Category Archives: Life

Update

Lots has happened. So where to start.

There has been a major shift in my crafting focus towards arts and away from sewing. I still sew a lot, but my main focus now is art journals, cardmaking, beading, painting, mixed media and other stuff like that. It makes organization in my craft room interesting.

We lost Clio and Dayton and now have Skittles. Check out her pics under Cats, Cats, Cats.

Grandson is growing by leaps and bounds and is pretty busy with his sports and after school and weekend activities.

Hubby had a battle with cancer, but has won so far.

I had cataract surgery in both eyes and have ditched the glasses.

And life goes on.

 

craft room update

So it seems that I need more room for crafting and less for sewing nowadays. The sewing machine has been put up for a while so I have some fun with some old friends. I forgot how much fun I can have with some papers, glues, paints and the like. Here lately I have been really getting into stamping, mixed media and painting.

So it was time to reconfigure the craft room I did not take the quilts down as they remain my part of my family, but will be putting up some of my other stuff soon. I am amazed how much room I have with the sewing stuff all put away. After I took these pics below, I even put away my ironing board and brought out a table to sit at. It is totally lovely to be able to sit and stamp, paint and the like.

Here is the room now

craftroom5_25_16

As you can see there is still a lot of sewing stuff around. I just have other things in front of it. Also I can still work on my hand embroidery and on my crazy quilting as all that stuff is easy to get to. It is the machine embroidery and fabric items that are behind tables and shelves.

I know that sooner or later I will be returning to these things and they will be waiting there for me. Just like we go through stages in our lives and we also go through times when different things appeal to us. I like to think that means I am well rounded, and not just physically, ha.

Currently, it is the artsy part of me that is getting the attention and fun while, for the past five years it was the traditional quilter that was getting stoked. By paying attention to all parts of our lives I feel we maintain our mental health and are able to deal with what life throws at us.

I like to think of my craft room as a reflection of my mental health. It seems that when I am starting a new project it is clean and relatively neat. My mind is in decision making mode, business like and efficient. Then when in the middle of the project the mess begins and towards the end things are strewn all over the room. My mind and focus are entirely on the project. Actually, my mind cannot seem to focus on anything BUT the project and all the myriad details that go into it. Then when the project is down, I walk it down the hall to show my husband and all is well. He gives his approval (he has been trained well in that department -ha, ha) and then I go back to the craft room and clean up.

When the day comes that I cannot work in my craft room, I will be at a loss. I hope there will be something around to pick up the slack. I believe all will be OK if I judge from past history. Cause see I go through phases and move on.

 

 

Perfection

I have always been haunted by the need for perfection in my crafting. If it is not perfect, then it is not good has been my attitude. Not such a good attitude but it does not apply to other people’s work just mine. Strange that I am just fine with other people’s work not being perfect and will even purchase work by other people that is not perfect yet I am unhappy with imperfection in my own work.

This does not mean I have achieved perfection in my work, just that I get very unhappy with my work if it is not perfect.

So when I found this tutorial about making the perfect loop in beading I just had to try it out.Here is the link:

How to Make a Perfect Simple Loop

I decided to practice by making knitting stitch markers. It has been on my mind to make some for a while now so combining the two goals was a great idea. I loved how the tutorial broke it down into very simpleĀ  steps and it really helped. I found I had been making my loops in a different way – making them this way increased the number of perfect loops I was able to make.

Of course not all the loops came out perfect and I had to make a bunch over but overall I was please with the outcome.

But now I have too many stitch markers. I might just make some more for retreat goodies. . . .

Here is what I made:

workarea

My favorites were the orange ones and the clay bead ones.

orangemarkers

claymarkers

Memories

Did you ever run a diaper pin through your hair to make it easier to use?

Have you ever torn up rags to use as bandages?

. . . pulled your child in a red wagon to the corner store down the road cause strollers just were not in your budget.

. . . taken a taxi to hubby’s workplace to get the family car cause child woke up needing a doctor visit? (most families still only had one car apiece)

. . . had one doctor for everything, children, childbirth, skin moles EVERYTHING?

. . . boil baby bottles to sterilize them – the nipples too?

. . . made five pairs of pants all the same for your child cause that was the way things were – children did not have to make a fashion statement in those days

. . . cut your children’s hair, gave them perms and suffered the consequences (tears sometimes, happiness others)

Those were the days -times were not simpler or harder, just different.

Too big for my britches?

