I Should Buy A Lottery Ticket!

This week, our local quilt guild held a fund raiser to purchase batting for the quilts we make and donate.  It was a lot of fun.

The premise is that everyone with a stash has stuff they know they're not going to use, or they have too much of something.  Everyone brought 'stuff' to donate to the raffle, whether it was one item, a kit, a packet of half yards or fat quarters, whatever a sewist would like to have.  It didn't have to be sewing related.  Someone brought a big bag of chocolates, and someone else donated a basket with cheese and wine.

Wine always goes well with sewing, or sewing always goes well with wine... lol!

The two piece tickets were 50 cents each.  You tore off half and put it in a small paper bag near the item you were interested in winning.  We spent quite a while 'shopping' at the various tables that were set up, examining the wonderful items.

 

After a brief couple of announcements the fun began in earnest!  The ladies running the raffle picked up a bag, showed the prize and drew a ticket.  We had such fun cheering for the winners.  There were a couple of items I wanted that I didn't win, but for the most part I did well, as did my friend Suzi.  She ended up with a quilt kit in purple.  She rocks purple...

I got several kits:



A small quilt kit of cupcakes...



Small kit for a wall hanging including the hanger.  This will go in my kitchen.



This kit is like a wreath or something, I have to read the directions...



These are the pieces, precut, and very tiny!

I also picked up the 30th anniversary packet for the Log Cabin Quilt Guild -- that was the year before I joined.  The booklet is so interesting, listing all the past presidents, where meetings used to be held.  I guess everyone else had one because mine was the ONLY ticket.  I won.  Go figure...

There IS a cute little log cabin pouch and an adorable button flower in here.

 

My favorite prize was this packet of fat quarters.  I make a quilt called Yellow Brick Road, and you need six fat quarters to do it.  There are six pastel fqs on the left, and five black/white/red fqs on the right.  I will add one more and probably make two tops to donate.  Score!

 

Then there was a Ziploc baggie with a bunch of stuff in it.  There were patterns and some rubber stamps.  I didn't really look too hard at the stamps, but the baggies inside were filled with:

 Which is a pattern and these stamps...

 

So after I read the directions on THIS packet, I realized that this was designed to stamp on fabric.  You stamp the shapes, you can cut them out with a scissors and hand sew (yeah, I know, right?) or you can machine piece.  The inside line is the sewing line, the outside the cutting line.

It looks like someone used this stamp for a 60 degree triangle.  It's about 2 inches on a side...  With the dawn of rotary cutting I think this method of piecing went the way of the dinosaur, although I did come across a web site last week where this system was featured.  I thought "how interesting, that someone would have you stamp on the back of the fabric!"  Then, viola!  I win a quilting stamp.  But it might come in handy for other things.

The bag also contained some patterns and other things but the real find was this stamp:


Abstract designs, this is about five inches square and will completely cover a small notepaper.

Also included in the bag were a tiny book and a few miscellaneous notions... check out the little ruler with the scissors handle!  Yes, it's a total of three inches long, as is the book.  The book has a thimble on a ribbon as a bookmarker.  There are all sorts of quotes about quilts and quilters in the tiny pages.

 

Some things still had the prices tags on them.  I spent $20 on tickets and got what I calculate to be over $125 worth of items. 

 

We raised a little over $300 which we will use to buy batting for the quilts that members sew and donate to various charities in the area.  For a group of probably about 50 women, we did well. A good time was had by all.  Only two things didn't go home with new owners.  Those items will be given away at some future time.

 

I want to try and make up a few of those little projects over the next month.  I think I'll take some of them to Friday sewing with my family. 

 

Sew on...

 

 

Oh Pickles!

This weekend was so completely awesome weather-wise that I forced myself to finish up errands like going out to the office supply to pick up tax prep software and going to the drugstore to stock up on toothpaste and mouthwash.

Doing all that made me feel very virtuous, so I rewarded myself with a trip to the quilt shop in Elm Grove, Patched Works.  It didn't hurt that I had a gift certificate for PW either.

I had seen some black and white fabric on someone else's blog that I NEEDED... it was a print that looked just like greenbar accounting paper!  (Only I guess you'd have to call it whitebar since there was no green in it.)  There was also some graph-paper type print, one with words and something that may have been bar codes, I don't remember exactly.

I found the words and what I thought was the bar code BUT I also found crossword puzzle and Sudoku fabric!  Had to have that too.  I passed on the bar code but here's what I did get:

The red added a bit of whimsy to the group.  I'm thinking I need a couple of tablet holders, since my Kindle Fire doesn't fit into the one my previous Kindle used -- I bought the smaller version. 

And then I found Pickles!  I love that cartoon, it's the one thing I miss about not getting the newspaper on Sundays (that's a post for another day).

