Highlight of the Week

This week's highlight was a yummy seafood dinner celebrating my dad's 74th birthday. You may be able to guess the menu item that he chose. Daddy just retired at the beginning of October, so now he has more time for his favorite pursuit: bike riding. He regularly makes a round trip circuit of sixty-five miles! I have trouble driving that far! Four or five years ago he took a two-day bike ride of some 200 miles. That's not my idea of a good time by any means, but I'm sure I'd be in as great a shape as he is, if it were. And I might have made the same menu selection that he did.

Another Highlight

Another highlight of the week was a sale in my Etsy shop. I was thrilled to find a buyer had chosen not one, but four bibs! So thrilled, in fact, that I threw in one more bib for free. Now I need to get busy and get some more bibs posted.

One Lonely Thing

My only sewing this week (Where did the time go?!) was one lonely bow. I don't even have a picture of it. I made the purse on the left first, and gave it to my sister. Then I made the purse on the right that I kept. When she saw mine, she wanted a bow for hers. So I made her one and delivered it. The end.

Isn't It Bee-Yew-Ti-Ful?

This is the finished cedar chest now residing in my sewing room. (If you want to see what it looked like before James & I applied the polyurethane, click here.) The original plan was for James to add some cedar trim around the top edge so that there would be a place to grip the lid and open the chest. Without smashing your fingers, that is. The front edge was so curved that he couldn't make that work, so we went to plan B and added the handles. I love the smell of cedar! As a child/teenager, my vacation souvenir of choice was often a small cedar chest (hand-held sized) imprinted with the name of the locale. In case you were wondering, the chest is already full! I used it to house the stuff I had under my sewing table, and my extra machine that was sitting on the six-foot table. The room appears a lot less cluttered now. I'm sure I can fix that, given enough time.

When You Can't Decide

If you can't decide between cookies and candy, have them both. I've been taking Caleb and Alexa to the local library for story time each week. A nice surprise is that they also have a small craft for the children to complete. This week, instead of a craft, they had sugar cookies to decorate. These aren't very good pictures of the kids, but I wanted pictures of the cookies because I thought they'd be devoured, and I wanted Emily to be able to see what they did at the library. Both kids opted to eat all the candy and leave the cookie behind, though. Maybe they ate the cookies later at home.

The Week in Review -- Lots of Sewing

Now that I've finally gotten everything caught up with my part-time at-home bookkeeping, I've had a little more time to call my own. First up, a denim purse for me! This was made with thrift store jeans and a remnant of fabric.A couple of postcards were made.Finally, I chose fabric for the binding fabric for Jordanna's baby quilt. This is the first time I've made my own bias binding. I've either used pre-packaged (screams amateur!) or else I've folded the backing fabric to the front to bind the raw edges. I found and printed a tutorial online so that I could make the binding in one continuous piece. It wasn't that hard to do, and here it is.By now, I'm sure Emily is suspicious of all the glimpses of bright colors I've shown here. If I tell her that I'm having flashbacks to her pre-teen years, she'll understand completely.

Friday was spent largely doing tech support for my mom. Her ISP replaced her modem, and then she couldn't get her laptop to connect through the wireless router. I fixed that problem and installed AIM so that she could rejoin our weekly Buddy Chat (mom, three sisters, and me). She hasn't been able to since she canceled AOL. I was also able to export her AOL contacts and import them into Microsoft Mail so that she won't have to go online to AOL to retrieve one every time she wants to send a new email. The other thing I did was put everything in writing, since she can't remember anything for more than five minutes. (Hi, Mom! Remember me?)

Follow-up: We watched the 10th Anniversary show for Good Eats last Saturday night, and we were disappointed. It was so much better in person (not to mention twice as long). Some of the funniest things that happened or were said didn't make the final cut. They should have asked our opinion, in our opinion.

Dominating the Scraps

Last week I showed my neat little stacks of scraps that I've been whacking. What started out as a basket like this... Now is neatly sorted away in individual drawer and snap-top boxes. So one basket is finished, and I still have the basket above to whack down to manageable sizes. I actually think that this is a fun "job." I love handling fabrics.Even though my friend Liz has my motto pegged, as evidenced by the plaque she gave me...

I don't mind straightening up my playroom... er, sewing room. Alas, no Braves baseball on TV since they fell just short of making it to post-season play.

