What's new?

New blog friends, new wallpaper packs, new thrifting happiness

Hi there!! Before I forget; yesterday I found not one but TWO fabulously smart and crafty and talented new bloggers that you may not have heard of yet but I'm sure you would have soon enough even if I wasn't telling you right here and now.  Kathi's blog is i think we're all bozos on this bus (see; how could you NOT love her already?) and Cheryl's is Periwinkle Vintage.  Like I said, I happened to find the both of them yesterday but have already added them to my blog reader because I don't want to miss a single thing. Check 'em out!

Mary at Oh Merci posted some lovely (as always!) thrifted finds a few days ago and asked, "Have you found something your are so very happy with?" Which reminded me I found these two Homer Laughlin Georgian Eggshell pieces for 99 cents recently.

Yes, that's right; less than a dollar each. Here's the deal with the local thrift shops: they are all SO different from one another in their pricing. For instance; I'll routinely go in to the Cancer Society thrift shop (with the nicer clothes, nicer items all around) and find something that is currently selling at the local dollar store yet they will have the used/donated item marked at 2,3 or sometimes 4 dollars. Depends on who was doing the marking that day. My favorite store isn't considered as worthy of a cause...they mostly give a hand to homeless guys with their profits, and appear to have a few of these guys working in the store as well. When I was searching with great hope for a sugar bowl to go with these I asked a guy who was bringing stuff out if maybe he'd seen one and he said, "No, I personally priced those and they were the only pieces like that." I said, "Well, ya did real good!" I know, I'm shameless! Anyway, when I looked on ebay I found that this pattern also comes with a pink band so I'll probably be on the hunt for this pattern the rest of my life in either pink OR blue. I don't care which. I just really do love it.

Another fairly recent purchase I've been meaning to share is this child's desk and chair.

It was at the monthly indoor flea market in an antique dealers booth. Her original price tag was $125 and it was billed as a "French antique".

I can't tell for the life of me if it's really old or really French, but I thought it was very sweet and she had it marked down to $50 so I snagged it before I thought too much more about it.

Maybe I just wanted the paper inside? (I keep meaning to take that to Kinko's and make some large paper copies.) Anyway, now I have TWO child's desks and chairs "for the studio", neither of which I would let the little ankle biters sit at with markers or paints. :-)

SPOILER ALERT FOR THE NEW MOVIE: CLOVERFIELD.

Don't waste your money! It was an hour and a half of a guy holding a home video camera (a la The Blair Witch Project) while a big horrible (Think thirty stories tall) monster of alien appearance pounded through New York City killing everything and everyone in it's wake, including our hero at the end. Then the screen just blacked out and I said aloud to the rest of the dead silent audience, "Well THAT was depressing as hell!" The jittery camera work made me pretty queasy to boot. WHAT was I thinking:?! A good reminder to read a review or two BEFORE going to the theatre. We took Caleb because he LOVES scary movies and it was actually PG-13. Early in to it he whispered to me "Ya 'member when I was a baby and all those bad guys came and killed those airplanes?" Yeah. I was holding back tears thinking of how beat to crap New York city has already been. For cryin' out loud! Not my idea of entertainment.

Our sweet little Kadence has moved back to Redding with her mama so as of today my life is once again my own. We miss her so much already, but I DO need to 'get a life' and they DO need to work out their own family issues so it's all good. Here are she and Caleb eating homemade waffles yesterday morning while I sucked down a medifast shake. It's no fair, I tell ya! I hate my old metabolism. :-{

Well, I think I've told you just about everything I know so don't hold it against me if I don't come back for a few days! I'll close with a pic of my last LAST (I mean it this time!) offering of vintage wallpapers I've put together for the etsy shop. I couldn't help it...I still had so much left and people kept buying the packs. This is listed at $14 INCLUDING U.S. SHIPPING. Can't hardly beat that!

My new favorite sewing tool

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Yesterday I posted here that I wanted to share a sewing bit with you. And what a coincidence that today miss PAMKITTYMORNING's post asked "What tools do you love/can't live without?" Well, currently it's this little number that I'd tried for SO LONG to avoid buying.WHY did I try to avoid buying it? I don't know...just seemed kinda gadget-y at a glance. In 35+ years of crafting all over the map I've certainly bought my fair share of CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT!!/this is crap! tools and gadgets. But I really REALLY wanted to do custom bias trim on the hooded baby towels I'd been thinking about for a while so I finallly bought one with my last order of faboo fabrics from SuperBuzzy. It really does work well...I didn't even have to read the directions. Just cut strips of fabric 1 3/4" wide for the 1" wide tool, slipped an end of fabric in the wide end of the tool and started pulling it out the other while ironing the magically perfect folds down.

