Blog-tember Four

Alternate title: First Day of School

Yeah, so that tablet. The one that hated me on sight. The one that told me I erred and was not to be permitted to log in. I was prepared this morning. I went in extra early so that I would have time to solve my sign in issues! So proud of myself! Planning ahead, I was!
I figured I’d do my circle check then tackle Tabby. (It has a name all of a sudden? Where did that come from?) Circle check done, I powered Tabby up – which seems to take an obscenely long time, so I did my paperwork while I was waiting. I opened the app, entered my supposed log in credentials, which hadn’t worked yesterday, so why would they work today. And I’m sure you can imagine my shock when Tabby accepted my log in and greeted me with a cheery “Good Morning Sue B” across the screen! So all that extra time I had allowed? Yeah, I used that to put up my revised seating plan labels, since the brilliant magnetic ones weren’t magnetic enough. But now I have cheerful yellow signs above the seats.
And Tabby continued to co-operate the rest of the day, turning off politely when I turned her (Her? She’s a she now?) off, and letting me log back in for the afternoon run. One of my younger co-workers has found all manner of cool things by investigating what all the various buttons do. She’s a millenial. I’m Gen X. We’re suspicious of new things, so it’ll take me a while to feel comfortable enough with Tabby to poke her buttons and see what all she does.

My safety patrols found the new Book Bin right off and were quite excited about it! This afternoon I think all of the books I had put out were read aloud at least once. And the Spiderman one was requested a second time, but my patrol said there wasn’t enough time.

All in all it was a rather uneventful day. Everyone was where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there, other than the idiot who ran my red lights – how, tell me HOW do you not see a large bright yellow school bus with flashing red lights AND a freaking stop sign on a narrow two lane residential street? With a group of adults milling around on the sidewalk? Apparently she didn’t! Nor did she seem to hear my horn as it blasted her with one very long blast followed by a bunch of short ones when she didn’t seem to hear the long one. Waste of my time, apparently.

Although, the funniest thing today happened with one of my kindergartens. Last year they were in junior kindergarten, and at four years old it is very hard to leave mom, and this little person wasn’t having any part of the big yellow bus. They screamed and howled and clung to mom like a leech, but mom, bless her heart, climbed bravely up on the bus, peeled her child off finger by clinging finger, and fled down the stairs while I blocked the child from following. That was last year. We have grown up some, it seems. I pulled up at the stop, opened the door, and that little tyke marched right up to the bus and climbed those stairs without so much as a look back at their parents, who were standing, dumbfounded, their phones held up hoping to capture a wave goodbye from the top of the steps.
“Well,” said mom, “I guess that’s that!”

And since it’s getting late, and I need to sleep to face tomorrow, I guess that’s that!

Blog-tember Three

Well, last evening of summer holidays. And I confess, I’m more than a little down tonight. It doesn’t seem all that long ago that I was so excited about the prospect of two entire months off! Being able to stay up late and sleep in, frolic in the pool, craft and create to my heart’s content. So, yeah. Here we are.

I went to the bus this afternoon. I have the same bus as last year – actually, the same bus I’ve had since the fall of 2020. I’ve had this bus longer than I’ve had my car! We knew there were no new buses coming this fall, and that we probably would all be getting our buses back. So why did the summer cleaners deem it necessary to remove the hook I had put up to hang my safety vest on? Luckily I had another one, so the vest is now hanging where it belongs.

I hung my leaf garlands across the roof ribs, stuck my seasonal window clings on all the windows, taped up the fall leaves above the seats, taped up my route number signs, put away all my personal stuff, and attempted to put up my seating plan. Attempted, as in, my brilliant new idea of using magnetic labels didn’t work because the magnets are too weak to cling to the metal above the seats. Sigh. Chucked that all back in the bag for later, and attempted to log into the new tablet system being introduced this fall.
It’s easy, they said. You’ll have no problems with it, they said.
They were wrong.
I powered it up easily, launched the app, and tried to log in. And that’s where it all fell apart. Your log in is your employee ID number, they said. Again, they seemed to be wrong. It would not recognize my employee ID number. And yes, I know I was typing it in properly. I have to type it in every time I want to access a pay statement, which is pretty important to me, so I know that damn number! The tablet claimed there was an error. The help button told me I could set up a new password by having a verification code sent to the phone number my employer has on record for me. Great, let’s do that. So I entered the phone number. Nope, sorry, that’s not the one on file for this ID number. Excuse me? I only have one number. So I called the tablet some nasty names and turned it off. I’ll be going in early tomorrow to put up the seating plan signs I prepared this evening. And ask for help to get into the tablet thing. Sigh.

