Blue Monster Costume, Redux 2017

"Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories, sweetened through the ages just like wine --"

as sung by the late Elvis Presley, memories come back in sweet little packages, making us happy...

Or not.

Last night my youngest grand Miss A came bopping down the stairs at about 7 p.m. and started digging in my pantry.  I asked her what she was looking for.  She announced that she needed party brownies for the class at school, for the store because she lost her business and now was an employee of someone else's store and they were selling brownies.



Say what? 

OK to back up a bit, the fourth grade Genius Hour project was to find a product you could make and sell, set up a store, pay rent, sell your stuff, and see how it turned out.  Play money was used.  She made some hand warmers, priced them at a dollar each, sold some but not all of her product.  Rent was $20 and she couldn't pay it, so she sold something less than 20 items.

Another student who was making and selling brownies had lots of money so he bought her store and her stock.  She then became his employee.  She was asked to make some brownies and bring them in to sell on Wednesday, to which she agreed.  On Monday.

Then she forgot to tell anyone.  Until Tuesday at 7 p.m.

OK so we looked at recipes and decided that since the grocery store is a mile away, a brownie mix would be the easiest way out of this dilemma.  Gramps went to the store.

We baked between rounds of homework converting grams to kilograms and back.  Tears ensued.  She has a good math brain but kept saying OMG this is so hard!!  She was tired and cranky.  So was I.  I said words under my breathe about teachers who can set up a business enterprise for 40 kids but can't adequately explain multiplying by 1,000 to just one.

Meanwhile the brownies were finished.

They were cooling when she went home to go to bed.  I cut them while they were warm because that is what the box said to do.  I went to bed late.

This morning we got up early and applied the "Party" aspect to the brownies before breakfast.  I like to let the frosting set before I package things up for transport on the big yellow school bus -- although I'm sure the kids will eat anything with sprinkles on it regardless of the appearance.

This was transpiring in front of my daughter, Miss A's mom.  I said "this is just like the blue monster costume you needed for that play when YOU were in elementary school."

She said "I thought it was ORANGE."

I said "It was orange, and it was orange because you asked for it on a Sunday night for Monday.  All I had was orange fabric, so you had to have them change the script."

She said "I told you about that WEEKS in advance!!"

Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind...

'nuff said...

Mean People

Mean people suck. No one reading this blog would ever be mean.

Everyone says they think bullying is bad.  We try to teach our kids and grandkids not to be mean, and how to react when someone is mean to them.

The "Golden Rule" was given by Jesus of Nazareth, who used it to summarize the Torah: "Do to others what you want them to do to you. This is the meaning of the law of Moses and the teaching of the prophets" (Matthew 7:12 NCV, see also Luke 6:31).

Evidently I missed the recent Facebook blowup about a group of QUILTERS for goodness sake who started a group so they could badmouth another group of QUILTERS for goodness sake!  It's probably because I keep my FB pages pretty private, just my friends list.  But I did see a couple of reactions to the posts by friends of mine, and I have to say I'm ashamed of the world at large and those narrow minded so-and-sos who went to that mean place in a down and dirty way.

Do they do it because they think that no one will know it was them?  Does it make them feel bigger or smarter to knock someone else down?  Were they raised by wolves???

I blame it on ignorance.  Not the I don't know something kind, but the stupid I'm better than you are kind; the people who are apparently in league with all the imps, demons and other-worldly beings who make you stub your toes when you're wearing your new shoes and spill your soda on your car seat and drop your ice cream cone when it's the last of that flavor.  But it can be and this did get so much worse.

In Matthew 5:21-22 Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” 

It is a sin to hate someone enough that you wish they were dead, so to God hating someone is equal to murder.

If you want to read a very funny and snarky response to the FB thing, go read The Bitchy Stitcher's LINK: http://thebitchystitcher.blogspot.com/  comments today.  She is irreverent but she has a point of view that is undeniable, and I can't add anything to what she said.  I warn you up front, you're going to see some words you shouldn't say in front of your mother.

Here's the thing:  to any of you who were involved in that whole mean quilter FB thing, go look at yourself in the mirror and then slap yourself good and hard.  How would you like it if you were on the receiving end of what you put out?

Shame on 'them'.

Back to our regularly scheduled program tomorrow...

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

Previously I blogged about my friend Suzi being the big winner at the Nancy's Notions Sewing Weekend event.  I was a tiny bit jealous, but only for a minute.  Really!  As I said previously, there was that sewing machine...

