{"id":7955,"date":"2013-12-31T05:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-12-31T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/?p=7955"},"modified":"2013-12-31T02:02:25","modified_gmt":"2013-12-31T10:02:25","slug":"juggling-balls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/?p=7955","title":{"rendered":"Juggling Balls"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"juggling-balls2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So much for not posting daily. I was trying to cut myself some slack, but when I spent time thinking about this past year, I realized that one of my favorite parts of it was blogging. M told me the other day that for the last 18 months or so, I’ve been happier than he’s ever seen me. We’ve been together nearly fifteen years, so that’s saying a lot. There’s something about this medium of visual and textual storytelling and community interchange that fits my temperament.<\/p>\n

This morning, I was thinking about a dinner party I thoroughly enjoyed on Sunday evening. During the meal, we casually took turns voicing our 2014 resolutions and one of my friends said that he wanted to simply enjoy each day. Such an understated yet good resolution. If I were the type to make resolutions (I usually try to avoid them), I would piggyback on my friend’s goal to savor each day and would add trying things outside of my comfort zone. Instead of overarching resolutions,\u00a0I have a frightfully long to-do list of the mundane sort, and I am on the opposite spectrum of being zen at the moment.<\/p>\n

But I crossed off quite a few things from my list. I drew that satisfying line through a project on which I was dragging my feet: juggling balls from Oliver + S’ Little Things to Sew book<\/a>. As fun as these are to make, my grinchy attitude about sewing the same thing over and over threatened to hijack the fun.<\/p>\n

\"juggling-balls3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I made four sets and okay, I also promised to make a set for K that I haven’t delivered upon, but I high-fived myself for the ones that got done. In the interest of time, I didn’t make the matching bag from the book and just banged out a much quicker drawstring version without a lining. The balls aren’t perfect – they’re not completely round and some of the pointy ends don’t match up neatly as that is what happens when you sew until 2am the night before you’re meant to give these out. I briefly noted to myself that I would be a terrible quilter and then moved on. If there’s one thing I’ve gotten good at this year, it’s accepting and fully embracing imperfection.<\/p>\n

I started to add a mini beanbag with plastic pellets to weight them (a la Froo and Boo<\/a>, whose juggling balls are a thing of beauty), but then I had visions of my uneven stitching bursting open and making a right mess everywhere, so I stuck with polyfill only.<\/p>\n

\"juggling-balls4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They were a massive hit, though no juggling happened. We had fabric balls flying everywhere with kids squealing and laughing, while adults became unwitting target practice. I’m not sure that the parents appreciated them, but those kids sure loved ’em. The fabrics are all bits and bobs of scraps I dug out, and my favorites are the Nani Iro, pastel-toned ones. I’m sure I could blather on about the metaphor of juggling and life, but I’ll spare you.<\/p>\n

\"juggling-balls1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Another thing I want to cross off the list before the end of the day is underwear for K. Yes, underwear! When I was a little girl, my mom always got me new underpinnings for New Year’s Eve. It was this weird tradition in our family that you start off the year with brand new undies, and though I haven’t kept up the tradition too faithfully, it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do with K. Because everyone needs odd traditions in their lives. So I got this pattern<\/a>, and I’m off to stitch up one more set of juggling balls and some cute undies!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So much for not posting daily. I was trying to cut myself some slack, but when I spent time thinking about this past year, I realized that one of my favorite parts of it was blogging. M told me the other day that for the last 18 months or so, I’ve been happier than he’s ever seen me. We’ve been together nearly fifteen years, so that’s saying a lot. There’s something about this medium of visual and textual storytelling and community interchange that fits my temperament. This morning, I was thinking about a dinner party I thoroughly enjoyed on Sunday evening. During the meal, we casually took turns voicing our 2014 resolutions and one of my friends said that he wanted to simply enjoy each day. Such an understated yet good resolution. If I were the type to make resolutions (I usually try to avoid them), I would piggyback on my friend’s goal to savor each day and would add trying things outside of my comfort zone. Instead of overarching resolutions,\u00a0I have a frightfully long to-do list of the mundane sort, and I am on the opposite spectrum of being zen at the moment. But I crossed off quite a few things from my list. I drew that satisfying line through a project on which I was dragging my feet: juggling balls from Oliver + S’ Little Things to Sew book. As fun as these are to make, my grinchy attitude about sewing the same thing over and over threatened to hijack the fun. I made four sets and okay, I also promised to make a set for K that I haven’t delivered upon, but I high-fived myself for the ones that got done. In the interest of time, I didn’t make the matching bag from the book and just banged out a much quicker drawstring version without a lining. The balls aren’t perfect – they’re not completely round and some of the pointy ends don’t match up neatly as that is what happens when you sew until 2am the night before you’re meant to give these out. I briefly noted to myself that I would be a terrible quilter and then moved on. If there’s one thing I’ve gotten good at this year, it’s accepting and fully embracing imperfection. I started to add a mini beanbag with plastic pellets to weight them (a la Froo and Boo, whose juggling balls are a thing of beauty), but then I had visions of my uneven stitching bursting open and making a right mess everywhere, so I stuck with polyfill only. They were a massive hit, though no juggling happened. We had fabric balls flying everywhere with kids squealing and laughing, while adults became unwitting target practice. I’m not sure that the parents appreciated them, but those kids sure loved ’em. The fabrics are all bits and bobs of scraps I dug out, and my favorites are the Nani Iro, pastel-toned ones. I’m sure I could blather on about the metaphor of juggling and life, but I’ll spare you. Another thing I want to cross off the list before the end of the day is underwear for K. Yes, underwear! When I was a little girl, my mom always got me new underpinnings for New Year’s Eve. It was this weird tradition in our family that you start off the year with brand new undies, and though I haven’t kept up the tradition too faithfully, it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do with K. Because everyone needs odd traditions in their lives. So I got this pattern, and I’m off to stitch up one more set of juggling balls and some cute undies!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-crafts","7":"category-sewing","8":"entry","9":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7955"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7977,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7955\/revisions\/7977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}