However, after I got home and had cooled off – oh, right, I forgot to mention that it was scorching hot outside, which means it’s beyond scorching hot on the bus, even with windows open, so I was dripping sweat for a couple hours in there. Not fun. I decided I deserved McDonalds for lunch after my ordeal, and I even had a gift card, so FREE LUNCH!

And after I felt human again, I treated myself to the last sewing session of the summer and made a doll dress to match the little sundress I had made yesterday. Very happy with how it turned out! I had intended to decide what my first fall project would be, but the things I still had to do were weighing on my mind, so I dragged myself back upstairs, prepared the seating plan signs, cleaned the books Brianna and I had bought for my new book bin, cleaned the bin itself, went back downstairs for Kleenex, dug though the junk bin for my Velcro strips to secure the Kleenex box on the bus, and brought up some clothes to wear tomorrow. No more leaving it till the morning like I’ve done all summer! I had planned to shower tonight and blow dry my hair but after having to skim the pool AGAIN, and the extra activity today, I am aching, so the shower will be in the morning and the hair will be stuffed into a big butterfly clip sopping wet.

If all goes well, my next entry will be all about how well the first day back went…..or not.

Blog-tember Post Two

In which our heroine valiantly tries to catch up on everything she didn’t post in Blogust.

And she calls it:

CATCHING UP!

I had a delightful birthday month. Brianna and I went to Peterborough to visit Marion. We enjoyed a lovely lunch at a pub next to the home, followed by a visit in her room, after which she walked to the front doors to see us off – and got caught by a staff member not using her walker. She had a cane and seemed to be doing just fine to me, but what do I know.
Rianna has developed an interest in writing letters and has started a “Snail Mail Club”. I accepted my invitation to become a member and received my first letter in the mail from her! It included a couple of seasonal recipes chosen just for me. (She must not have read about my sugar and vanilla incident in my last blog post. From July. Not Blog-ust.) So I wrote her a letter back and included some stickers I had bought for her. She confirmed she had received it, but told me I would have to wait for a real letter to learn her response to them. I guess that really is the point of it after all, isn’t it.
I also received a lovely letter from Sean, expressing sadness that no one had invited him to join the Snail Mail Club, and requesting that I be so kind as to write letters to him too, please and thank you. So I did. I actually made a card – not one of my strengths, though really, how hard can it be? – for him, with green cardstock and plant paper, and put a letter inside. I was quite pleased with myself for how it looked, but I guess I’ll have to wait for a snail mail reply from him to see how he liked it. However did we survive way back when snail mail was the only way to hear from family and friends overseas? In some ways, the advent of the internet was a wonderful thing. In other ways, not so much, I think.

I cross stitched more on my AI designed snowman. I have added to the list of grievances – round balls shown in mock up are not round. They require adding or removing stitches to make them round-ish. And some of them aren’t in the pattern at all. Despite the annoyances, he is looking quite lovely and I am happy with him.

I scrapbooked. I helped Brianna with – a thing that involved scrapbooking skills. It’s a surprise for someone so I can’t say more, but we had a lovely morning snipping and stickering. We prepared for it with a trip to Michaels, which was a good thing because I wanted to buy a mega album to transfer the wedding pages into. The idea of two albums simply is not going to work. I wasn’t happy with that and I am much happier with a single large album. I have produced more pages and may be finished with it some time this year. Considering I had hoped to have it finished by now…..but as Brianna cheerfully pointed out – I’m over half-way, which is further than I was at the beginning of the summer. Oddly, that made me feel better.

