Making a Big Mess!

Last night on my way home from work I saw this building leaning like crazy.  They're removing it to make way for something, I'm not sure what.  It's been there for about a hundred years give or take a decade.

Today it's just a big mess!

I was sitting through a lot of traffic
 at a red light and waiting for my
turn.  Look past the car ahead of me,
on the right, you can see a pile.

Getting closer to the corner, this pile
was upright last night but is pushed
down today.

 

This part of the building is still leaning...

but I expect that either tonight on my way home, or next week on the way in I will see a whole block long pile of rubble in place of this old building.

Out with the old, in with the new!  I wonder if they're putting in condos.  That seems to be our modus operandi in the near downtown area these days.

Are you a maker?  Theses guys surely are (and I mean guys in the generic sense because I'm sure there are women in construction too).

All I've made this week has already been posted.  Mostly it was just a mess in my sewing room, but at least I made something!  How big is your mess this week, or are you a clean as you go person?

Sew on...

Stampin Up Gifts

I placed an order from Stampin Up a couple of weeks ago.  I have a demonstrator I've known for several years.  Her husband works here at my company so I hear from him when there's a sale or something exciting happens like new stamps are out or she's hosting a card-making session.

 

I ordered on line and chose her as my demonstrator.  You can do that even if you didn't have a party or attend one. You don't get any freebies that way but sometimes you just want something without any fuss.

 

She sent me (as she always does) an adorable thank you note, made by herself of course.   There's usually a little gift attached or enclosed.

 

This time there was a tiny clipboard in the envelope.  Check it out!  It's a small cardboard square covered in cute paper, with some small memo-sized white paper attached with-of all things-a binder clip!

However it's not just ANY old binder clip.  This binder clip is covered with matching paper. A couple of pieces of ribbon are attached just for fun.

It's the perfect size to hang next to my phone for when you need to jot down someone's number.

And of course she stamped the 'maker' on the back and wrote her name on it!

Very cute, and so appreciated!  Thanks, Connie.

Stamp on...

Christmas is Coming!!

Today I looked at the calendar and gasped in mock horror -- there are only 39 days until Christmas Day!!

O-M-G!!

What???  How can that be??  Yeah, I know it's on December 24-25 every year.  But I didn't know it was almost here!!

Well, we're seeing these in the stores....

 

 My Christmas Cactus is starting up again...

And I think it might be time to get some of those craft items done that I started seems like last week.  Except it turns out it was last week plus a year ago...

Maybe it's the unseasonably nice weather we've been having here in Wisconsin.  Most of the area still looks like this

So I'm sure a lot of us are not in the mood for this yet...

Those of you who complain that Christmas has been in the stores for too long already will need to TRY to have just a little sympathy for those of us who feel like it's sneaking up on us.

Again...

Sew on!

Retail Therapy (Sort of...)

I don't think I'm going to get over the shock of the election and its aftermath quickly, but I'm working on it.  Moving on...

When you're feeling down in the dumps what do you do?  A little retail therapy usually helps me feel better.  I don't even have to buy anything although it's LOTS better if I do.  Just the process of going into a store, realizing that we have so many choices, and so much available to us, makes me feel better.

If I buy fabric, or books, well then it's just been nirvana.  Not the band.  😉

Here's what I did yesterday:

Stopped by my local library to pick up a book... and on the way out there's an area of shelves where you can buy books for pennies, really, nothing over $5 and many for much, much less.  I was on my way to the car and I thought I'd just take a peek.

I found these four books plus one other and spent $7 total.  I mean two of these are hard covers, and you know the price of hardcover books these days!  They were $1 each.  The Alexander McCall was 50 cents!  I love his books!  The one on the top was $2.50 but it's the latest DCI Banks mystery (of PBS fame...)

 

The Cara Black at the bottom of this pile was also purchased at the library, also a hard cover.

 

There was also a big padded mailer on the table from Amazon and the three top books were in that.  I purchased them via Amazon Smile on Saturday.  My church will get a small donation from that purchase.  There are quite a number of charities that participate, there might be some organization that you could help if you check it out.