She's talking to Earl about quilting.  In one panel I think she used his jeans to make a denim quilt. 

In another one, she's discussing the fact that she doesn't have the right color thread to fix his shirt and that means a trip to the fabric store.  At which suggestion he abandons his request!

So add 7 yards to the stash that I am not counting in this lifetime!  But I had a wonderful time... and I'm anxious to get my new tablet keeper started!

Sew on...

Pet Peeves

We all have them.  Why?

 

My daughter calls me the Grammar Queen.  I know I'm FAR from perfect but some things just grate on my ears.  I cannot listen to the local news lately without laughing out loud at the grammatical errors.  A few things that just drive me crazy are:

• On one station, the anchors will make statements and they're not full sentences, such as "A bad accident on the freeway this morning."  What, it happened, there will be one, what???
• The misuse of apostrophes in print -- on signs, wherever:  Martin's Car Wash -- OK,  Car's Washed Here -- not so much.
• The use of the word 'myself' when it is not appropriate.  "Please call John or myself as soon as possible".  Leave out John.  Would you say "call myself"?  That one just blows my mind any time I hear it!

And careless pronunciation  is like fingernails on a blackboard for me.  I know we have a lot of funny place names, but seriously, if you're going to be on the news in Wisconsin, learn to SAY it!  Also learn to say WAU-kesha, O-CON-omowoc, and New BER-lin (as opposed to New Ber-LIN.)

I'm ashamed to say it but I judge performances of the national anthem by any singer or group -- based on whether they say 'per-il-ous' or 'per-o-lis'... 

Ain't it fine over by the bubbler??  (If you understand that phrase you grew up in Milwaukee...) 

I know, loosen up!

I'll try.

Sew on...

A Word of Advice for Monday...

It turns out that according to many experts and all sorts of insurance people, one of the most dangerous times of the year for people in cars is the MONDAY after DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME begins.

Studying accidents over the last ten years, the Fatal Accident Reporting System shows a 17% spike in accidents on that day.  Most of the accidents involved trucks and happened in the early morning hours.

 

Turns out that our body clocks don't like being deprived of an hour's rest.  We don't make it up by going to be an hour earlier.  Even if we do, it takes a week before our bodies catch up.  We end up going to work feeling sleep deprived, we make errors in judgment, and those of us who don't drive well under normal circumstances (you know who you are) are even -- well, you know, dumber than usual.

So this coming Monday, if you have to go out in the morning, use

• Watch out for trucks
• Drive carefully and defensively
• Go in late on purpose -- or better yet, take a 'mental health day'

Drive on...

Color of the Year. Wait, What?

Saw this jotted down somewhere and thought it appropriate on so many levels...

The color of the year -- huh, who knew?

According to Pantone, the color authority for everything from paint to fabric to plastic spoon handles and beyond, the color of the year is marsala.

 

 

Seriously?  Who decides this stuff?  They must know something I don't.  Or they're trying to sell someone something.  You can decide.

 

The color of the year for the past 14 years has been all over the map. 

I LOVED the color of the year in 2013.  I decided it was going to be MY color of the decade.

So what is up with marsala?  What does it go with?  Who looks good in it?

I don't much care for muddy or muted or 'shades of' color.  I think I'll take mine straight up, thanks.  So give me red, teal, even last year's color, Radiant Orchid.

I guess 2015 is a non-starter for me colorwise.  I'm going to live in the color of 2013.

Sew on...

Sick Days and UFOs

I normally go visit my doctor every six months for checking up on my blood pressure, my prescriptions and all that good stuff.  Lately I've been getting letters from my insurance company saying "flu shot due" or "mammogram due".  That's a nice service.

Monday I went to discuss the high cost of a certain prescription and the possibility of getting a generic brand, and since I had a congested head, I got a 'two-fer', that is two consultations for the price of one!  Well, it turned into almost a dozen because I got an exam, changed the prescription, got an antibiotic for a sinus infection, left blood for a bunch of tests AND got a tetanus booster!

I can't remember when I had a tetanus shot last.  Probably over 10 years, maybe more.

Monday night I had a tough time sleeping.  It's hard to sleep when you can't breathe out of your nose.  So Tuesday was a sick day.  I just could NOT make myself get up, get dressed, and drive to work in snow.  I guess the roads were bad, but I can't say for sure.

So after 24 hours on the antibiotic, I started feeling better, so I hauled out a basket full of UFOs.

About a year ago I started a sweater for myself, called February Lady's Sweater.  You can find the pattern free on Ravelry.com.  If you're not signed up for Ravelry, you should be!  It's free and fun and there is a ton of fun stuff available there.

Left front... this is top down knitting and I'm into the pattern rows.

Right front, close up of the pattern.

