look ma, i'm sewing /  by jen geigley

Just so you know, I am possibly the world's worst sewer. I'm impatient, inaccurate and messy. I don't like to pin, don't like to use the iron, and don't take time to measure. Plus I have an incurable hurry-up-and-get-it-over-with attitude. But my quilting class is forcing me to abandon my careless ways and now I'm making my first set of nice, neat quilt blocks. You must be kidding me.

I love my teacher, and I know I've mentioned her before. Her name is Mabeth. She says things like 'we don't make blankets, we make quilts' and 'we don't iron, we press.' She'll scold you if you don't retract your rotary blade after cutting. She's adorable. The pattern we're doing for class is very old school with traditional triangle and nine square blocks; it's not my favorite style but this is such a great learning experience and I now fear that I'll be reaching for my ruler and squaring up edges for the rest of my life.

A new challenge is up today at The Creative Type. Type gone retro. Erin and Trisha and I have been discussing travel destinations for this spring which made me think back to our Vegas trip last summer and what a blast we had. And how nice and warm it was. Actually, hot. Vegas is hot. Get me out of this Iowa snow. I'll go anywhere.

suspenders, por favor /  by jen geigley


Dare 125 = junk mail. Documenting my late nights.

Yarn addiction. Scored some sale yarn at Knitted Together this week to make my stash a little bit stashier. Guilty smile.

New kids' birthday t-shirts are going up in my Etsy shop today. More colors and numbers are available.

And we have big news at Work Your Soul. The addition of a super talented girl by the name of Kara. Her photography and fashion sense and creativeness are astounding. Love this girl, I do!

what's the time? /  by jen geigley


It's time to get ill. Dare 124 time. Inside jokes. Check out the goods from Gen, Nisa, Kristi, Jamaica and Tina here. It's almost too much radness in one place.


It's also Work Your Soul time. A little Victorian inspiration, stitching, lace, silhouettes and a fab guest – Holly Neufeld. And Kim and I have a very super secret surprise coming up that you seriously won't believe. I can't wait to spill the beans.

I also finished knitting my somewhat troublesome Anthropolgie-inspired scarf.
Complete with pom poms. And it's not ten feet long this time. Friday Friday, everybody – hooray for that!

winter goodness /  by jen geigley


It's a new year and challenge #9 is up today at The Creative Type.

Be sure to go check it out and participate for your chance to win some super rad letterpressed goods from Elise!

A big reason I've been looking forward to January is that I finally get to break out my 2009 Egg Press calendar. I have a little project of sorts that I hope to make using these little pages as each month passes ... I'll post that later. You know I'm not just going to throw them away!

We got our latest issue of Dwell and we so want to live in this house. And maybe it's just that time of year, but I've been feeling like I've been bombarded by infomercials. So now I feel that I must have these. And this. It sanitizes grout and floors and pillows and bedding and I just know it would make cleaning the bathroom so much less dreadful.

Bo returned safe and sound and injury-free from snowboarding in Colorado. Next time, we decided we need to go during the X-Games.

Over the weekend, I finished knitting my Calorimetry. Thanks to much help and guidance from my friends Amy and Sarah! Check out how theirs turned out here and here!

It's like a headband/earwarmer. Perfect for people who wear their hair back all of the time. Like me. Or people who have bad hair days but need to go to the grocery store. Like me.

I used Noro Kureyon yarn (and so did Amy – I give her credit for the idea.) Love how the colors slowly show up (I was knitting a row and all of a sudden – holy yellow!) and it's so fun to see how it changes as you go. I added two buttons to attach the flaps behind my head. It turned out to be a little bit big so this will keep the ends secure.

Another creative mind in our house is our future Kat Von D. Lo is obsessed with tattoos drawn on with pens and markers. She asks for a pen twenty times a day and she'll write on her own hands and anyone else who will let her. If we need a bribery tool, we offer to tattoo her hand with a star or a heart and then she'll do whatever we ask. Bo usually gets more adventurous and writes O-Z-Z-Y on her knuckles.

On Friday night, we bravely took Lo's crib apart, assembled the new toddler bed and attempted her first night without being behind bars. (Prompted by a crib escape the week before.) She was so incredibly excited about this new bed that we thought we may just be in for an easy transition. But after five tries and two hours (she'd lay down and be fine for five or ten minutes, then get up and cry by her bedroom door – poor kiddo) we gave up. We pulled the crib parts back into her room, slid the bed back out, but the crib back together, and the child slept in heavenly peace. We'll wait and give it another try in a few months after her birthday...wish us luck.

And yesterday, we had a snow day!

We broke out the sled and had a blast in the fresh snow and sunshine.

So much so that Lotus wouldn't take off her Brobee hat once we got inside. :)

One last note... thanks so much for all the sweet comments on my last post about my new adventures with The Dares. Each one made me smile.

why /  by jen geigley


Sometimes people ask me why I do the things I do. Why I stay up late making weird things, why I blog, why I make little books filled with nonsense, why I spend too much time on this or that or whatever. Sometimes they kind of laugh, and I get it. It doesn't make me mad, but sometimes I wish I could explain it.

Sabrina Ward Harrison said it far better than I ever could.

'I believe we must create what we most need to find. I don't aim for pretty, I aim for release. We have to make room for our life in progress. As women, we must be heard along the way. We must share how it really feels, what we know but can't place. We must take a deeper breath and let go. Trust yourself. Leave ripples.'

Journal Your Christmas /  by jen geigley

Hello hello. I know it's January and the holidays are long gone, but here's my December book that I made for Journal Your Christmas. I did a page a day from December 1-31 and even though a lot of the pages were super fast – stick, write and be done – I'm so happy I stuck to it and finished. It doesn't have to be perfect and pretty. It tells the little stories of our holiday season as parents, and records Christmas memories that Lo can laugh at later. Like how she ended up eating all the cookies we left out for Santa.

(Just roll over and click on the arrows to see some of the other pages... )