 

 

Two weekends ago I went to Murder and Mayhem in Milwaukee, a small conference for mystery and crime writers and fans.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly and came home with a whole list of new writers to check out.  That's where I met Cara Black and heard her speak on a panel about her French lady detective, and her series of books -- Murder in (insert location in France).

 

We also had the pleasure of listening to an interview with Sara Paretsky.  If you don't know who she is, she's the creator of the Chicago female detective V.I. Warshawsky.  I've been reading those novels since I stumbled across the first one at a little used book emporium in Seattle years ago.  Yes, I went to the Powell's mother ship during a trip there.  All I can say is wow!  I had to buy another tote bag to carry my finds home that trip.

Here's a very bad phone pic of Sara singing about the Chicago Cubs before she started the interview.  The other person on stage is co-emcee Dana Cameron.  I am on the lookout for copies of the Emma Fielding novels, one of Dana's multitude of series, she's very prolific!

Sorry for the fuzzy focus.  I did get a nice shot of the back of the lady sitting in front of me.  Here's one of Dana with Tom Schreck who was giving us the opportunity to learn some boxing moves.  He's the author of a number of novels involving boxers, and he also coaches boxing.  He pointed out that if you read about someone using a right hook there might be some inaccuracy in the fight description because that could get you ko'd!  Who knew he'd let Dana get that close??  LOL!

 



The last thing I did before I went to bed last night was cut and bag some more kits for our church quilt guild.  My co-leader and I had made some purchases a couple of weeks ago, and it seemed like spending some time in the sewing studio would be good therapy.

 

We've given out a large number of quilts to people having babies, having surgery, etc, and we needed to replenish the kit bag.  Now I feel ready for this Saturday and the quilty ladies!

 



 

Getting ready to sew on...



Election 2016

low·est com·mon de·nom·i·na·tor

noun

Mathematics

noun: lowest common denominator; plural noun: lowest common denominators

• the lowest common multiple of the denominators of several fractions.

  • derogatory

    the level of the least discriminating audience or consumer group.

    "they were accused of pandering to the lowest common denominator of public taste"

     

   

  
  

  

  
  

 

...

My Mom and the Cubs

My mother was a big baseball fan.  She loved everything from Tee Ball and Little League to pickup games in the park to games played by the over-seventy crowd.

She played a little at family picnics or with my brothers in the back yard once in a while.  In her 50's she took up golf and her coach told her she had a 'softball swing'. 

Well, yeah!

And she loved the Cubs. She called them her Cubbies.

Before retiring to Arkansas in the mid 1990's, she lived in the Peoria area, so rooting for the Cubs was kind of natural.  I live in Wisconsin and back then the Milwaukee Brewers were in the American League, and the Cubs were in the National League, so they never played each other.

In fact, at that time the Brewers played the Chicago White Sox.  Lots of Sox fans made the 90 mile trip to Milwaukee, and those games could and often did get rowdy!  So it was kind of a relief to have her be a Cubs fan instead.  Cubs fans were nicer, they had to be since my mom was one of them!

So maybe because they were perennial underdogs, maybe for some other reason, my mom was a Cubs fan.  Sadly, she went to the Great Stadium in the Sky in 1998, so she missed the Brewers moving over to the National League, and all the Brewers-Cubs games that have happened since then.  And we never went to a game together.  I went to Brewer games with my daughter instead.

But I am so sure that Mom was watching last night... as I was sitting on my sofa watching that 10th inning I could almost feel her sitting there next to me.

Here's a link you might enjoy -- especially the headline:  Go Cubbies!

It ain't over til it's over...

Presents -- November Style

I love getting packages in the mail or from UPS.  Yes, "Brown" can be my favorite color!  One day last week the UPS man was parked in front of my house when I got home, and I met him in the driveway.  He handed me a package from somewhere and said "I hope it's something nice".  It was!  I had ordered a stamp and punch set from Stampin' Up.

They had this cute stamp set in their holiday catalog, and a punch that makes the Gingerbread Man shape and the little bits and pieces.  Miss A has already made all of her Christmas Cards using this set.  I borrowed this picture from their web site.