So if you too have thought about buying one of these I highly recommend it. I'll never be without one again!!

The towels I've made are hooded and square, which has been popular for newborns as long as I can remember. Melissa says these that I've made are superior to the ones she received as gifts because it is 30" square as opposed to 25, and they are nice and thick, not thin and droopy. Also, when Madison was first born she was pretty small at six and a half pounds...not much meat on her little bones, so keeping shoes or socks on her was (and still kinda is) difficult. So I made these little fleece lined booties to match the towel. They are elasticized at the ankle and stay on well. I think they'll be a nice and useful new baby gift. I'm making the towels in pink, blue and green and am listing them in my etsy shop at $35 for both the shoes and the monogrammed towel.

By the way, aside from the top character fabric on the shoes, (which is, of course, from SuperBuzzy) I used Paris Bebe fabrics by Robin Mynatt. Great fabrics, great customer service. I also used their fabrics recently for curtains and a bench seat in the guest room, but I'll save that for another post. :-)

The pinewood derby

Seems the past couple of years spent being around a young boy has just been full of first-times for us. T-ball, soccer, weird 'boy stuff' in general. See, between the two of us John and I had four girls, so boys  just seem like they're from a whole 'nother planet sometimes (in a good way, of course) At a recent cub scout meeting Melissa was handed a block of wood with wheels and instructed to turn it into a racecar. So of course she promptly brought it here for Papa to figure out. John appeared to have fun with it. He bragged that he hardly used a saw at all...mostly sanded the ends down and used a drill to carve out a seat for the Legoman driver. He they (wink wink) put a lot more time into the paint and decals than anything else, and we had no doubt that it would be one of the finest cars at the race. 

Yesterday was race day, and of course John & I were there with camera in hand, ready to beam at the finish line as only grandparents can do. Here's what we were faced with at the door.

Ahem. That's some creative carving going on there! Look at the paint job on the darth vader car...it has a mirror finish! (That dad happens to be our kind-of-ex-son-in-law who owns a hot rod detail shop. No fair!)

And catch the squirrel in the log car. Haha! Only in Humboldt County! Well, at this point we still thought our little flaming banana was an admirable competitor.

Caleb's chest almost seems puffed up in pride here

Anxiously waiting (poor little guy doesn't have a clue at this point)

And they're off~!

Oh My! Tied for last place! That's not good. Here, let's try again.

Well Shoot! That's DEAD last! Okay. One more time. Third time's a charm, right? RIGHT?!!

Ahhhh....No. No luck whatsoever. We were laughing so hard I'm surprised we got these pictures taken. After three rounds of utter humiliation a couple of nice boys tried to help Caleb figure out how in the world it could've been THAT bad!

Is it the car? Might it be something to do with Legoman? While we adults were wondering the same things ourselves John up and confessed that he had 'lubricated' the axels with Vaseline. VASELINE!? "Yeah, what's wrong with Vaseline? It's a good lubricant!" Oh my my.  "John," I said. "Just because someone mentioned that way back in high school it don't make it true. And besides, I don't think they were talking about racecars! If you put a blob of Vaseline on a window and a squirt of say, mineral oil (if we're going to be using bathroom products), which one do you think will run down the glass the fastest?" Then Melissa says that when they arrived at the race that afternoon she cluelessly sprinkled Graphite on the axels as instructed, so I imagine the Graphite powder mixed with the Vaseline to make flat out SLUDGE. Too funny! And yes, John is already plotting for next year's better faster car. :-)

I have a sewing post I want to write for you and will try to come back in the next day or two for that. Here's a little preview of part of it,  as modeled by our sweet already two months old Madison.

Hey Crafty gals! Check out this contest...

Claire over at Handmade Parade has kindly invited me to be a guest judge for a Vintage Pillowcase Crafty Challenge. The winner will receive a $50 gift certificate for fabric! Run on over there and get the low-down. It oughta be a lot of fun! I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.

(Bribes are welcome and appreciated )

Valentine pedestal plates

Hi friends- Between watching grandchildren and crafting I haven't much to blog about lately. Thought I'd let you know I've put a batch of decoupage pedestal plates up on etsy, just in time for Valentine's Day. I've a feeling this one won't last long.

