I must confess: I’ve been out having so much fun that I’ve hardly given sewing or Me-Made-June much thought. On Sunday, my family and I were treated to a special outing by a good friend: we went sailing around Puget Sound. The weather has been unpredictable here, lately, be we lucked out. It was pleasantly warm, the sun was out and there was just enough wind to keep us moving on the water.

As far as Me-Made June is concerned, I did wear a home-sewn t-shirt and jeans, but they were mostly covered up by my ratty (but warm) fleece jacket and the life vest. I did a little knitting on a long-neglected shawl while I was on board. There are no words to describe how nice this experience was!

The following day, was the homecoming for our new family members, Bender and Zoidberg.

Due to allergy issues, we can’t have pets of the furry sort, so Claire talked us into getting a couple of fish. She checked out some books on fish from the library and read them cover to cover. She knows all about how to take care of fish now, so we’ll see how she does at animal husbandry. From her research, she became enamored with the Zebra Danio. I was lucky to find one. There was only one left at the fish store. The pink fish is the same breed as the zebra fish, but it has been crossed with an anemone to attain its glowing hue. It’s called a glofish.

Last night, I got all dressed up and went to my knitting group. We ate dinner, chatted, knit…and then headed off for some ice cream at Molly Moon’s. The ice cream was delicious, but it was something of a pleasurable torture, since we stood outside in the freezing wind while eating it.

I wore my Burda pleated knit dress. It’s not the most flattering style for my figure, but it’s very comfortable and allows me to gorge on treats like ice cream.

My husband’s birthday is on the 14th. He always manages to take me out somewhere nice on my birthday and on our anniversary, so I wanted to do the same for him. The hardest part of arranging a date night is finding someone to watch the kids. I managed to talk some family friends into a babysitting swap: they’d watch our kids tonight and we’d watch theirs next weekend. Our kids love playing together, so were looking forward to swap night as much as we were.

I got dressed up in my red dress, four inch heels and sparkly heart-shaped earrings. Robert put on a clean shirt and a smile (which is all the fancy dress he needs) and we were ready to go.

Rest assured, he also wore shoes.

We went to one of our favorite holes-in-the-wall: Mr. Villa’s.^[1]We drank margaritas, chowed down on some tasty Mexican food and finally got to talk one-on-one without interruption from little people.

Butterick 5315^[2]

Afterwards, we went for a walk at Matthew’s Beach and watched the geese and ducks splashing around in the water. This required changing out of my four inch heels, of course. I know some people can climb mountains and leap over crevasses in such things, but I’m not one of them.

1. ^[1] I notice that the Yelp reviews for Mr. Villa’s vacillate between love and hate. The same is true for the fish store where my daughter and I bought supplies to set up our freshwater aquarium this morning (more on this tomorrow–Claire & I are both excited about this). I’ve had wonderful experiences at both places–either I’m not as picky as other people or they’ve got little black rainclouds hovering over their heads.” ↩
2. ^[2] Yesterday I mentioned how the passage of time occasionally allowed me to love a me-made item more than I did when it was fresh off the assembly line. That has happened with this dress. I wasn’t completely enamored with it when I finished–and I’m still not 100% happy with the darts; however, I feel happy and pretty when I wear it. It’s also very comfortable, which can allow for over-indulging in yummy food. After dinner, I joked that I should have worn my apple dress, which restricts deep breathing and makes eating seem less pleasurable. It’s my “diet dress.” ↩

I thought I was having a bad day, given a migraine and a $40 parking ticket**, but my son has me beat. Poor guy.

**Thanks City of Seattle! Really makes me happy I was out supporting local businesses.