I'm still in the planning stages of my holiday cards... heh heh... usually I grab a box from the drug store as I'm dashing around in December.  I'm not sure I even sent any last year!

UPS stopped again yesterday.  I was not home, but here's what came to live at my house anyway:

It's a package full of loveliness from Connecting Threads clearance section.  The first six fabrics are one yard cuts of prints I decided I could not live without.  Then there are three two-yard cuts of ladybug fabrics, with yellow, blue and green backgrounds (the green is kind of hiding), and the final cut is a 108" print that will make a couple of fun backings.  I could not resist because the prices were so low!  There is nothing here that was more than $7 a yard, and some was considerably less.

DH had gone to Menard's and picked up some air fresheners for me.  I sew in the basement, and even with the dehumidifier running, sometimes it smells kind of -- 'basement-y'.  There's no other word for it!  So these just freshen up the scent, and I like the 'clean linen' variety.  One jar will last about a month, so I'm set for a while.  I think he was trying to avoid another shopping trip soon because that's only half my new supply.

 

This is not a present but rather a gratuitous collage of some of the quilts our church group has made.  A few internet-savvy folks are updating the web site, and asked the quilters if we had a photo to put with our contact information and mission statement.  I have this app on my phone that makes collages.  Neat, huh?



And that's what's going on where I live!  Hope your day was fun.

Sew on...

Confirmation

This past weekend went by like a freight train on steroids.

The oldest grand, Miss E, made her confirmation on Sunday.  Beginning on Friday it was go-go-go to get everything done on time.

Because the day was Reformation Sunday, the confirmands had red stoles to decorate with symbols of their lives and their faith journeys, and they could do anything they wanted to do.  So Miss E wanted her name and her bible verse -- chapter and verse number -- spelled out on either side, and symbols of baptism, communion, etc.

We paged through the gazillion embroidery designs we have and found several that were appropriate and sat down Friday night to get them applied.

 
Jeremiah 29:11New International Version (NIV)

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.


Symbols of baptism, communion and the holy spirit.



She added an atom and a double helix because she loves science and math, and hopes to be some type of engineer or scientist some day.  She's an excellent student, smart and diligent, always has her homework done and gets wonderful grades. -- I'm allowed to brag, she's my grand!

Combat wound -- me, not Miss E!!

See the horrible machine -- the screw on the needle is a blur and if it hits your finger it HURTS like crazy!!

Note to self:  stop the needle before clipping the threads... I got my thumb scraped by the screw on the right side of the needle shaft and bled ALL OVER the place including on my Gloria Vanderbilt jeans!

Lucky for me I did NOT bleed on anything important.  Like the stole.

With her proud mom.

Congratulations Miss E, Gram is very proud!

Sew on...

Wet Wednesday!

I used to work with a lady who had a clever saying for every day of the workweek.  Her expression for Wednesday was "It's Wednesday, I must be in love!"

I'm not sure what that meant...

This morning it was raining when I got up, and it's supposed to continue raining for the balance of the day.  This is what the commute looked like. 

And it went very slowly!!  I was thinking about expressions that include rain:

• It never rains but it pours - apologies to Morton Salt.
• Rain check
• Come rain or come shine.
• Right as rain.
• Save it for a rainy day.
• Don't rain on my parade (or Streisand's!)
• The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
• Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain...

Here are some from Pinterest:

• When life gives you rain, wear cute boots and jump into puddles.
• Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.
• Some people create their own storms, then get upset when it rains.
• Some people feel the rain, others just get wet. -- Bob Marley
• Let your kindness be like the rain, that cares not about whom it falls upon. -- Talih al Habib
• The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it. (Sounds kind of like Yogi Bera!)
• Without rain nothing grows.  Learn to embrace the storms in your life.

I think the last batch is very profound... 

Sew on!

Clouds

The other night on my way home, it looked like it might rain.  As I drove west through the suburbs, the most amazing cloud formation was right above my head.

 

While stopped at a long light, I turned on my phone and took a few snaps.  It was just in one area although the area was pretty big!  By the time I got close to home I had passed under it, or it had passed over me...