It came to me that I was doing things the hard way because I thought I was too good to do things the right way. In the middle of cutting out some shapes by scissors, I realized that in Primary school they taught us to roughly cut out the shapes first and then go back and precision cut them. When I did that, it became so much easier and faster.

It made me wonder how many other things I was doing the hard way because I thought I was too good or too important or maybe too old to do things the right way. Of course I am not the only one doing that I am sure.

It is a dangerous attitude to have for sure. How about the driver who thinks they are too good a driver to go by the posted speed limits? Or what about the person who carries a gun in places that they are not supposed to? Or how about the person who feels that they know what is best for their children even though it has been proven that they are wrong?

A little bit of humble pie is good for the soul. It makes take a step back from the table of life and look around and check our attitudes and beliefs and re-evaluate our beliefs and perhaps change a few. It is also good to reaffirm what we believe in too.

Don’t exceed your grasp

The past few years I have been working on improving my free motion quilting. It has been a journey and one I have not finished yet. I will know I have “arrived” as a free motion quilter when I can do feathers.

What are feathers? they are the utmost in elegance when machine quilting. I practice and practice so that one day I can make them myself. Here are a two samples I found on the web about feathers. There are plenty of pics out there, I even made a board for them on my Pinterest account.

 

But the thing is, they take practice and practice before perfecting.

One of the things I learned when working on my machine quilting was to make sure you have control of what you are sewing on. When I was using my little Magnolia Janome, that meant putting a table behind the sewing machine and a tv tray beside it to support the quilt. But, I just did not “get it” yet and would end up with sharp points and jagged lines where I had lost control and the quilt would pull out of whack. I was moving the quilt beyond what I could handle. Beyond my grasp one would say.

It got so bad, that one time I sewed the sleeve of my shirt onto my quilt. I just did not want to turn loose of the quilt and adjust my grip on it so I had my arm fully extended through the throat of the machine. It was kind of shocking to sit there and watch that needle go through my sleeve. Then, I was kind of stuck. I could not take the shirt off, I could not remove my arm from the sleeve and so I sat until I realized that no one was going to come and rescue me. I had to use my left hand, did I mention it was my right arm that was stuck in the sewn sleeve? Anyway, I had to use my left hand to try and cut the sleeve loose. Choosing between cutting the sleeve and the quilt, of course I chose the sleeve. It was a worn out shirt anyway. I got free, but learned about loose garments and the sewing machine.

My skills have improved now, and I don’t feel the desperate need to hold on the quilt until I could not move it another inch. I’ve learned to just try and control a little bit of the quilt at a time and I get much better results.

Isn’t life a little like that. If we desperately try to control every little thing we end up loosing control and things get damaged or destroyed in the process. It takes maturity and a little trust to let people and situations work themselves out without us trying to control every little part of it. I had to learn how to trust my needle to go up and down and do its thing and just worry about the piece of the quilt that was under it at the time. I could not control the whole quilt, I had to just concentrate on just that part of it that needed my attention.

In my life, I have had to learn how to just let some things go and not worry about them. That does not mean that I wash my hands of the situation, or that I remove myself, it just means that I should just enjoy myself and let others do their job and handle their own responsibilities.

Of course, I am still learning how to let go. It probably is one of those things that we all will struggle with for our entire lives. Once in a while I just need to step back and give myself a talking to about it.

 

 

Orange Toothpaste

It happens about every other year that I need to purchase a new tube of toothpaste. One of those huge tubes will last for quite a long time. A dentist once took his time to explain to me how I should be brushing my teeth – little bitty brush and just a dab of toothpaste. That way you get everything and the toothpaste is not cushioning your teeth from the effects of the brush. So it takes about two years for me to use up a tube of toothpaste.

So, last week I shop the toothpaste aisle at Wally World and find there are about ten kinds of toothpaste for each brand. Lets see, do I want whitening? do I want tartar control? how about some of the super foaming stuff that will work its way into the cracks and crevices? Oh, my look there are different flavors as well! It can be a bit overwhelming. Why can’t they just put out a tube that says, “This, one is for you Nancy.”

So I opt for the citrus flavor cause it is cheaper than the others. Gotta watch those pennies, ya know. I saved about fifteen cents (why can’t I find the cent symbol anywhere?)