Wednesday night when I got home from work there was a message on my answering machine from the Sew and Save in Racine WI about a pattern I had ordered at the Mukwonago quilt show.  It was in and would I call for information about getting it sent to me... well of course!  It's a lovely stitchery pattern, hand embroidery, which I enjoy doing very much.

http://www.sewnsaveofracine.com/about-us

Then later when we were getting ready to go to bed I noticed a light blinking on my bedroom phone.

The downstairs phones blink too I think but you have to really pay attention to see that there's a message.  It was too late to call anyone back but I picked up the message anyway.

"Hi, Sue, this is Quilt-agious in Mukwonago, you won the yard of fabric for a month..." was how the message started.

WOW!  If you live in southeast Wisconsin and haven't been to the shop, you should go!  Mukwonago may be a bit out of the way for some but it's totally worth the trip.  Go to their website for directions: 
http://quilt-agious.com/

They bill themselves as the largest collection of Kaffe Fassett fabrics in the state, and I believe it!

This photo is borrowed from their web site, in case you don't know
what a Kaffe fabric is all about.

Since I am in charge of the monthly raffle for our local quilt guild, I think I'll be picking up some fabulous things there both for the raffle and for myself.  And getting that free yard each month for TWELVE whole months!

Thanks, Quilt-agious!  And thanks too to the Mukwonago quilt guild for putting on a great show that included opportunities for purchases and winnings!

Sew on...

Some Things Cannot Be Improved Upon

Got lost on the internet the other day, and when I was done looking at these quotes I felt a whole lot better.  Some things just can't be said any better than this...

 

Rock today...

Monday, Monday...

"can't trust that day. Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way."

What's your favorite day of the week?  I love the weekends between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon, but Sunday night has a sad flavor... I get can't go to bed-ism, because I know Monday morning I have to return to work.  :-(

I also like Tuesday because it's so much CALMER than Monday... and the food trucks show up at my work location so there's the opportunity for lunch al fresco (outside) and a variety of cuisine available.

My quilt guild meets on a Tuesday, so that's fun.  And my favorite TV show NCIS is on Tuesday too.

So I guess in order, my favorite days are Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday.

Remember that old poem from Mother Goose about the day of the week on which you were born?

Monday's child is fair of face
Tuesday's child is full of grace
Wednesday's child is full of woe
Thursday's child has far to go
Friday's child is loving and giving
Saturday's child has to work for a living
But the child that's born on the Sabbath day
Is wise and kind and good and gay.

I was born on a Thursday... and I wondered what that meant so I looked it up here:  http://www.famlii.com/tools/what-day-of-the-week-were-you-born-calculator/

Thursday children have a long, successful life ahead of them.  Sometimes, “far to go” is interpreted as meaning a difficult path, such as children with special needs. However, traditional versions focus on the concept of positive abilities and talents that will take them far in life, rather than attributes to overcome.

My DD was born on a Friday.  My two oldest grands were born on a Thursday, like me, and my youngest was born on a Tuesday.  If grace means elegance of movement and motion like dancing, maybe not so much.  Talk about your stubbed toes and thudding around the house... but if it's grace in the sense of honoring a place with presence, then I think she fills the bill!  She has a very tender heart, which I hope she keeps forever.

I'm pretty sure my grandson was born on a Monday... and we all think he's as cute as a button except when he's pouting.

My DH commented to me while I was on vacation that he forgot what day it was because it was a day I normally went to work and I hadn't done that.  He likes his routine and he's the guy who would never forget to take the trash to the street, or to water the plants, so that was pretty funny -- he forgot and it was my fault!

Whatever day you're reading this blog, I hope it's a great one!

Sew on...

Sewing Weekend Follow Up

About 4,000 of my best girlfriends and I had an absolute blast at Nancy's Notions Sewing Weekend last weekend. 

And after attending this event for probably 20 or so years, I finally figured out that I need to take some days off work AFTER the event to decompress, pet and oooh and ahhh over the stuff I bought there, and maybe do a project or two while I'm still inspired.

And inspiring it was!

Some of the great things I saw were in the presentations, and some were just in the people attending and the meals shared.  it was just the best weekend ever.  I'm telling you, next year you HAVE TO BE THERE!!

My pal Suzi won a couple of door prizes, including an OTT lamp!  I am still cruising on the personal high of the Baby Lock I won two years ago...

I saw some wonderful speakers giving various topics from renegade sewing (Nancy Zieman) to modern quilting (Weeks Ringle) to wonderful pictorial quilts that just defy the imagination (Cynthia England).

