My life lately

I am now finished with the last of Abigail's dresses. This is the pink/red print that I bought recently from Zinck's. I wanted to do something a little different so I pleated the bodice and added 100% cotton ribbon on the stitch line. The skirt is pleated as well to keep the theme going. We tried to do sausage curls but that didn't work out very well, they were just too limp. ;-)

This is a better shot of the sleeve detail. I pleated the sleeves just like the skirt and added the same trim.
This is a close up of the pleated bodice. I really like the look and I think I'll make this style again!

The boys also got new homespun shirts which I have yet to put the buttons or buttonholes on. They prefer their homemade shirts to storebought as does Mr. G, they are more comfortable I guess!

I've also gone on a button buying binge as of late. I use china buttons on dresses and pinafores and metal on shirts with the very occasional mother-of-pearl thrown in when I don't have anything better. I buy mostly from E-Bay but that can be hit or miss especially with china calicoes as they tend to get snatched up by collectors. I purchased these below along with 118 plain white china buttons not pictured. I also have about 20-30 ringers coming by the end of this week. I'm pretty happy with my purchases especially in light of how expensive new buttons are, I had to buy new metal buttons for the shirts and they were $.66 a piece. That's more per button than the antique ones which are better quality too.

This is Katie and her new green dress. It's the first one that she has sewn entirely by herself. I'm very proud of her and the job she did!

She and I also hand washed the boys' wool winter coats. Dirty! Ugh, I could not believe the water, but they are all fresh and clean now and packed away. We also gave the girls' winter dresses a heavy scrubbing, mended them if needed and put them away until the weather cools. That's a job that I feel good about once it's accomplished.

Aleks, Levi and Micah got new overalls this past week. They are rather partial to overalls and really dislike the fit of modern jeans. I suppose if that's all they owned they would get used to it, but for work wear nothing beats pants that don't fall down! ;-)

In addition to all this we harvested over 1000 leeks and got a gallon of powder from them. The garden is doing well and we're eating sugar peas now. Mmm!

I had some blood work done and found out that I'm pretty anemic and I have a low platelet count. I have never been anemic before and was pretty surprised to hear this, although it sure explains why I'm so tired. I'm supposed to take it easy. ;-) Also, I have consistently been measuring big this time, which is again something that never happens to me (except for the twins of course). Anywhere from 3 to 8 cm bigger but we're pretty sure it's not twins so.... what is it? It seems odd to me that you could have 8 children and each pregnancy would be pretty much the same until your 9th and then boom! everything is different. Time will tell, I supose.

Things have been so crazy here that I hardly have any computer time. Blogs that I used to check frequently now don't get visited. I miss hearing about you all and hope to be back when things settle down.