Fashion advice and my favorite kitchen gizmo....

"Mom? Does this basket make my butt look big?"

I recently purchased some new catnip from the place where I get the buckles for the cat collars that I make our kids. Man, it must be some seriously good sh!t! lol I caught Beeswax pulling the packages of batteries out of this Longaberger basket this morning, in his quest for a fix. I'm talking packages of D cells! The heavy ones! I keep the catnip in there, with the lid down, but he wanted in and he wanted that stuff NOW. So I gave him some and put it away and he went after it again. Then he wanted in the basket. *snork* We were cracking up, watching him. He's so funny.

Nosey Parker wanted some too and after Beez vacated the basket, she climbed in. A slightly better fit, but not great! Daddy brought Beez a bigger box.


I have to share with you my favorite kitchen gadget- the Sunbeam Egg-cetera. I've had this forever, I just love it, it makes the best poached eggs. You put some water in the bottom, up to a certain line and plug it in, when the light comes on, they're done! And isn't it cute? The little egg shape just cracks me up, no pun intended. One egg on a half of an English muffin and I'm thrilled at breakfast time. It'll do hard boiled in the shell, too, if you want.


Cute, huh? I hope it never dies, I'm sure they don't make it anymore.

And finally- you all know about Nosey Parker, the white kitten. We also have a black cat, Sammie, short for Sambuca. Well, he's the only one that will play with her, the other boys have each other and that's all they want. They wouldn't play with Sammie either, so when we got NP, he was kind of happy, until he learned how tough she is and relentless! lol She pounds on him all the time, but sometimes he likes it. Anyway, when they're together we call them Salt and Pepper. And when she's beating him up, we change the names again to "Assault and Pepper".

Somedays, I feel like I should call the cops on her, she's mean! Poor little Sam, he's been known to scream like a girl and he goes on and on about it. rofl He's got super thick fur, though, so she's not really hurting him.

Fun and games at our house. Stoned out cats and kittens and wrestling matches. It's pretty entertaining sometimes!

I just can't have anything nice anymore!

About 25 years ago, my husband gave me the coolest birthday present- basket weaving lessons. I loved them, learned all the basics and all about different supplies and then I bought some books and branched out on my own. This basket was the hardest one I ever made. I had to mold the spokes to the handles and then let them dry in order to form the nice round, square shape. I think it's called a Margaret Basket, but I'm not positive anymore. It looked great, I dyed it green after it was all done and it served us well for over 20 years until some big doofus stuck his big fat foot thru it!

It was partially my fault, I left it on the floor and it was dark. I knew it was there, but I guess he didn't. It still worked, the holes were mostly on the sides, but it was bothering me and he felt awful about it. So I fixed it! I had a lot of twill tape in stock so I wove that thru the bad spots and voila! It's better. Not perfect, but better. And the poor thing is very brittle. Hopefully I bought it a few more years of gentle use.

Because our old dog is having a few problems and needs to wear a "bikini" with Poise pads in them, we have to keep the pads real handy. I got tired of them being out in plain sight all the time, so I broke into my Fassett materials and made this.

It holds both size pads that we use and hangs on the wall, up out of the way. And it goes well with the wall color and other things in the room.

A simple project, but quite needed and rewarding.

Directly behind you as you're looking at the new bag, is this-

I've been pretty busy upstairs this week- I'm making more of the coffee cup organizers that I sell in my shop, I am down to only 3 all of a sudden. I'm making some to match the sewing caddies for those people who like sets to match. People like me! lol

Home repairs and a finish....

First the pretty- I made a purse for a friend. Jennifer doesn't sew or quilt and HATES going into quilt shops because she says she feels like an imposter. (Probably feels like I did the day I had to go into a Junior League meeting to pick something up- 50 beautiful young women in power suits and I was in my work jeans, sneakers and a t-shirt.... lol, I wanted to crawl under a linen-draped table!) Anyway, Jennifer sucked it up and went to her LQS and picked out the fabrics and sent them to me. LOVED them, so pretty and spring/summery! This purse is from my original pattern, The Parker Purse, only it's a bit bigger than what I usually make. Jen hauls more stuff around than I do, but I'm starting to find my little ones just a bit too little, so I make myself one like this.

