she works. She's definitely getting more comfortable with weaving on the loom, so I guess someday soon we'll need to learn how to warp it ourselves and set up a "real" project of her choosing.
She's also pretty nuts about sewing right now. Having made lots of doll clothes, she has now decided to refine her seaming skills, so she's working on better alignment of her fabrics and nice, neat seam lines.
Luckily, besides the stash that I've built up over the years, she has also had strips and squares received as awesome gifts from the stash of Grammy, Quilter Extraordinaire. The strips kept her busy for a long time and now she's mesmerized by the options afforded by patchwork squares. She didn't want any help from me or anybody else, so she discovered that a 9-patch gets a little bumpy and bulky if you don't press the seam allowances flat and in sew them in opposing directions.

You should have heard the squeal when I pulled a flannel sheet out of the closet, thumbtacked it to the wall, and showed her how the squares and strips will stick to the flannel and can be moved about in any configuration -- instant design wall! Made me laugh because she was just about as ready to burst with glee as I used to be when I'd come home from Murphy Mart in Cheswick, PA, on a Sunday when Red Heart yarn was on sale for $0.99 a skein and I'd buy a whopping $30 worth to make the crocheted clowns that I used to sell, and I'd arrange all the yarn by color in the toy box that became a yarn box (and then became a toy box again when Jesse and Leah were little), and all was right and good in the world and nothing could go wrong because I had all that glorious yarn, yarn, YARN and the Steelers were on later in the afternoon and my whole family would watch the game and have a blast and everything was GOOD. Squee !

Ahem. So, yeah, that's how Leah was with the quilt stuff the other day.
She's also doing a fair bit of spinning. This is some of the Fleece Artist roving we bought in Nova Scotia earlier this summer. In the background you can also see some bobbins of a blue-purple blend from Grafton Fibers.
She's also in the process of turning a heel on a sock she's knitting, but I don't know where she has that stashed (possibly with her at friend's house for a sleepover), so pics will have to wait until another day.

And she's ga-ga over morphing t-shirts into other articles of clothing, with little to no sewing, a la Generation T. We've been doing our own version of this for various costumes through the years and have seen some similar ideas elsewhere, but she got really jazzed about it last weekend, when a friend offered to loan her the Gen-T book the next time we get together. I better clear the calendar when that time comes because I have a feeling there will be a wild flurry of t-shirt deconstruction!

Her #1 request for our upcoming vacation is to learn how to make Belgian lace while we're in Belgium. I haven't made the arrangements yet, but I think I've found the perfect fit: a private lesson in a lacemaker's home in Brugge. My mom already told us how beautiful Brugge is, and Rick Steves confirmed this, so I think we'll have to go there ourselves and see!