Weeks Ringle - she said "yes, that's my real name".

I bought this book...

Cynthia England -- laugh a minute!!

FABULOUS quilt I saw it in person!

Maybe the most fun was being at the Thursday night Midwest Ya Ya Sisters program and seeing Mary Mulari and Rita Farro do their thing with new sewing ideas and lots of jokes and laughing.

I'm in a few of the pictures on Rita's blog too, so I am now famous, in a kind of anonymous way...

Go read her take on it.  See if you can find me (ha ha, I'm very small...), and afterwards see if you don't want to make your reservations right now.http://ritassewfun.blogspot.com/

Sew on...

 

 

The BIG DAY!!

I am so excited about this weekend that I'm practically vibrating!  My friend Suzi and I leave at the crack of o-dark-thirty on Thursday morning for beautiful downtown Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, for Nancy's Notions Sewing Weekend...


As near as I can calculate I've been going up to Sewing Weekend for 21 or 22 years.  And it only took me that long to figure out that I should take some days off after I get home so I can start working on some of the projects I am inspired to start after being there!!


I have souvenir pins going back to 1996.  I don't know how many years they've been giving out pins, but I think I went at least one or maybe two years before I started collecting them.


... so maybe 1995 or so was my first year.  Although it wasn't THEIR first year.  Plenty of ladies from the area around BD have been going since the first weekend.  If you're anybody in sewing, you've been there at least one time.

So I can hardly believe it's time to go, and again this year I have sewn nothing new to wear there.  :-(


Oh well, maybe next year.


Wednesday is my birthday, and for the first of many years, it's not one of the days I'll be in Beaver Dam.  I'll spend it cleaning out my car, packing my suitcase, and figuring out where my husband would like to take me for dinner.  The girls will come over for cake and I'm told there are presents involved.  Should be fun... if they don't light the number of candles that belong on that cake!


Life is good... thank you God for family, friends, health, interesting hobbies and decent weather for this weekend!


Rock on...

Arbor Day the Last Friday in April

 

April 28, 2017 is National Arbor Day.  Do you remember when you were in grade school, maybe someone took you out to the schoolyard to plant a tree?  It always seemed like an exercise in futility to me, I mean from year to year I went to different schools, never staying in one spot more than a couple of years.  I never did get to see any of those trees I tossed a spoon of dirt on, so how did I know it was even helping?

 

Trees take a very long time to grow.  Well, except for bamboo, which I understand grows almost visibly every day!

 

I do remember a very large tree outside my grandma & grandpa's back door that three of us smaller children could hide behind without even trying.  We loved climbing up in the crook of the apple trees in their side yard and picking the apples right off the branches.

 

I am an admirer of trees now in my adult life.  I prefer shade over sun, and the bigger the tree the better I like it!

 

 

 

This week when a tree in our yard needed cutting, I was very sad.  That half of the yard will be very sunny this summer, and my tenants will have to get a big umbrella for their picnic table if they want to use the patio when it's hot!

 

 I feel like the Ents (Lord of the Rings), mourning for my lost friends...

Ent, looking sad.

I'll get over it!

Seriously, working for water engineers has made me realize just how much trees mean to life.  Trees provide shade and homes for birds and squirrels and all that.  But they also help manage stormwater runoff and absorb unwanted nutrients from groundwater.  They help with water retention and hold the soil together to defeat erosion.

Trees have marvelous resiliency, coming back after forest fires.  Their seeds spread out and sprout and pretty soon the cycle starts over.

I think I like trees so much because most of them are green, and green is my favorite color.  But then I love them in the fall when they turn all of those gorgeous colors too.

Happy Arbor Day!  Go hug a tree...

Busy, Busy, Busy!

When it rains, it pours, right?

Just about the time I figured I could start working on something besides the quilt for our re-retiring Pastor, a whole bunch of additional projects made their way into my queue.

<sigh>

I guess it's good to be busy!

Our church guild had its annual full work day last weekend.  I'm happy to report that a good time was had by all, including Miss A, who accompanied me again this year.  She spent a lot of time helping me organize the day and setting up.  She managed the quilt bingo process and handed out prizes.  She's a good worker when she wants to be!

I managed to sew one block that day.  Oh, and it was started last year, I just finished it up!

However, I did help pin baste the Pastor Mike car quilt so we could send it home with Suzi the quilt expert.  I'm happy to say that we have had our call answered, and our new pastor starts on June 1.  Thank God for blessing received!