I sewed. There’s always sewing. I DID use my new embroidery machine to create a heart for the bib of the pinafore referenced in my previous catching up type post. Not the last post, the one before that, from July, not Blog-ust. I’ll edit and add photos later from my phone. Then I got really creative and made a matching doll dress and pinafore! Brianna agreed that it would be a neat idea to store the doll dresses in the packages with the human dresses, so that’s the plan going forward. That way a little person can find a new doll dress matching their new dress! Then I finished off the last of the pretty print with a 12 month size dress and panties with a dusty rose pinafore (which can also be worn as a sundress). August may not have been a good month for blogs, but it was a productive sewing month!

And here we are, Labour Day Eve. Back to work day after tomorrow. Sigh. Every year I say I’m not ready to go back and I don’t really want to go back and every year I mean it just a little bit more. But I can’t justify not working and having money come in. How else can I afford my hobbies? I’ve been dragging my heels getting my stuff organized to take to the bus tomorrow to get it all ready for Tues. I made my new seating plan and the signs for it. I washed my hi-viz safety vest and it is now hanging to dry. I need to dig out my fall decorations to put up and I need to sort my paperwork, highlight my new students and decide what to wear. Ok, that last one isn’t very important, but still….

So on that note I shall go sort the paperwork, and tomorrow I will bring up the decorations right before I go to the bus.

Happy Blog-tember!

Blog-tember Post One

I received a prodding note from my daughter today.
I quote, exactly as received: “you missed august. no august blog. no blogust.”
I replied that I’d try to make up for it in September.
To which she replied: “you can’t make a pun with september though”
Followed by: “august could have been blogust”
And: “but what is september? bleptember just sounds like the cats have their tongues out”
Utterly baffled, I asked: “I’ve been making puns?”
And she replied: “no I just like making puns”
To which I calmly replied: “oh, ok”

And on going back and re-reading all of it, I am so confused.

If I wasn’t making puns, why would there have been a blogust? Wouldn’t I have called my post something utterly brilliant, like, oh, I don’t know, maybe “Catching Up”? Although if I had written a post, there might have been less catching up to actually do, so maybe I’d have named it something really creative. Or not.

Bottom line, I failed to produce a blog entry in August. A Blogust.
The world will never know what it missed.

Halfway Through Summer

I couldn’t let July end without getting in another post! I’m trying so hard to write more regularly! I’m determined to write more posts this year than last. Not keeping track ongoing, but we’ll see at the end of the year if I was successful or not. Although, knowing me it’ll likely be mid March before I realize I forgot to tally up the post count at the end of the year!

June was a slow month for sewing. After the hype of the sheet-fest, I kinda needed to catch my breath. Stephen worked a couple of short weeks, and took one week off, so I was doing more cross stitch than sewing, which was just as well. July was far more productive. I did one sundress in pink with white polka dots. I was a little disappointed with it as it looked – blah, boring, dull. I thought it would be more fun. I also did three outfits out of a $5.99 thrift fabric – who am I kidding, they’re ALL thrift fabrics, so if I mention the price it’s because I’m pleased. I mean, three outfits for $5.99! It was pink with cutesy animals on it. Really needed to be more baby than child, so I did sizes 12 months, 18 months and 2. Added lace and cute buttons and had fun. Brianna and I had been shopping two weeks ago and found several really nice pieces, and one of them was just too great to put away for future sewing – it all out demanded I make it up NOW! It’s a lime green with blue, orange and dark green jelly bean shaped blobs on it. I did one traditional vintage inspired style dress, size 18 months, and a pair of short overalls in 6 months. For the overalls I did patch pockets and the shoulder straps in orange, used orange turtle shaped buttons, and did all the topstitching in orange. Little touches that only I would notice. Well, the topstitching anyway; it’s kind of hard not to notice the orange pockets and straps!
One of the other pieces we bought that day quietly insisted that if the green got to bump the line, it should be allowed to also. She’s a pretty pale pink background with a mid-sized floral print in pinks, sage green and soft yellows, and is simply gorgeous! So I listened and today I sewed a very traditional vintage style dress in size 3. I had bought some bags of ribbon ends from Lens Mill Store and there were two pieces of grosgrain ribbon in the perfect shade of pink to do two rows of ribbon around the bottom. I am planning a pinafore in a deep burgundy which looks stunning with the pinks, but it will have to wait till next sewing week. In the back of my mind I am toying with the idea of machine embroidering a floral design on the bib of the pinafore…..to that end I have ordered a 4×4 hoop for my machine in order to have less waste of fabric and stabilizer. I have also discovered that she (the lady in the store) sold me the most difficult type of stabilizer to work with – plain, basic tearaway. There is a creature out there known as iron-on, water soluble stabilizer and I think I need to become acquainted with this creature!