 

Isn't it beautiful?  I thought it might be a storm brewing, or that I might find the face of God somewhere.

 

You can see it was lightening up as I got closer to home.

What a wonderful world!

Happy Friday...

Yo!

I remember people using the word YO as a greeting when they were trying to sound cool...  but this is something entirely different.  Whether it's cool or not is a personal opinion.

A couple of meetings ago the speaker at our local guild meeting was a lady who makes yo-yo quilts.  She patiently took us through the process, and some of us even executed one or two yoyos at the meeting.

I'm sure you know what yo-yo's are in the quilting world.  You take circles of fabric, and with a hand needle and doubled thread knotted at the end, you do a running stitch all around, and gather the stitches to the center of the circle at the front... or is that the back?  I don't know... I'm not a big fan of yoyos myself although I do know how to do them.

Circles can be tricky to cut well if you're using a scissors.  They have some fancy gadgets now that let you cut them by machine.  Sizzix has one, as do Fiskars and Olfa.  I bought one from TrueCut that I like a lot for large circles for applique.

You can draw around your favorite jar lid...

There are circular rulers.



If you're into production!!



Lots of folks use this one from Olfa.

Fiskars.

I have this one.  Disclaimer:  No one paid me to show this to you, or any of the others for that matter.

OK so we've solved the cutting conundrum.  So on to the hand sewing.  A lot of you are going "ugh" at the H word.

I don't mind a little hand sewing.  It's something to do when DH is watching sports or other boring TV but he really wants me to stay in the room with him.

To make one you take your precut circle and do a running stitch around the outside while turning under a little less than a quarter inch but slightly more than an eighth of an inch.  It doesn't matter exactly, as long as you're consistent.

There's even an "app" for that, a sewing APP (notion) from Clover.  So far I've resisted buying one.  It tells you how big to cut the circle and helps you get the stitches even.  I've even seen them for shapes other than circles.


I get no money from Clover for showing you this notion either.  Clover, are you watching??  Call me!

Then you sew the resulting finished yoyos together at four 'corners' to make a piece big enough for whatever it is you're making.  This piece is shamelessly borrowed from the internet.  I don't have enough made yet to even sew two together.

So for me, making a whole bed quilt out of yos - I doubt I'd live long enough to complete one.  But they are kind of cute, and you might make something cute from them, once you have enough.

Here are a few ideas:

Toys - always cute...

The right girl would have to like this...

Table topper?

I could do this for the holidays.  Especially if I start now!

Sew on...

Not a Happy Weekend...

I am so not a happy camper...  yet!

 

If you remember the saga of the jean jacket patches and my bent sewing machine from a couple of weeks ago, you know that I sent my machine in for service.  It came back quickly and I was very happy that it didn't cost me the proverbial arm and let for the repair.  That post was on Sept. 28.

 

And the result was a naked bobbin case, with no cover.  After several calls back and forth, the part was supposedly ordered.  I say supposedly because this was a conversation that took place between someone at the repair shop and my husband.

I trust my husband with my life.  Everyone else has the benefit of the doubt the first time.

Here's my machine, on October 16, bobbin still naked.  "Viking parts have been very slow coming in".  Uh huh.

I have projects all cut and ready to start!  Like this table runner.

Oh I have other machines, so it's not like I can't sew!  But my Viking is my main workhorse and has all my favorite tools and lights attached.  It's what I use when I want to blaze through projects.  It's also set up in my favorite sewing spot, and weighs about 32 pounds so moving it is not a fun job.

Last night I found an on-line parts vendor that has my little bobbin cover in stock and it will ship today.  Of course I'm going to pay twice as much plus shipping, but at least it will be in my hands.  In a matter of days, not weeks.

So what's the matter with my repair shop that they don't have access to Viking parts?  Maybe they just want to sell new machines or something, I don't know.

Color me disappointed... I would much rather shop locally than on the internet, but if I can't get what I need, I will reach out to the web.

Now I need time to get down into the studio and get sewing.  My next big project is Miss A's confirmation stole.  We worked out all the designs yesterday, and the big day is two weeks away so I need to get to work.

Sew on...