Jewelry fit for a Snow Queen

Tonight I listed this gorgeous citrine and quartz set made by my talented sister Joy. It has a choker, bracelet, and matching earrings. The way the light reflects off the quartz is really neat -- makes it look like ice crystals.I was really having trouble coming up with a decent description and pricing of this set. I sew and crochet and have no idea of what's reasonable for beautiful jewelry. Luckily, my friend Yoboseiyo at Jewelry Ninja! helped me out. :o) Check out her shop for all sorts of innovative jewelry designs.

O Frabjous Day!

For the last several years we've prayed every Sunday for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life, especially from our parish. Today Fr. John announced that five people from our parish are committing themselves to trying their vocations. Two young men will be studying for the priesthood for our diocese, and one for another diocese. A fourth man will be taking his first vows as a Cistercian monk, and a young woman will be starting a life with the Dominican nuns.

This is truly wonderful! Over my lifetime we've had three priests from our parish: my brother Joseph, Msgr. Robert Coerver, and Michael Duca, the new Bishop of Shreveport. There have been a couple other men ordained, but they ended up leaving the priesthood for various reasons. We've also had at least two women become nuns. The older sister of a schoolmate has been in the convent for twenty years or so, and comes home every year for a few weeks. Sister Carol, the former music teacher at my parish school, also grew up here. However, she left the convent after about 15 years. She's been out 20+ years and I still don't know how to address her! LOL To me she'll always be Sister Carol, who taught me piano for one year (we agreed that piano was not for me), music for 8, and was my choir director for 3.

We must continue to pray for vocations. There is a serious shortage of priests in America, and the only way we will get more is by praying. You never know who will hear God's call and take heed -- it might be you!

WalkerMates listed at last!

Today I listed my newest creations, a couple of WalkerMates bags. They're great for carrying all the little things you can't handle when using a walker. I plan to tweak the patterns a little, and try some other designs as well.

The floral one is for ladies, and the blue one for men. The latter includes two elastic straps on the back for holding a magazine or newspaper, or other bulky items.

I'm hoping they'll just walk right out of my shop. :o)

Root Canal Day

Today I had my root canal, and it was a lot easier than I expected. In fact, in some respects it was easier than having a tooth filled. The doc didn't start til I was well numbed, even though he had to wait a bit to give me a second shot. And because of the "rubber raincoat" they put on, I didn't have to worry about keeping my tongue out of the way or swallowing some of the debris. :-)

In 10 days I go back for the finishing touches. The doc will replace my temporary "Blue Velvet" filling (I'm not kidding, that's the name) with a permanent one. Then it's off to the dentist for my third crown.

On the other hand, that rubber raincoat was attached to a torture device. True, it kept my mouth open without work, but it was rather painful going on and gave me a real ache in my jaw which I still have 14 hours later. :-(

The other painful part of the procedure was the price. My insurance plan will only cover about $150, and I get to pay the rest of the $1350 myself. OUCH! They don't normally do payment plans, but since I have to come back, I was able to pay only half today.

I'll probably have to have another root canal done, but it will have to wait for a year or two while I save up for it.

I took the plunge

I listed the fabric in my previous post. It's here in my Etsy shop. Now I have to wait to see if anyone is just so wild about it that they want the whole piece.

Destashing Fabric . . . . and I'm Stumped

A few weeks ago my mother and I were going through some of our boxes looking for certain materials, and we came across this piece.

It's very pretty, but we have absolutely no use for it. The little girls in our family are all too old for it now, either as dresses or curtains. I want to list it for sale on Etsy, but I'm completely stumped as to price.

The piece is 2.75 yards long by a true 45" wide, with a single 2.5" border. Any suggestions, whether for price or description, would be deeply appreciated.

Too Many Gadgets

About 5 years ago I bought a simple Babylock embroidery machine, very similar to this Simplicity machine, and this PED Basic card reader/writer device to download designs from the internet.
Unfortunately, machine embroidery software is only available for Windows, so I had to buy a PC and a printer.And a hub, since my laptop only has 2 USB ports. :-(Then I messed up and bought a pack of designs on a disk instead of a card, so I had to buy a disk drive for my laptop. It's been 3 years and I've used it exactly once, to read that disk. LOLMy next purchase was a digital camera, so I could take pictures to list items on Ebay. Before I could list anything, I learned about Etsy.com, a much better place to sell handmade items. :-) This one is similar to mine (it's hard to take a camera's picture ;p).After I started to sell things on Etsy, I signed up for Stamps.com and got this digital scale. It only weighs up to 5 lbs., but it's fine since my stuff is all very light.Earlier this week I got tired of changing camera batteries all the time and bought myself a card reader. I'd have preferred green, but the choice was black or blue. :-( so I got blue. The only downside is the cable's fairly short.And of course, there's the nearly 20-yr. old dual tapedeck/radio that I listen to while on the computer!
As I've been sitting here tonight, I've realized two things. One, I have too many gadgets. And two, I have too much time on my hands when I start taking pictures of everything I own. :o)

More Mitts in production

I've gotten lots of comments on my first set of micro mitts. Some were simply on the lines of "neat idea", but others were more "ooh, I want a set!" So I picked out some fabrics and dug out the Insul-Bright yesterday and got started.

Here's what I got done today:


The red's a bit darker than it shows, and the rooster fabric is a little lighter. (I never can get that red to photograph properly.)

I marked, quilted, cut out, and edge-finished these three sets. Whew! What a job! Tomorrow I'll get to do the easier part, binding and assembling the sets. Then it's time for a photo op before I list them in my shop. Hopefully, they'll sell as fast as the first set. :-)