Pattern

Center back

I think my left front is off as far as the pattern goes.  There are supposed to be holes where the yarn overs are, but I have some thick branches instead.  It's a really simple pattern, done over seven stitches on four rows, and the wrong side rows are just pearl stitches.

So I've done about 15 rows, and I think I'm going to have to rip back.  I can't decide if I should try to rip back just the section that's off, or if I have to pull out the whole 15 rows.  Or if I can live with the out of pattern stitches.

I'm thinking ripping a section. 

Speaking of ripping, if you love funny stories about knitting, may I suggest that you check out Stephanie Pearl-McPhee at the Yarn Harlot Blog ?  She's too too funny, and I swear I have lived some of her stories verbatim!  She's turned some of her stories into books, which I've recently picked up on Amazon.com.  Love her!

Knit on...

The Weather, and Under It

OK so maybe we don't have as much as the East Coast.

We have enough to make the birds unhappy...

And DANG but it's cold this week!  The normal high is in the low to mid 30's but we've been having below zero temps and/or wind chills for what seems like months.

Brrr...

And to top it all off, this week I'm under it.  The weather I mean.

This should give you some clues as to how I'm feeling.



Taking a lot of this.(I know, I've kind of got that same fuzzy feeling in my head...)



Drinking lots of water....

Using up a lot of these!



 

My boss says I sound like a frog on the phone.  I have coughed so much my sides ache, and not in a good way!

 

I am looking forward to a NICE quiet weekend of vegging on the couch.

 

Although I did get a new package of yarn yesterday --  but knitting doesn't seem too strenuous as long as the pattern is easy.  I grabbed up a kit for a baby sweater from the clearance section of Love of Knitting this week and it arrived quickly. 

 

Yeah, that much I think I am capable of.

 

As long as no one moves my tissues.

 

Knit on...

 

 

Comment or not... as you wish!

Whatever I did to restore comments apparently only works on new posts.  Perhaps because I had a thirteen year old helper rather than the requisite nine year old, or I read the directions incorrectly or something.

Regardless, you may now comment if you choose on new posts.

Sorry about the older ones.  :-(

Sew on...

No Comment...

Evidently somewhere along the line, either through change in Blogger or the infamous User Error, the ability for you the reader to comment on my blog posts has become invisible.

Rest assured that I am working on it.

I think I have to get a nine-year-old to help me.

Sew on...

Leftover Bits - Stash Control

Just like making a quilt or garment leaves scraps, so does knitting and crochet.

I had a bag, a box and a fishbowl that were all full of tiny balls of yarn left over from previous projects.  I'm talking small -- too small even for making doll sweaters.  Some of them could have made doll a SLIPPER, but really, how many dolls want only one slipper?  I'm not changing yarns and weaving in ends in a slipper that is less than 3 inches long.

 

So I decided to try to use all of those bits and crochet an afghan for the back of the sofa.  When I first learned how to crochet, I made an afghan using a neat pattern that put stitches down a row from where you normally do, and alternating them every ten stitches or so created a kind of zigzag pattern.  Done in colors with black and white thrown in for contrast makes a striking garment.  Plus I love black and white stuff and I have LOTS of black and white yarn.

The beauty of this method is that you don't have to have 'the right amount' of yarn, they don't have to even be the same kinds of yarn, although I found out that if you're using pure, shrinkable wool with acrylics and washable wool, you could have a problem, so all yarns should at least be washable.  If not, you'll be dry cleaning or hand washing a blanket!

In the zigzag pattern, you did one row at a time, going right to left as is normal in crochet, and cut off the yarn at the end of each row. 

You can see where I changed colors in the gray stripe just before I ended the row... I had run out of yarn completely so I just tied the new one on.  All the ends are hanging loose, like eyelashes where the color changes.  The black row has one stitch that dips down into the previous row and forms a point.  I even tried some shells for a couple of rows.

The great thing about this project is, it's done, the stash is busted, and it's warm when I toss it over my legs on the couch.

Crochet on...

Not Being Perfect...

Ever had that feeling??  Sometimes I feel like I'm really off -- a salmon swimming upstream, or a bird flying north when everyone else is going south.

 I sit near a guy in our office who makes a lot of noise.  We're in open cubes, and when he's not here, it is very quiet.  When he IS here, well, for instance today he kept saying
 

 

That's not something you want to hear all the time -- I mean it's OK if you're making toast and it gets a little burned, but if you're designing a retaining wall or a jet airplane, that's not a good thing!  (He isn't doing either, so don't panic!) 

 

Sometimes it's just that you're doing the right thing, but going about it the wrong way... like sewing the left sleeve in the right sleeve opening.  Or picking up the stitches on the wrong side of the neck edge of a sweater.

 We've been hearing a lot in our state recently about people who are driving the wrong way on the freeway.   It's OK right up until the moment you run into someone and cause a major accident.  This usually happens around 3 a.m. after bar close and generally involves an excessive level of blood alcohol content.