Anyhoo- a batik for the exterior and a Jane Sassaman pink and blue dot for the interior. I gave her a cool, iridescent glass button for the closure, too.

Then the home repair- all of a sudden our electric bill jumped up by about $40 a month! What the heck!? So we thought- maybe it was the water heater. We did an experiment by shutting it down for 22 hours to see what it did to our meter reading and it was a big difference. So that meant our water heater was running too much. Jim got all his big tools out and spent about 2 hours trying to get the element out of the bottom of the water heater, under the house in the crawl space. I'm really proud of him, I would have been screaming obscenities by this point but he had a smile for the camera.

Just behind him in the first photo, the ground drops away and there's a ditch about 4 feet deep. (That's where we're heading in case of a tornado!) The garage is on the other side of that wall. Anyway, not much room for him to work in.

He ended up having to cut a bigger hole so he could get the pipe wrench in there, that element did not want to come out. It was to the point where I was about to go shopping online for a water heater to replace this 20 year old one. He finally was able to unscrew it and pull the thing out, though and then the built up lime and calcium/hard water deposits started pouring out with the water. He got his little copper tool and started scraping, while I watched. Usually the scraping is my job, don't why I escaped this time, but I was happy to squat there and ooh and aah over the massive quantity of it all! We have really hard water here.

He scraped out about 10 pounds of this crap. No wonder the heater was working so hard, the element was buried in it! We're going to do this once a year, now, instead of waiting for an element to go bad. Well.... we SAY we'll do it, but it's such a crappy job and it's so hard to get the elements out, we'll probably wait as long as we can. Procrastinators Unite! So here's how we spent our Monday afternoon. I hope our next electric bill is much lower.

The Doll Quilt Swap was a success!

Yesterday, I received the most wonderful package in the mail- it was the doll quilt that was made especially for me, by Christina, The Sometimes Crafter. I was so excited! I had ordered some fabric online so when I got the package, I just assumed it was my fabric. When I noticed the fabric was wrapped in tissue, I got suspicious and when I saw little cat faces peeking at me, I was bumfuzzled- I didn't remember ordering any cat fabric. Then it HIT me! It was my little quilt and I knew exactly who had made it for me and what the other side looked like- it is the coolest pineapple block and it's so me!

Included in the package was the most lovely notecard that she made herself with a great owl on it. I love owls, too! And a long, handwritten note that I read aloud because Jim was standing next to me, wanting to know why I was so excited! Such a sweet, personable note, too. And she had noticed that I was a very active member of the swap, which was nice. Of course, some people probably wished I'd shut up a little, I was into everything like a rotten little kid! lol

Also in the package, in its own little glassine envelope- a sweet little month-by-month calendar with the most exquisite photography- the top of each month has a close-up photo of something to do with sewing- either fabric or thread or binding, a tape-measure, etc. I love this so much! I really enjoy things that have "parts" and this set has 13, man, this is so great. lol Really, I was giddy over this calendar. And then to ice my cake, Christina- a fellow pirate aficionado- sent me a fat quarter of some really cool Japanese pirate fabric!

Wow. She is a girl after my own heart! She nailed me- knew what I would like, made it happen, sent it all on time, added goodies and the sweetest note ever and I am just still over the moon with it all. Big, huge thanks go out to Christina, the sweetest, cleverest and most talented young woman I've met in a long time! She couldn't have been a better partner for me!

I have hung the little quilt by the back door where we'll both see it constantly. It looks outstanding! I've been needing something there and it's just perfect on the apricot colored wall. And unbreakable, which is why that spot's been vacant for years and years. It's a busy little doorway and things get bumped.

Doesn't it look great here?

And this is the quilt I made for my partner, Kristan.Ellsworth. I sent it out last Saturday, wrapped in a tube for mailing and she received it on Monday, in AZ. I was shocked at the speedy delivery time. She was pleased to get it and I'm glad. I had fun making it and searching out just the right kind of birds to put on it to give it some life. I had to go get these fabrics because this style and color of quilt was not really my cup of tea, but I liked it very much and it was hard to send it away.