Front... the bottom panel is repeated across
the top and a small black border finished it up.

The back side panel consist of this between two panels
of a print with small green, red and blue sports cars.

A couple of the ladies worked on the latest class of hand print quilt blocks from our preschool.  And a few others sewed up some string blocks and some other things for our parts department.  Miss Suzi quilted up one of the things we pinned, so plenty of work was done that day.

Thanks, ladies!

The following day was the Mukwonago quilt show, day two.  That was a lovely show, fine things were to be seen there.  The theme was 1930s for their 30th year.  I like 30s fabric but I'm not in love with it, so it seemed that many of the quilts were so similar that they kind of mushed together.

Thirties prints... we all have them.

Not that they aren't lovely, but after a while they all seemed to look the same.

This week has been a rush to get my sewing room put back together because I went to buy thread at a local sewing store and came home with a floor model Koala cabinet!  Yes, DH said "expensive thread"... 

 

The base of the cabinet, without the doors.

 

He complained a lot, mostly because he had to put it together after he took it apart to put it in the basement.

 

It's now installed, and while one half of the room is neat and tidy with a new cabinet in it, the other half looks like a hand grenade went off in it!

 

Bombed area...

So much for making a few new tops to wear to Sewing Weekend in Beaver Dam...

 

Maybe next year.

 

Sew on...

Sewing Weekend

Today we're having a sewing day at church.  The ladies will be meeting in two hours to finish the Pastor's retirement quilt and do other fun stuff.


If you want to read about the best girlfriends weekend ever, you should go to Rita's blog here:  Sewing Weekend  because Rita Farro will be there, and her explanation is about as good as it could be.


Sew on...

Easter Weekend - Updated!

This is the first Easter weekend in I don't know how many years that I didn't have to make a big family meal.  I kind of missed having everyone over but not having to do all the cooking and cleaning up both before and after was a very nice experience.

DD treated her dad and me to a very nice brunch at a local watering hole. 

Definitely not a hole in the wall!!  The restaurant was lovely, so was the extensive buffet, and the desserts -- well it's an overused expression but they were to die for.

 

The church services this year were as well done as I've ever seen them.  Lenten services presented short dramas, conversations with various participants during Passion week as they were imagined by the writer of the program.  Maundy Thursday communion service and Good Friday's service of darkness led up to a wonderful Easter Festival celebration.

Cap that off with cheesecake and I'm not sure it would get any finer.  If only the rain had held off until AFTER the Sunday School egg hunt, but what's a little mud between friends?

I spent a LOT of money on thread on Saturday, LOL!

Laughing because I went to Frank's Sewing Center to buy thread and ended up buying a floor model of a Koala Cabinet... it's a long story.  DH says that Suzi and I are not allowed to buy any more thread!!

This base and its hutch (hiding behind it) need to go...

Where this big mess lives!! 

I spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons clearing out the space where the cabinet will go and it doesn't look quite so bad anymore.  Right now it's living in DH's parking spot in the garage.  His poor car is suffering the elements.  :-(

The sacrifices some people are asked to make for the arts!!

Sew on...

The Miracle of Modern Electronics

Remember when you had a phone, and you had a camera, and they weren't the same thing?


OMG I have become my GRANDMOTHER!!


We had some issues over the weekend with the granddaughter's phone, and DH and she went to the phone store.  A year or so ago I wrote a post about my DH and his analog phone, and how he was forced to get a new phone, and he bought a FLIP PHONE!


So, Miss E has an iPhone, and she always wants the latest and greatest, as all teenagers do.  She was having some problems that could not be solved by anyone in our house, and DH decided he'd take her up to the phone store and ask the experts.


About an hour later, they came back.  She was all smiles!  I said "They fixed it?"  She said "Yes, and Grampa got an iPhone!!!"


Almost immediately DD came over to gloat and give her dad a hard time or maybe see for herself!  Miss E had texted her on the way home.  Really, it was an event worth marking!


So they took some selfies and had a fun time.


Meanwhile I am still trying to figure out how to get the camera in my phone to take a lower size of photo.  My son helped me clear up some annoying issues with my phone on Saturday, but even he said he couldn't find a place to change the photo size.


He did make it possible to get a few more pics off the camera -- here's what's been on the needles and hooks recently:

Knitted Beret, my desk lamp is making
a cooperative model, isn't she?

Crocheted cap with a shell pattern, and
a bow made of leftover taupe yarn.