So to summarize that last chapter – July was a stellar month for sewing here!

Scrapbooking – making steady progress on the wedding album. I need to let them know that there will have to be two albums because with the number of photos, if I use only one album it will not stay together well. Any more than two posts and the albums become floppy. So I think one album for portraits and one for everything else. I’m at the point where – two more layouts in the everything else album, and I’ll have to move on to portraits. So all the actual wedding is done, just need to tackle the mound of gorgeous photos they have.

Cross stitch – I haven’t touched it all week. Leave me alone. I did make it to Michaels to get the one colour of floss I finished off, so there’s that. Don’t judge me.

But hey, I baked – well, not exactly baking – cooked – no, not really cooking either. I made a food thing this morning, how’s that? I found a recipe for no bake Cool Whip Cherry Cheesecake and figured I could cope with that.
How did it go, you ask?
You had to ask, didn’t you.
Well…..I went to the store the other day and bought the cherry pie filling, cool whip, cream cheese and pie crust. Not the kinds of things I have randomly in my kitchen. And this morning I got all organized with great intentions, gathered all my ingredients and tools and began to measure and assemble.
After a brief pause to sweep white sugar off the floor – I was barefoot and the sugar felt nasty underfoot after I spilled it – I measured the first of three tablespoons of vanilla extract. As I turned to dump it in the bowl my wrist hit the mixer and the vanilla went all over the counter. And me. I took comfort in the thought that at least my shirt smelled delicious. Cleaned up the vanilla, measured more, managed to get it into the bowl with the cream cheese and the sugar. Beat it all up, nice and creamy, looking good, was proud of myself. Added the tub of cool whip, folded it in, and began to feel a tad uneasy by how – much – there seemed to be. I had done exactly as the recipe said, and it was from a real site, not an AI one.
Got my pie crust – yeah, I wimped out and bought one of the pre-made graham crumb pie crusts. So sue me. Given my sugar and vanilla incidents, it was probably for the best that I had done that! – and started to spoon the creamy mixture into it. I then had a choice. Go back to the store for another pie crust, or make one quite full pie and have some filling left over. I was not going to a grocery store on a Friday, so I filled the crust as full as I could, ate some of the extra, and spooned the rest into the compost. I figured if I tried to put the cherry pie filling on top of it at that point it would just all squish out of the crust, so I opted to let the filling set in the fridge for a bit before cherrying it. Cleaned the kitchen, put everything away and opened my Emotional Support Diet Coke.
A bit later in the day I removed the pie from the fridge and slathered the top liberally with the pie filling. It looks damned impressive, if I may say. Fast forward to tonight, when I was struggling with my sweet tooth and the lack of anything in the house to satisfy said sweet tooth. The pie is supposed to be for Stephen coming home tomorrow – I’m actually going to cook dinner too! – but I decided I had toiled hard enough that I deserved a piece early! (besides, if it tasted horrific I could throw it out and he’d be none the wiser!) It didn’t taste horrific and I am not throwing it out and frankly, I’m quite proud of myself! It’s quite tasty, very smooth, and much lighter than actual cheesecake. It’s also not overly sweet, despite the cup of white sugar. Perhaps the cherry pie filling is a bit tart and compensates, but overall it was very tasty and refreshing! 8/10 because sugar on floor, vanilla on counter and me, and needed two pie crusts.