Facebook, Friends, and Family

I don't spend half my life on Facebook. If I participated in all the quizzes, games, "gift" swaps, and everything else out there, it is entirely possible to spend (or should I say "waste") a lifetime. I do enjoy seeing what my friends, family, and sometimes mere casual acquaintances are up to, and I enjoy throwing out a comment-provoking status every now and then. The thing I didn't anticipate is the "who knows who" out there. In Facebook, when you acquire a friend (by accepting an invitation or by having the friend accept your invitation -- and yes, I have ignored a few friend requests and blocked a few people) you are then able to see who your new friend's friends are. My first surprise came when I learned that my cousin is FB friends with one of Emily's childhood friends. Turns out they attend the same church. This week I added three new friends (total of 104). One is a childhood friend of mine. We were friends from 1st through the middle of 7th grade when her family moved to California. How many of you have a friendship that has endured for 47 years?! We've managed to keep in touch all this time, even by real letter writing before the computer age. In addition, I've added her sister to the list. My most recent new friend is someone I went to high school with. Imagine my surprise to learn that she is friends with the same cousin who knows Emily's school friend! My cousin gets around! Turns out all three of them attend the same church. Small world indeed!

A Dreaded Twice-Yearly Task

I took care of the dreaded seasonal clothes closet swap this week, even though we're still having temperatures in the 80s. This is why we're careful about leaving closet doors open around here.

Sewing This Week

After I made my selvage purse, my youngest sister kept saying she wanted me to make her a purse. She said it didn't have to be as involved as mine; she just wanted a fabric purse. I saw this idea online recently and decided to give it a try, using a pair of thrift store jeans. I really like how it turned out, and I may make myself a similar one. Since the front waistband of jeans generally sits a little lower than the back waistband, that's how the purse opening is too -- with the front a bit lower than the back. Inside is a hidden velcro closing.The other sewing this week involved mending. It's my least favorite task at the sewing machine. There are too many creative ideas swirling around in my brain. Anyway, I hemmed a pair of pants for James. Since I bought them at an Eddie Bauer outlet store while on vacation back in July, it was about time! I also repaired some of Emily's maternity pants, repaired a mesh bag for laundering lingerie, and hemmed the lining of a skirt. The skirt as well as the lining are cut on the bias (I didn't make it) and the lining stretched more and was hanging a bit below the skirt. So, it feels good to have my mending basket empty for a while.

I *think* I'm finished quilting Jordanna's baby quilt. I'll let it rest a day or two and then see what I think. After that, the only thing left is the binding, and I'm undecided on that as well. I don't think I've ever made a quilt that was totally planned out, start to finish, before I began. All have just sort of evolved. I'm not ready for the final unveiling, but here's another sneak peek.

A friend sent this shirt for Caleb this week, since he's about to be "double-teamed."

Tonight's the Night

A few weeks ago I wrote about the taping of the 10th Anniversary of Good Eats, a Food Network program, that we attended. Reminder: Tonight at 10 p.m. is when the show airs.

And the Winner Is...

I showed you this purse several weeks ago. This is what it has looked like for the past week or so.It has earned a red, second place ribbon at the North Georgia State Fair. The ribbon comes with a monetary prize of $3.00!

They don't display the entries in the culinary division because some of them would be pretty gross by the end of the fair's ten-day run! But I found this list posted by the door.

I'm not sure if it will turn out to be legible on the blog, but I have a blue ribbon awaiting for the pralines I entered! The premium for that is $5.00! I'm rich!

Twenty-ish years ago, I entered "party pants" that I made for Emily. Actually, I made us both matching ones, but I didn't keep the ones I made for myself. (Party pants have gone away like big hair and other fashion trends of the late 80s/early 90s. Let us be thankful.) This garment won a third place ribbon back then.

Quilt Show Update

I made a couple of purchases from the vendors at the quilt show a couple of weeks ago. Since my new sewing machine sits on a small, custom table, I'm short of surface space. This ingenious invention is clipped to the table next to me: combination cup holder and trash basket!The cup holder is perfectly designed with a small opening on one side, so mugs with handles can fit. And I don't have to worry about Blinky knocking it over. The "snippet" basket is perfect, too.

In addition, I bought a pair of gloves. These gloves have a stretchy fit, and the palms and fingers are "rubberized" with some sort of non-slip coating. I can hold my ruler in place a lot better while using the rotary cutter. And although they're not technically "klutz gloves" they do provide some protection against a sharp, out-of-control blade.

Blinky, Out of the Way

In addition to getting my beverage off my small sewing table, I now have Blinky off the table, too. I purchased this feline window seat that clips to the window sill. She was content to stay there and not on my table after I bonked her on the head with my plastic ruler a few times.

Surprisingly, I found her curled up the basket once this week. James says it's because with the doors and windows open and the attic fan running, our house is so cold that she's trying to find a place out of the draft. Gee, I thought it was quite comfortable in the house.

Old Sewing

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I made valences and a pillow for Caleb's room. Here's a picture of the pillow. It just wasn't in me to make a plain pillow from one fabric, especially since I knew he had a solid comforter on his bed. The valences are from the fabric in the center of the pillow, and monkeys now have taken over his "big boy" room.