Doing handcrafts makes my brain quiet after the craziness of phones and cameras and computers.  I feel calm with needles or a crochet hook and a ball or two (or twenty) of soft yarn.  Except when the pattern gets a little complicated, the act of making is usually an enjoyable experience.


I hope it's that way for you too!


Rock on with your making...

Random Thoughts for Friday

Today is Friday so I'm sitting on my two hour plus team call for work, multitasking and not paying the proper amount of attention I guess.  Hopefully since I talked for my three minutes I will be ignored the rest of the call!

I have discovered that if I'm knitting on my lunch period, the lamp on my desk is a good substitute for a hat model.  Necessity is the mother of invention -- so true!  But even though I took a photo, I can't post it because for some odd reason my phone is not communicating with my email, and the picture is a gazillion megabytes large!

Where is the eight year old when you need one?

 

I found an interesting article recently on making to-do lists.  It was in a presentation about artistic journaling which veered off into left brain/right brain concepts and made me think that I'm going down a rabbit hole again... like HERE -- Rabbit hole -- but it made me think about creativity and how it starts.  Or how it gets bogged down in details sometimes.

 

 

Our church guild is making a quilt with a car theme for our retiring pastor.  He's a car guy, and my mind just went to checkered flags and applique right off the bat.  I got the center medallion made, and the other ladies made a BUNCH of black and white checkerboard pieces to go around it.



 

I am now struggling with the next step because this quilt wants to be horizontal, when I wanted it to be vertical!  I made some additional primary color blocked pieces for the top and the bottom, but I was a little stymied by the layout.

 

I asked my friend Suzi to come and look.  We put our two minds to the task and a plan gelled.  I guess my left brain, which enjoys a work plan, was getting in front of my right brain, which works more spontaneously!

 

Hey, here's a new notion I found in a trip to my local quilt shop: 

 

 



I'm a big fan of triangle paper of many types.  The ones from Miss Rosie's are made to work with layer cakes (hence the name) so I bought a couple of packs to use in a project that is fermenting in the right side of my head.

Sew on...

To Finish or Not to Finish... or Not to Start? What's the Question Again?

🔃

You know what that symbol means, right?  Around and around?  Refresh?  Every which way but loose? 

Or maybe running around in circles without getting anywhere!  That's where I feel like I am right now. 

Witness:  DH and I share an email address.  We've never felt it necessary to have separate emails.  He sees what I get and I see what he gets.  He's home during the day so if he's ordering something on line that is a gift for me, he can quickly move the confirmation to his own file, and I can do the same from my smart phone, so we're good.  Until now... until our insurance company won't let us both sign on with the same email so I can't pay my dental premium on line, or sign up for the prescription mail order with the same email!  Ugh.

I think I can set up an alias address but I'll need an eight year old to help me with that.  :-(

Also, my SMART phone has suddenly changed the resolution on my photos, and they're now about a billion times larger than they were a month ago.  I can't seem to find where to fix that.  Again, eight year old...

So far in 2017 my quilting projects are piling up but not too awful much is actually being finished.  I still have three quilts to do for church.  The retiring pastor will be leaving in May and I'm about half done with the top for that quilt. 

 

The "car" is now surrounded by road, then a band of green.  It's ready for the black and white "checkered flag" that goes next.  I need a few small panels of b&w to fill in the spaces.

 

Then I had a plan for red, yellow and green panels for above and below the car section but the yellow I had was not right.  On Monday I took a little lunch hour jaunt to Patched Works and came home with a better yellow.  Now to get some time in the sewing room!

 

Here are a few pathetic finishes...

 

 

Did I post the picture of Baby Owen wearing the sweater I made?  He's so adorable!  And he does look happy and warm, doesn't he?

The Favorite Strip Quilt was finished by my friend Suzi the Quilter, and returned to the LCQG meeting. I'm counting that as a finish -- one!! One down, I have no idea how many to go.  The problem seems to be, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, I don't care what's on the list now, I'm thinking about what ELSE could be on the list!

I also have in process a quilt for the Little Lambs nursery; progress so far:  Purchase fabric, and think about quilt designs.

For the Teen Ranch donation quilt, fabric has been pulled, design is done, a few flying geese units are done and more are cut out. 

I guess I need a couple of additional projects and a deadline or two!

Easter is coming up in a few weeks.  The other day my daughter said "Let's go out to brunch instead of making all that mess in the kitchen on Easter".  Wow!  I guess she doesn't want her dad to have to wash all those dishes!  That's OK, my favorite thing to make for dinner is reservations.  :-)

Sew on...