Has it really been a year since I last posted?

My, how time flies. I kept thinking of things to post, but always at the wrong time -- lying in bed, at work, reading the paper.

So, what's happened in my life?

-- I made a bunch of luggage and key tags and listed them on Etsy. I've even sold a few.


-- We finally buried my uncle in May. He donated his body to science, so we had to wait until they were finished with him.



-- I embroidered forty favor bags for a 52nd high school reunion. I hope I make it that long.


-- My mother is losing her memory. It seems like I spend my days telling her what day or date it is and repeating things.

-- The store manager got transferred right after Halloween, and the former assistant came back from the new store she was managing to take his place. Now she's off to yet another new store, and we're currently without an official manager. So it's a team effort right now. Upside is I'm getting extra hours because we're shorthanded.

-- For the first time in the almost 17 years I've worked at my job, a current coworker has died. We had a really nice teenage boy working for us -- eager to learn, tall (very important, we're mostly shorties :o) ), apparently happy. Note the "apparently". A week ago he committed suicide.

Here's hoping I can remember to post more often in the coming year, and with less depressing stuff.

Cool Ties Are Hot This Summer

Since the beginning of June I have sold thirty-three cool ties! The orders ranged from several singles to a priority order for six for a camping trip. My boss even bought some for friends. :o)



I list my ties in groups of six or seven fabrics. They've been going so fast I haven't been able to update the listings fast enough! On June 4, I listed two new sets and within five days I'd sold out of two fabrics. Since then I've sold out of several more fabrics, some permanently. :o( I just finished a batch of nearly 40 ties, half of them repeats, and listed the new ones.

Miscellania

It's been quite a while since I last posted, mainly because I would think of topics but forget them when I got online. So here's a short synopsis of the last few months.

January: Had a sinus infection and went a little crazy winding balls of yarn with my nostepinnes. Joined Ravelry.com and listed a few of my yarn projects.

February: Gah, what did I do in February other than not get to work as much as I'd like? I know I spent a lot of time at the Unofficial Etsy Forums, which has now been reborn as Creative Breakroom. Oh yeah, I made three baby blankets for my sister to give to new moms. And I sold several items from my destash shop, including one that went to Spain!

March: We celebrated my mother's birthday by going out to breakfast. I finished up some cool ties that had been half done for months, and bound three toddler aprons. I made sales to England and Greece, and a few here at home. Otherwise, mostly wished for more hours and worked on the computer.

April: I was cleaning out a closet and found 15 more doll dress panels and listed them. So far, I've sold almost all the Daisy Kingdom ones. I also found some vests that I plan to list. We did a major housecleaning and cleaned the carpets, so that disorganized my business area. A couple of my sisters came in to help. In the process we filled up a 6 cubic yard dumpster and still have more junk to get rid of -- not surprising when you live in a house for 50 years. My parents celebrated 61 years of marriage last week (63 if you count from the day they met). In the not-so-happy department, we got a call that an old friend died yesterday. They were friends for 60 years, meeting a few months after my parents were married. The month's not quite over, so who knows what might still happen.

Hey look! I've got my own nostepinnes!

Well, ok, they're not your regular nostepinnes. Actually, they're wooden spinning mill bobbins that have been repurposed. These are longer than most nostepinnes, which is good if you're trying to wind up a skein of chunky yarn (i.e., most of my stash).

A few years ago I started to make a sweater in Antique Homespun, but got stuck. Since then it's been sitting in my stash waiting for me to frog it and start over. I kept putting it off because winding a pull ball by hand was such a chore. Then I heard about nostepinnes and watched a video. I searched on Etsy and found these. They were longer than any others I found (7.5" - 10.5"), and a much better price. It took me a few months. . . ok, several months. . . to get around to ordering them, but I finally did it. Two days later (!!!!) they arrived and I've been playing with them for the last couple days.

My first attempt looks rather like a corny dog. It didn't help that the ball I was trying to work from was still attached to the sweater panel, so I got to fight multiple twisting strands. Unwind from one ball, wind, onto the noste, disentangle, repeat. Over and over and over.

For my second try I grabbed a hard ball of Bernat's Boa in Bluebird. Let's just say that things did not go well. It looked like I had a very small, very hard, dark blue feathery lollipop.

So today I found a small odds and ends ball of Homespun in Tudor that I could play with, and went back to the video. This time I watched it as I wound my yarn, pausing it at times to catch up. And voila! I have my first fairly flat-ended ball that will pull from the center without rolling everywhere. Yay!

Tomorrow I plan to take a shot of the sweater panel before I frog it (so I can post it on Ravelry.com), and then I'm going to try again to wind a bigger ball. I just hope it doesn't turn into a giant bagel. LOL

Phooey on Futons!

Last weekend I spent two nights at my sister's house while I attended a craft show. I was given my niece's old room, complete with a futon bed. I (almost) wish I'd slept on the floor instead.

First problem: height. The damn thing was too low, even as a couch. It was lower than my knees, making it difficult to get up and down. I don't know how my niece does it, especially since she's at least 6" taller than I am.

Next, the mattress. Or rather, the lack of one. Even with the addition of a padded mattress pad, the featherbed was not much better than a couple of folded blankets.

It was marginally more comfortable than the last time I slept on it, mainly because they'd added some plywood so guests couldn't feel the slats through the featherbed. On the other hand, I ended up sleeping on it as a couch the second night because as a bed the only semi-comfortable spot was right in the middle between the plywood panels. (Which led to another problem: having to roll over to get close enough to the edge to get up.) It felt like old times: I used to stay with them regularly, and I always slept across the middle of the sofabed to avoid having a steel bar in my back. At least in the couch configuration I was resting on the most padded part of my anatomy. LOL

If we stay there again, I think I'll bring a camp mattress and sleep on the floor.

Phooey on futons.

I want to meet you at the Fall Craft Show!

This Saturday I'll be attending the Fall Arts & Craft Show at the First Church of the Nazarene near Ft. Worth, Texas, along with my sister Joy. If you're in the area, come on by to see all my baby things and more for yourself. And don't forget to check out Joy's beautiful jewelry right next door.

The church is located at 2001 E. Main Street in Crowley. Show hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more info, including directions, go here.

Hope to see you there!

The Friday 56 -- The Best of Jim Baen's Universe

A weekly meme hosted by Storytime with Tonya and Friends.
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions on your blog or (if you don't have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog. * Post a link along with your post back to this blog. * Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

This week's book is The Best of Jim Baen's Universe, edited by Eric Flint. It's a compendium of sci-fi and fantasy stories drawn from the online magazine. The quote comes from a tale called "Bow Shock" by Gregory Benford. I went with the fifth line, since it has some very short sentences at the top.


"Andy pretty well showed there was no pulsar beam," Harkin said helpfully, "so . . . ?"