Then there's the Toilet Paper thing... there's a big debate.  Rolling off the front or rolling off the back.  For most of us, it's just a matter of preference.

 

However, if you live with a cat or even a toddler, there can be a wrong way to do it.  

 

I mean I try to do things the best way possible.  I get upset with myself when I make mistakes.  I'll admit it, I'm a Type A personality most of the time. 

However -- it's good to acknowledge that we're ONLY human.  I've been hearing a lot about giving yourself permission to make a mistake or have a bad idea.  I was watching a TV program, and a very creative person said that for every wonderful idea she has, she may have 40 or 50 stinkers.  Wow!

Think about baseball.  A player with a good batting average - the top 5 in any season - may be at .325 or so, according to Wikipedia.  The best there is in baseball may only achieve .372 in a lifetime.  That's just a little over 1 hit every three times at bat.  And home runs?  The best Babe Ruth ever did was an average of 1 in every five games.

And let's not even discuss the weatherman!

We have good days where we bat 1,000 - a hit every time.  Sometimes we strike out three or four times in a row.  So sometimes when things are not working out for you, maybe you're just doing the right thing in the wrong way... 

 

Take a deep breath.  Step back, look at things again.  Toss anything that isn't right, but give yourself permission to use the stuff that doesn't work as a jumping off point to fuel your creativity and do things over.  If it doesn't work, at least you tried something.

 

Maybe all you need is a new perspective!

 

Sew on...

All Thumbs

I just tried signing in to Google to update this blog and it took me four tries -- FOUR! -- to type in my email address.  First I had my hand on the wrong keys.  Then I had one hand on the wrong keys... boy, it's going to be that kind of day.

Last night was the regularly scheduled meeting of my local quilt guild.  We had a super speaker!  Chris Kirsch is a local quilting celebrity, and evidently she started out in our guild!  She spoke last night about the connections between garments and quilts.

Her web site is here if you'd like to check it out:  http://www.chrisquilts.net/

and her work is stunning.  I especially liked it that she spoke about her faith and how important it is to represent it in her quilting. 

After the meeting we had some show and tell.  That's always fun, don't you agree?  We had just finished a sew-along so lots of ladies had used the same pattern.  I was again amazed that people using the same pattern could come up with such a diverse group of finished items.  There were many table runners and one full quilt among the SAL group, and they were awesome.

We always wish happy birthdays to those celebrating during the month.  My friend Suzi had had a birthday the day before and I'd made her a tote bag from one of the Nancy's Notions templates.  I'd made one for myself and she said she 'coveted that bag'.  So last week I dug around in the resource center and came up with some quilted fabric I picked up, who knows how long ago, and made one for her.  She showed it briefly last night.  Wouldn't you know I forgot to snap a picture of it before I gave it to her -- although I DO have a pic of the original:

Here it is on my ironing board. 

Sideways with the bottom and straps showing.

It's the Florida bag from Clover designed by Nancy Zieman.  We had a big piece of upholstery fabric in our stash at church, and it was too slippery to use in any of our own projects, so we split it between three of us and we all made a bag. 

My piece happened to land near that green check in the 'someday' pile, and I went "Eureka!"...  The center panels are checked, also upholstery weight fabric, as are the straps.  The whole bag is lined with muslin because that's what I had that matched.  The button came from one of my American Sewing Guild conference experiences.

The gift bag is a blue printed double-sided pre-quilted fabric that I think I got at Sewing Weekend one year.  Suzi just happened to be wearing an outfit on Sunday that coordinated in an awesome bout of serendipity... as if they were meant to be together, she and that bag!

I had nothing to show.  My projects at present are all UFOs.  <sigh>

At the end of the meeting one of the ladies told us that another of the members was lucky to be there at all -- here's the story, short form.  She got up in the middle of the night to use the facilities, and she had a pain in her back.  She took some aspirin.  She could not get comfortable and her arm started to hurt, but none of this was bad pain, about 4 on a scale of 10.  Not being able to go back to sleep she decided to call her doctor's answering service.  THEY recommended that she get to the ER.  She called 911 rather than drive herself, although she said she had considered it.

Diagnosis:  heart attack.

Heart attack symptoms in women are NOT like they are for men!  Coincidentally, this week is Go Red for Women in our building... since one of our neighbors on this floor is the American Heart Association, here's a plug for them:

And here's the web site:  https://www.goredforwomen.org/

Having been through this with one of the aunties, I hope everyone gets themselves informed.  According to AHA, one in three women die of heart disease or stroke every year.  33%!!  The next time you're with two other women, or three women if you're a guy, ask yourself which one of them could you bear to lose this year?  Yes, it's that big a deal.

Getting off the soapbox now... carry on!