And with that, July’s a wrap!

Catching Up

Oh, look! Another entry called “Catching Up”! I guess after the seriousness of last night’s post I need to go back to light and fluffy me.

So I’ve been off work for a month, and what have I done? Welp, sit down, buckle up and here we go.

Stephen and I rearranged my craft room to fit in the Marketplace desk we bought for the embroidery machine. I was whining to him about my chair and how the wheels lock and don’t turn. He had a look at it and pronounced it dead and told me to buy a new one. He was insistent that I only buy a chair I could test-sit in a real store. Um. Not so easy. I really wanted an armless chair and my research showed that none of the retailers stocked them in-store. So I did my research, showed him my choices online and he selected the one that had been at the top of my list. Ordered, delivered, assembled, and he’s incredibly impressed with the quality. So much so that when I suggested a second one for the new machine he agreed immediately. And so much so that when I was laughing about how the wheels on the old one – which I had relegated to scrapbook desk use only – were annoying me though I hadn’t expected them to, he all but ordered me to order a third chair to replace it. So once this one arrives I will have matching chairs at each of my desks (sewing machine and serger share). I am so spoiled.
He also agreed without hesitation to my request for another glass mat for the embroidery machine chair to protect the carpet.
Oh, and as if that weren’t enough, he also bought me a console table to go along the wall between the sewing and serging desks so I could get some of my supplies (think thread racks) out of drawers to be much more visible and accessible! So the two desks and the table form three sides of a square, with the table along the wall and the desks protruding out into the room.
Once we’d moved everything around it actually worked out that I gained about six extra inches between the sewing maching and the cutting table, which is a huge gain! Very happy about that!

I went to Ottawa at the end of June for a weekend and the wedding cross stitch was ready for me to take up. Cutting it close though; I was able to pick it up on my way out of town; she had literally finished framing it the night before! Had a lovely visit with the kids and they hung their gift right away!
I think I finished another page of Autumn since I last mentioned it, and I have set it aside to work on a summer project – the snowman I referenced in yesterday’s post. It’s a beautiful picture, AI aside, and I’m loving seeing it grow!

We went down to Nova Sewing Center on Ottawa St N in Hamilton to buy the embroidery machine. I haven’t been to Ottawa St in years, and was thrilled to see some of the old stores are still there – Montreal Textiles, European Textiles, Consumer Textiles – I knew them well! Going into Nova was a huge step into the past for me. It took me right back to the days of working in Lizannes. The racks of thread, the wall of buttons, all the notions – damn, I miss that. Stephen said my face just lit up as I wandered around. I was trying to explain to him how it almost felt like coming home, walking in there. And when we were talking with the saleslady about the machine it felt so comfortable, talking the language, knowing the vocabulary, I don’t know, it just seemed like an other-worldly experience.

So the Brother SE2000 came home with us and moved into its new home on the Marketplace desk and I spent a couple hours that afternoon learning the sewing part of the machine – it is both a sewing machine with eleventy-billion fancy stitches, and an embroidery machine. There’s so much – you can’t do it all in one session. Today I spent about three hours sorting the embroidery part and making my first test piece. I learned lots, only felt slightly overwhelmed, and am excited to try another piece tomorrow. I’m taking it in small bites, returning to the safety of the machine I know and love to sew and feel like I’ve accomplished more, lol. My comfort zone, if you will. I’m so incredibly happy and excited about all of it. The rearranging of the craft room, my new table, my new machine, my new (incredibly comfortable!) chairs – it’s just thrilling me to pieces! I’d be down there now if I weren’t in so much pain tonight.