The first morning I used it I discovered why it was cheaper that all the rest. They had to get rid of it before everybody found out it is not the color you want to see in the morning before you are fully awake. Actually, it is not the color you wanna put on your toothbrush even when you are fully awake! Then when you get it into your mouth (closing your eyes helps) you wanna spit it right back out again. The idea of a sweet toothpaste just kinda sours the mind on toothpaste if you know what I mean.

So, I gotta put up with this for at least a year – by then I won’t feel bad throwing away a half used tube of toothpaste. Though, perhaps I might be able to pawn it off on one of the daughters. Though if I want them to continue to talk to me and not put me out of their lives, I had better come clean with why I don’t want it.

 

Here is a photo of it, I want everyone to know and beware. Amazon is selling them in a six pack. They have found out and are trying to get rid of them as fast as they can before the word gets out.

toothpaste

And so on

How does one start blogging again when there has been a long hiatus?

Do you start off by apologizing?

Do you make lots and lots of excuses?

Do you just jump in like nothing has happened?

Hmmm. . . how about all of the above?

The trend of my blog was slowing moving towards my sewing and quilting and less of my digital scrapbooking stuff and it became a little hard to figure out how to continue. Do I create a new blog? The answer to that was NO. I have had too much history in this blog to want to abandon it so I will just continue on each post with what ever comes up for the day/time I am writing.

A little update on me: Grandson is thriving and doing great, daughters are doing great, hubby is doing great. (Any details are theirs to share not mine.)

So lets move on

Trash Digger – that me’s

I have not mentioned the new sewing machine I got – -it is a super, super machine. Actually it is an embroidery machine as well as sewing machine and I have fallen in love with it.

BUT, it takes a different type of feet than all my other sewing machines that I have ever had. AND today I could not find the one that is going to be my main man. I looked high and low for it. You can probably guess where this is going. Yep, I had to go out to the street to dig in the trash to see if it was there. Of course, all the neighbors chose that time to drive by. There had not been a car on the street until I stuck my head into that trash can. Thank goodness there was not much garbage in the trash can or I would still be there digging in it. But, I found the foot after just a few minutes. The foot is expensive so I just did not want to blow it off and get another one.

But this makes me think. How many people in our lives have we mislaid or inadvertently tossed away? Do we just keep the ones who are expensive or hard to replace? Or do we make an effort even when there is nothing in it for us? What about those people who “cost” us time and much energy to keep in our lives? the ones who seem to be so needy? We all know somebody like that – who is needy. They need support and attention or they get real out of shape. They might need constant verification that they are important to use and that we approve of them. Or what about those people who are so busy in their lives but want to be friends. They are hard to be friends with because it has to be on their schedule and their time line. Do we forget to make an effort to be friends with people like these or do we inadvertently toss them in the garbage and move on? Just a thought. As for me, guess I will just have to keep the name of trash digger as I liketo go back and get those people out of the trash that I inadvertently tossed away.

 

Oh here is the foot that was so much trouble to me today – You can see part of the quilt that I am just finishing up.

Why is it?

**Why is it that when I drive five miles over the speed limit people still get mad at me for being in the left lane, even though there are people driving five miles under the speed limit in the right lane?

**Why is it that no matter how careful I am I cannot sew a straight seam? Yet I am a profession seamstress?

**Why is it that when I need more than five squares of TP, there are only four squares left on the roll?

**Why is it that when I want to cuddle with my cats they want nothing to do with me, but when they want to cuddle they will not take no for an answer?

**Why is it when I wish I had lots of time for sewing, there was not much for me to sew, but now that hubby is home full time and I don’t have as much time, I have dozens of projects calling for attention?

**Why is it when the house is clean and the sewing room is clean no one comes over, but when all is at the messiest, people just can’t stay away?

**Why is it when my closet is clean I can’t find anything to wear, but when it was all disorganized and a mess, I had no problem finding something?

**Why is it the Postman always rings the bell twice? (He does for our house at least.)

**Why is it Texas is in drought and we are hurting for rain, but the Mississippi is in flood, many homes have been destroyed and many states are facing emergency issue with too much water?

**Why is it only the stink bugs want to come inside and not the ones the cats would have fun with?

**Why is it that now hubby wants to run the roads but would not leave the house when the girls were little and I really could have used some “road” time? (Now I am the one that does not want to leave the house.)

**Why is it I have 50 spools of thread but none of them are the color I need?

**Why is it now that I have pretty colors on my walls, hubby does not want me to finish up the decorating and put stuff up on the walls?

**Why is it that with all these complaints, I still feel pretty happy and content with my life and really enjoy what the days bring?

 

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