Man, getting those shelves up in the Blue Rain Room made a bigger difference than I anticipated. I spent most of Tuesday tooling around in there and managed to crank out my two favorite projects so far. One I can't show you, so for today, I present only The Charming Handbag from Bend the Rules Sewing. Since kids across the land are getting their backpacks and lunch boxes ready to head back to school, I figured I needed a back-to-school bag too.

The outside is a super-soft fine whale courdoury and the lining is an Asian print by Alexander Henry. I didn't add the ribbon Amy Karol calls for on the outside of the tote. I really like the ribbon and probably will put one on future totes, but for this I just loved the simplicity of the fabric alone. This reminds me of when I was in Home Ec. in 7th grade and our sewing project was to make a pillow. Do they still teach Home Ec? They should. Anyway, I tend to be a pretty minimal person. I like clean lines and not a lot of fiddly bits, so when I made my sailboat pillow, I didn't include the button. I didn't like the button embellishment and I didn't want it on my pillow. But boy, was I proud of that pillow. I loved the fabric I'd picked out and how I'd put patterns and soids together. When we got our grades, I got a "B". It was a crushing blow. I felt so proud of that sailboat...I knew I had taken my time and done a really good job on it. The light dawned when I realized that my "B" was all about that damn button. I'd even asked our teaacher if I could leave it off, but still she gave me a "B". My first thought was, "She should have just said something, I would have sewn her a stupid button." It wasn't that I couldn't do it. I didn't want to. That was the bigger lesson, really. Tastes differ and I didn't like hers. So no ribbon on this particular edition of the charming Hadbag. And oh how I love it. Definitely takes the sting of the school year looming.

Have you checked out the Bend the Rules pool over on Flickr? Some amazing stuff going on over there. I'm in awe of all the things these women (I think they're all women) have cranked out so quickly. I was thrilled to find this book waiting for me when we got back from Greece, and I had to wander around with it for weeks before I could finally settle on what I wanted to do. This project was so satisfying. Fun, quick (about 2 hours including a dinner break) and easy, even for a sewing novice like me.

It's bloody hot here in Chickentown. What do you do when the Heat Index is 94 at six a.m.? What do you do when the high for the day was 102 and it felt like 115? What do you do when it's so humid that the traffic helicopter can barely see through the haze?

Have ice cream for dinner and rope Papa into reading some Tin Tin while you eat it. That's what we did yesterday. Today we're off to the beach...early...before it gets too too hot. And then it's back to the sewing machine. I want to make a million of those bags.