Oh, yeah, the pain part. I have been diagnosed through xrays with osteoarthritis in both knees and my right hip. I am attending the pain clinic in town for regular nerve block injections to help with the hip pain, as well as working with my physiotherapist on exercises to strengthen the legs to help support the aching hip. Tylenol for Arthritis is pretty good for handling the knees. For the most part, I’m ok, just have to be careful. My hip gave out on me one day back in January when I was at the kids’ house. I was going down the three steps to the main floor bathroom and was luckily holding the handrail as my hip literally gave out and I sat down with a plonk on the steps! That was scary, and was the incentive to getting the xrays. I find if I do too much walking it bothers me a lot more. Today I ran errands – ok, I walked errands – but at all three stores I had to walk pretty much all round the store. At Michaels, embroidery floss is at the back corner of the store. The dollar store does not stock bbq lighters with the bbq stuff. Or in hardware. Or with candles. By the time I found them – on the front wall by the checkouts – I had walked the entire store! And then I got groceries. More walking. And I spent the afternoon in the craft room, which means climbing the stairs every time I need to use the bathroom. We may need to re-visit the idea of a two piece powder room in the basement.

So, cross stitch, sewing, embroidery machine….and scrapbooking. I’m working on the kids’ wedding album and having a wonderful time with it! I was hoping it would be done by the end of the summer, but I’m not sure it will be. There are so. many. photos. And they’re all beautiful!

It’s a great summer!

AI, Cross Stitch and Me

Last summer I cross stitched a pretty purple/pink/blue/teal butterfly for a friend. Miss Flutterby was simply stunning. I fell in love with the design as soon as I saw it, and knew it was perfect for my friend. I decided to use three strands of floss on 14 count Aida to make the colours slightly more intense. And for a while I was thoroughly enjoying stitching it.
Then I hit the backstitching. Lots of patterns have backstitch – it tends to accent or delineate an area – and while it can be tedious, it is usually a necessary part of stitching.
Now, this backstitch was strange. Usually it uses the actual holes of the aida, but this one had backstitches poking up through between holes, beside holes, in the middle of actual stitches – it just seemed truly weird and I wasn’t enjoying it. To the point where I set it aside and couldn’t bring myself to work on it. It went on several camping trips and all round Nova Scotia and I didn’t do a single stitch.
But by August I had to do something. I wanted this done for Christmas after all. I took a long, hard look at the pattern and at the work I had completed. I came to the conclusion that much of the backstitch simply was not serving a purpose. It wasn’t showing up, it didn’t accentuate anything, and it was frustrating as hell to do. So I gave myself permission to – gasp – not do it. Now, some of it was fine, but it was dumb bits that went round spots on the flutterby’s wings but couldn’t be seen that were annoying. So I picked some of it out, left the ones you couldn’t notice and carried on only doing the backstitch that truly mattered. And the project became fun once more and I finished her, got her framed and gave her to my friend, who loved her.

In retrospect, and having learned a few things about AI in cross stitch, I suspect that evil backstitching was the result of AI either in the original design or in the transfer to graph. I wasn’t overly concerned about it because I have the skill to adapt relatively easily, but it doesn’t seem fair to land that on someone who isn’t as experienced.

I know there is a lot of discussion regarding AI in art, and I’m not totally sure where I stand on it. I get why actual artists object to AI works being sold without warning. It’s not fair. Someone spends a lot of time, effort and money learning and developing their skills as an artist in hopes of making money, and along comes a computer that does what they do faster and cheaper, and passes itself off as true art. But “real art” costs money and not everyone can afford it, so decorating with AI can be a cheaper option for some people to brighten up their surroundings. I think there is room for both true art and AI to co-exist, but I definitely think AI should be required to be labeled as such.

