I liked it better when your identity was a secret, Miley

...I just feel I have to say this.  Sigh. 

Left this innocent look in the rearview mirror long ago.

I don't ordinarily rant about things here but I have some stuff I wanted to get off my chest.
What IS it with girls who are on Disney shows and movies?  As soon as they reach adulthood or no longer are a starring Disney actress they hop directly on the bus to Skanky Town.

I am talking to YOU Miley Cyrus.  Miley's video for "We Can't Stop" is just straight up NASTY.  And this is the girl who millions of little girls, like MY little girl, watched as Hannah Montana.  This is the message she is sending them, that it's okay to present yourself as nothing more than an object.  Yeah, I know, there are all sorts of teachable moments here and I'll take the opportunity to talk to K about them.  I know it is my job to guide K and not Miley Cyrus' but dammit stuff like this makes it so much more difficult!  How do you reconcile the fresh faced teen whose biggest problem was not being able to tell people she was really a super-cool rock star with the girl waving her ass in the camera quite literally like a cat in heat?  I felt like I might've gotten crabs from just watching it. 

So last night, Miley brought her burgeoning sluttiness live to the VMAs and allowed Robin Thicke ( succinctly and accurately described by Jen of People I want to Punch in the Throat fame as a Beetlejuice wannabe) to bend her over.   It was really just depressing more than anything and definitely not sexy.  I guess neither of them was listening to Ashton Kutcher's awesome speech last week at the Kids' Choice awards about how being smart is the ultimate in sexiness.  I understand wanting to push boundaries both as an artist and as someone who is no longer a little girl.  But is this the boundary that Miley wants to push?  How tacky and low class she can be?  Ick.

Vote for "Girly Mermaids"!

Once again, I have entered one of my fabric designs for Spoonflower's Fabric of the Week contest.  I'm really proud of these cute mermaids.  I designed them with the idea of having them printed to make something for my daughter.  It was her idea to add the anemone.  The theme of the contest, in case you hadn't guessed, is "Mythical Creatures."  Most little girls, mine included, love mermaids.  It was for this reason that I liked the idea of a girlish and playful mermaid rather than the sexy bikini clad kind.  If you have a moment to go and vote for my Girly Mermaids--please do!

Halloween Flower

Since Katie is the only one who has told me what she wanted to be for Halloween, Katie is going to be the only one getting a costume made special by me. Here were have the half done top of her costume, a pink satin flower that is going to be attached to a green sweatsuit as a hood. This year, the costume satin (or satan as I like to call it since it likes to fray if you even just look at it) hasn't given me as much of a hard time as it did last year when I did a full princess costume. The hardest part of this whole thing has actually been finding a green sweatsuit.

Each of the petals is a sandwich of 3 fabrics: satin for the front, pink flannel for the back and brown fleece to give it bulk. Your fabric sandwich has to be your front and back right sides together with your fleece on top of that and you leave an opening to turn it right side out. The brown fleece is a leftover from a monkey costume I did last year for Ryan. My plan had been to make PJs after the monkeying had been done. However, as a clothing fabric, the brown fleece is cheap and awful and will tear at the slightest provocation. But as a quilt batting, it's pretty good! It's thin, lightweight and pretty easy to sew through when you have a few layers. Then you turn them inside out. I was going to trim the seams but when I turned it just to see what it was going to look like, it puffed out so nicely that I didn't.

Each of the leaves were done the same as a sandwich of green cotton, brown fleece and a layer of irridescent gossamery stuff. I trimmed those with pinking shears for a leafier effect. More later when I get it finished.