I couldn't hardly believe my luck when I found that cherub base! I love putting these plates together, and I hope that some of you may love them, too. :-)

Anyone who's been crafting long at all..

has said to themselves at least once, "Well, I guess I won't be making these for sale!" because the item just took so stinkin' much time or the supplies were too costly that you couldn't begin to get your money out of it. Right? Well, I've found a solution (other than giving them to friends and family like I usually do). Let the items sit doing nothing for a year! The tricky part is to be lucky enough to come across them in time if they're holiday themed. This weekend I happened upon these fabric valentines

and these paper ones

that I'd made last year just 'cause I felt like it but THIS year I have the etsy option AND I've all but forgotten the time that went into them...now I just want to find them good homes! (okay, AND make a little money from them). ;-) go take a peek!

How the felting went and a new quilt

Well, I'm afraid my felting report is not very favorable. First of all, when you hear that something shrinks up to 40% you may not think that sounds like a lot. Well, take my word for it; it's a lot! A ladies size Large sweater came out so small it may fit a one-year old. So now you've (I've) paid eight to twelve dollars for a 12 inch square of felt! I sure am gonna be extra sure on the project I choose before I start cutting in to these pieces! OH. And the washing machine died. The repairman (or I should say; undertaker. He charged $69 to pronounce it 'dead') said the piles and piles of steel wool type lint that ended up clogging the filter was just coincidence to the bearings that froze up, but still; I'm not happy about it! I'm putting the felt aside for a while til I get over the initial trauma of it all. ;-)

An ongoing creative goal of mine is to see how many different quilts I can get out of this little scraps box.

This quilt

and this one (both made last year)

come to mind as finished ones that have been created from The box. More recently I'm using these scraps to make a foundation (paper) pieced pattern called Rocky Road to Kansas

...

I love a lot of things about paper piecing. Mainly the precise results you end up with

But you can also go crazy and kinda 'off the lines within the lines'.

I really had a lot of fun sitting there in my little nook last night, mindlessly sewing away while watching a really young John Travolta and Debra Winger in Urban Cowboy. Good Lord, how was that 28 years ago!!??

Finally a purpose for itchy sweaters

Well, if I can just get the 3 pound jar of pistachios polished off and the sampler box of Jelly Belly's Melissa always buys for me (and somehow, I am always surprised!) eaten then I'll be off to a good start with my new years' resolution. At least between these noshings I'm eating vegetable soup and boca burgers. ( I feel like Winnie the Pooh--I have a rumbly tumbly!) I went to the bookstore with John a couple days ago and just when I thought there wasn't a single magazine worth coming home with me I spied this

I'd just recently decided that I personally *need* to eat real food...not made-in-the-lab foods like I KNOW work for weight loss, but not for the long run which I think works best for me.  Besides, Clean Eating just sounds good, no? Apparently it's the first ever issue and it's dang cheap when you subscribe ($1.25 an issue). The best part was there probably weren't 5 ads in the whole thing. It's all recipes and pertinent articles. You can order it here if you don't see it in your local bookstore.

Okay. Commercial over. :-)

Yesterday we took our favorite boy in the world in search of snow.

We drove less than an hour. This picture is really misleading, as it was simply a patch by the side of the road (last week probably would've been a great time to go), but it's still not too hard to please this 6 year old boy.

Every time I see that silly hat on him I think of Elmer Fudd and say "We're going to hunt some waaAAAAbit!" Travis, whom Caleb is apparently trying to emulate, does not find me amusing. Imagine that.

On to the title of today's post; I got Betz White's new book on felty projects, so of course I had to go to every thrift shop in town in search of dry clean only wool sweaters. MAN, I'm 'bout sick of reading neck labels! I can't seem to find the pretty pastels that she shows a stack of, but I did find a few. And they weren't cheap, either. Really kinda makes my butt hurt shelling out that much money for sweaters I've spent 50 years avoiding. But it's for the sake of 'art' and that's always a good cause. Maybe I oughta start going to yard sales again. Hmmm. More likely; maybe I oughta start having yard sales again!! Okay. Off to toss 'em in the wash and watch the felty magic happen!

OH, One more thing: I'm doing another limited run (seven sets of each) of the monogrammed towels that were so well received a couple months ago. You can get them here!