I think this because I have bumped my nose up against yet another AI involved cross stitch pattern that I once again fell in love with at first sight. It’s from the same designer on Etsy as the flutterby, which should have been my first warning. My second warning was showing it to Sean (who has a Masters degree in AI) and having him comment that it was probably AI. I looked very carefully at the pattern page shown online and didn’t see anything untoward, so I decided to take the chance. I ordered the pattern, downloaded it, printed it out and went over it with a fine tooth comb. No backstitch, so that’s good. No fractional stitches, so not going to mess me up that way. (I can do fractional stitches no problem; I just don’t like them much!) So I went ahead and kitted it. Cut the fabric, started pulling the floss – and that’s where I found my third warning. One of the colours called for is a variegated floss. Which means it transitions through several shades in one floss. I was suspicious. How can you control the shade you are getting with the variegation when you’re working with a design where shading MATTERS!? Against my better judgement I bought the variegated floss and got started. The first couple spots where it was used were fine, and it blended in nicely, so I was feeling better about it. But then it was called for in a section of intense shading of minty-aqua colours, and the dominant colour in the variegated is dark blue. Um. No. Not working for me. I looked closely at the section on the coloured picture of the completed design. Nope, no dark blue in there. What to do? Sigh. So I pulled the colours that were used in the section, called up a colour palette of DMC floss, found a shade that would work between the others for shading, and trudged down to the craft room in hopes I had it. I did. I restitched the area in the replacement floss and am very happy with how it looks! I have banished the variegated and replaced it with a colour that blends.

No actual designer would miss something like that. I have never seen variegated floss called for in a project with a great deal of shading. It just can’t work.

And when I was closely looking at the colour picture, I noticed a couple other oddities that I hadn’t previously. The snowman (of course it’s a damn snowman, but I don’t collect snowmen!) in the picture has soft pink shading in his cheeks and there are about 12 shades of colour in his carrot nose. The actual graph design? No pink cheeks and two shades in the nose. Now, he looks just fine without pink cheeks, and his carrot nose is delightfully carroty with only two shades, but I have to wonder how many other stitchers would be upset by those differences? I have the skill and experience to change what doesn’t work, but would a novice stitcher just go ahead and use the variegated floss and be very disappointed that their flowers weren’t shaded properly? Nowhere does it say that this is an AI design and thus may have discrepancies.

And that’s my point.

AI and art can co-exist. AI cross stitch patterns can be stitched. The art is in the stitching, and I’m definitely not AI. But there should be a labelling requirement. It’s not always easy to tell if something is AI without digging deeply and that’s just wrong. I shop frequently from an established cross stitch design company that specializes in turning art into cross stitch patterns, with permission, of course. They have started using AI to design some of their own works, but every single one states in the description that it is designed with AI. And that’s how I believe it should be. AI is a fabulous tool, but it isn’t perfect; it makes mistakes, and some of those mistakes – atrocious backstitching, and variegated floss for shading – have the potential to turn someone off a hobby permanently.

AI needs labels.

And just so you know….here are the snowman screenshot and the finished flutterby:

Middle of June? HOW?

I feel like I’m just kind of flying in to say at least SOMETHING here! Life seems to have been so busy, but I’m honestly not sure just – HOW!

The wedding wreath is at the framer and we should have it back in time for me to take it to Ottawa, as I have decided to go up for a weekend visit as soon as I am done work on the 25th. I’ll drive up on the 26th and home on the 29th. Looking forward to spending a weekend with Sean and Rianna!
I finished my ninth page of Autumn and will move on to page ten today! Yay!

The sheet – the never ending sheet – is finally all used up!!!! I got six, yes SIX outfits from one king sized sheet, for which I paid $5.99! I’ll see if I can somehow add photos from my phone later.
But the sheet has also sent me off on a tangent – I had enough fabric to make a dress for an 18 inch doll! Why an 18 inch doll? Because in my pattern stash I have patterns for clothing for 18 inch dolls. Why, I don’t know. What I was thinking when I got the patterns, I don’t know. Back when I worked in the fabric store (1980-1990, literally the entire decade of the 80’s!) we were given one free pattern each month, and sometimes if I didn’t have a specific project in mind I would just pick out something I might want to make someday, something that wasn’t trendy or stylish, but ever-lasting. Kid’s patterns, doll patterns, and other craft patterns fit that category. In the later years working there, it changed to allow us one free pattern from each of the big pattern companies – McCalls, Simplicity, Butterick, Vogue and Burda. I hardly ever took Vogue or Burda, but I made good use of the other three freebies!
But I digress.
I decided that it would be a good use of some of my leftovers to make doll clothes on an ongoing basis, and build a stockpile of them to go along with the kid’s sized clothing. And my inner child spoke up. You need a model, it said. Well, wouldn’t you know it, a lady on Marketplace just happened to have two lovely 18 inch dolls available for sale, both for $30. I picked up my new toys, erm, models the next day! Brianna did a wonderful job restoring their hair to brand new, and we named them Caitlin and Bayley, and I put my little sheet-dress on Caitlin, and I am so very happy! I also found some free patterns online and have printed out some basic clothing patterns – pants, shorts, tops, skirts – for future use.