So the Doll Quilt Swap is over for now, for me at least, but I'll still have fun watching to see which quilts are received by the other members. And also- I joined another little swap since this one was so fun- a potholder swap. I have to make 2 potholders for a certain someone. I have an idea of what she likes but I'm off to stalk her and search out more information before I settle down and make her something. This ought to be fun! She's got lots for me to look through, yay!

I am hereby sold on swaps, this was so much fun and great entertainment and a real learning experience for me. And it kept me inside during our long, cold winter, too!

My mum's NUTS!

Bwahahaha! Not saying she's not, but I did pick these up for her at the store the other day, since it's so hard to crack them when you buy them in the shell.


Sorry about the lack of photos of NP lately- she doesn't seem to sit still long enough to be photographed, unless she's WAAAAY up in the walnut tree, scaring us to death. I'd need a telephoto lens for that! (We ended up stretching a tarp under her in case she fell onto the rocks under it, which she didn't, but it was heart-stoppingly frightening to watch her finally come down. What made her come down? The other cats were playing under the tarp and she wanted to play, too. lol)

A method to my madness.....

It's taken me about 10 days to make these- 11 different sewing caddies for the Etsy shop. Each caddy has about 13 pieces of fabric and various assorted doo-dads involved. It took me 2 days just to fussy- cut them all out. (I cut out 14, I still have 3 to make but my fingertips are so sore from sewing on binding that I am taking a much needed little break.)

All of these were sewn with stash fabrics, I didn't have to buy anything except more snaps. I tried to make a nice assortment, not just ones that I like. lol You know, bright gaudy ones.... I threw in a couple of grown up ones, too, like the golden brown one and the Authentic black one and the light blue one.

This is the inside of one- maybe you can see why it takes me so long to make them, but I think I've finally figured out a way to streamline the process a bit.

I work on the accessories upstairs until I get to a point where there's handwork involved, then I move downstairs and watch the Olympics with Jim, or something else that we've recorded. (We really like having a DVR!) I call this "my homework." It helps keep him entertained too and not feeling so neglected.
I do turning, basting, gathering, wrapping (like on the hair elastics), etc, and eventually the hand sewing part of the binding. Then I go back upstairs and sew with the machine or iron on the fusible Velcro or do the assembly portion of the program.

When I'm working on so many, organization is important, especially because Nosey Parker is in a horrible stage right now of being kind of rambunctious and destructive. Nothing is safe from her and I can't even leave my typical piles of things lying around like I usually would.

I make up little kits for each caddy when I am doing a bunch at one time. This way I know that I have everything I need to complete the project, the kits hold the little things as I complete them and also the things I haven't used yet, like the binding, the Velcro, the cat collar buckle, buttons, I even make up little containers with all the snap components in them (not shown). Since I live 25 miles from the nearest shop where I can get most of my "ingredients", it's important to me to know I've got everything I need before I start. Otherwise I get stalled and I just hate that. I had 14 of these bags on the table and SOME LITTLE MONSTER decided they were toys and batted them and chewed on them and I found them all over the place. Now I have to hook them all together on a chenille stem and tie them to the wall! lol She's so rotten. It's not like she doesn't have 400 toys scattered all over!

And this is my excuse for being so absent lately- I've been sewing my fingers to the bone! I've got all 11 of these in the shop now, that's a record for me and gives my customers great selection, I like that. And hopefully I won't have to make any more of these for a while! At least, not so many at once.

Of course, the tutorial for this caddy can be found over on the sidebar, to the right. And a tip- if you're doing a bunch at once, group them by thread color so you're not always changing the thread. I did 3 with black thread, 3 with blue thread, 5 with brown and I have 3 more to do with black again. I hate changing thread, it's such a waste of time to me, so that's why I do it like this.

There you have a little peek into how I do mass-production. Hope I didn't bore you too much!

Lila Tueller is having a giveaway...

Of a most glorious quilt, in all my favorite colors!

I just love her patterns, her fabrics and her sense of style. She's incredible and generous to boot!

Thanks, Lila!