It's a No Sew

I haven't sewn a single thing this week. I'm not caught up at work yet, but the finish line is in sight. However, while watching the Braves game, I spent a few hours slicing up a basket of odd scraps into usable squares and rectangles... coming "soon" to a quilt near you. I have another basketful awaiting a similar fate.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

My haircut is a couple of weeks old now, but here are the before and after shots. You can see how long it was, but I never wore it down. If I didn't feel like taking the time to braid it (yes, I did that all by myself) then it was clipped up.

Nothing Prosaic

I have worked a ton this past week, so I'm short of time. I'll have to give pictures and more details later, but here are the week's highlights.

• The quilt show was marvelous, as usual.
• I entered the selvage purse in the North Georgia State Fair, and I happen to know that it won a ribbon, but I'm not telling which one just yet.
• We opted out of the Braves game last Saturday because of so much rain in the area. A few years ago, I would have gone anyway, but I'm way over the desire to sit out in the rain and watch a baseball game.
• Speaking of rain, we had over 11" at our house over six days. Much of our county had it far worse, with some places getting over 20" in a day or two. Atlanta saw flooding of historic proportions. Thankfully, we had no water in the house nor in the basement.
• I made pralines and entered them in the fair as well. I don't know yet how they fared, ribbon-wise.
• The only sewing I did was to make valences and a patchwork pillow for Caleb's room. I'll show those later.
• I'm hoping that by this time next week I will have all my bookkeeping work caught up and I can resume a normal schedule. But it'll be a long shot.

Zoom, Zoom

I wish that were the sound of my new dream machine flying across fabric, but alas, it is the sound of my keyboard and calculator as I continue to play catch-up with American Vision bookkeeping. I made one lonely postcard this week, for my young friend, Liz, and her husband, Joe, who welcomed baby Jude this week. It turned out cute, and they have a dachshund, too. (The dog's name is Aberdeen, in case any of you were wondering.) (Not my blue, spotted dog -- Liz's dog.)Last Saturday's birthday party for my father-in-law was a success, if I do say so myself. He seemed please with it, and I was thankful that so many family members were able to come. In the background of the picture is his sister, Frances, who lives in Canton.When most of the party-goers had left, Emily was sitting on the sofa with two or three of her cousins who are sisters. It was a little disconcerting to overhear my father-in-law asking his daughter who the girls were. He knew Emily, but he didn't know his other granddaughters. I don't know if he's seen them since Christmas or not, but I was still surprised by the inquiry. It also means that he probably didn't know his nieces and nephews either, although he didn't let on while they were there.

Today will be a zoom, zoom day. After an early morning haircut (pictures later, if the hair and the rest of me look OK), I'll head to the Cobb County Civic Center for the 2009 Georgia Celebrates Quilts exhibit. This is an every-other-year event that I wish were every year! It is like going to an art gallery, and I never cease to be amazed at the skill and creativity of the participants. I'm just a dabbler, but these people are quilters and artists.

When I leave there, I'm headed to the grounds of the North Georgia State Fair. The fair doesn't open until Thursday, but I've decided to enter the selvage purse I made. I may enter some homemade pralines too, but those don't get delivered until Wednesday.

The final event for the day is a Braves baseball game. We've apparently entered monsoon season this week (2.5" of rain on Wednesday, 1.5" on Thursday, and 0.7" on Friday) and two of the last three games have had initial rain delays of over two hours. That doesn't really sound like a good time to me, and since the tickets were free, I won't feel too badly if we don't see an entire game.

Finally, as I left the house yesterday for some errands, I realized that I hadn't seen Blinky for a while. When I leave the house, I always like to ascertain her whereabouts to be sure that she didn't accidentally get shut up in a closet. Finally, I found her. The sheets were off the bed for laundering and she burrowed her way inside the spread. Looks good to me, on a rainy day.

The Big Day is Here

This afternoon is the party I am hosting for James' daddy's 90th birthday. I took this Boy Scout memorabilia (left) to the framing shop, and this is the finished product (right) that we will give him today. We'll even hang it on the wall for him. I think he'll be pleased.

Dream Machine

For some, a dream machine might be a Ferrari. Or maybe an Aston Martin. A Maserati? Nope. Here's my dream machine.I got it this week, but I've been so busy with birthday party cleaning and preparations that I haven't had much opportunity to play with it. Thank goodness it comes with a free class to learn to use all the different functions and attachments. Here's just one of the many things this Janome machine will do:

My only sewing so far is a birthday postcard for James' daddy, who owned dachshunds for many years.I can't wait to really put the machine the test. It's got special features just for quilting, so I'm sure to get my money's worth.