Background time – as a child I had two dolls. One baby doll; I named her Victoria, and a doll that would be the equivalent of an American Girl doll now and I named her Nancy. Each doll had one outfit. One. Dolls aren’t much fun if you can’t change their clothing. Or push them around in a baby buggy. I had none of that stuff and at 6 I didn’t have the imagination or the materials to make things for them. Mostly, the dolls just sat in a corner. So I suspect six-year-old me is excited about playing with – erm, having dolls to model my clothing.

In other news, I have decided to purchase an embroidery machine. I want to up my game in sewing. I see so many videos of machine embroidery and I’m sure I can a) master it and b) learn lots in the process. So I have chosen the model I want, and have just kind of put that on hold while I organize my sewing space to receive a new machine. I found the perfect desk on Marketplace for $30, and as luck would have it, I had exactly $30 cash in my wallet that day! So Stephen and I went over to pick it up, and it is now sitting downstairs waiting for its place to open up. I made the hard decision to let go of Stephen’s old small couch and ottoman in order to make room for the new machine. It’s so very comfortable, but I hardly ever actually sat in it. It was becoming a space to just stack stuff on….not good. So the couch and ottoman left this morning, going to a new home with a friend of mine, and I can now plan the space anew! So that’s very exciting!

And in scrapbooking news, I have begun the wedding album! Well, I have the first page done. But that’s always hard for me, so I’m super happy with that! Brianna came over one morning and we baked chocolate chip cookies from her Grandma’s recipe book, and while the baking part was happening, she helped me sort and organize my massive quantity of wedding photos! We sorted them all and I wrote out a list of the sections/layouts in the order we think they should be in the book, and all the photos are in the right order, so it should be easy to progress through them – once I get to working on it again. I first need to clean and organize my craft room…..

And on that note, I shall sign off. Nine more days of work and then the fun begins!

And lastly, the doll dress…

And here we are in May already!

Counting this week, there are only six weeks of school left! Oh glorious summer! When every day is a sleep in day! When every Stephen-work-day is just like a weekend day for me! I’ll get so much done!

Well, maybe. Likely. We’ll see.

Doing well though! The wedding wreath is all finished and I washed and blocked it yesterday so when Stephen comes home we will take it to the framer and collaborate, as we do incredibly well, on the frame and matting! I have returned to work on Autumn, completed a page last week, and have moved on to another page! That makes nine of twenty five complete! I have a couple of little projects, gift items, I need to order the patterns for and do up, and I have a stunning snowman planned as my summer cross stitch. I don’t collect snowmen, no, I’m just stitching this one because it’s gorgeous. I wonder if one can insert a link here still. Everything’s changed so much since I used to do this regularly. Let me see….

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1739478292/blue-snowman-counted-cross-stitch?ref=lp_mix_and_match_bundle-3&pro=1&dd=1&mnm=1&logging_key=3cc326821eaa3364800b2b82e1f52121e83e2784%3A1739478292

Hmm. I wonder if there’s a different way. Oh, look, I can’t delete that. Further investigation is required here but at least the link will (should) take you to the pattern for my pretty snowman.

I was a busy girl and sent ALL my photos off to the printer over the space of a week at the end of April. I sent so many orders, I forgot how many, and only when I was sorting and organizing them did I realize all my summer photos, including Nova Scotia, were missing. Yeah, I had forgotten to pick them up. But it took cross-referencing all the photo receipts I had with my Visa statement to discover I was missing that one! But I have them now and they are all sorted and awaiting scrapbooking. I plan to start with the wedding. I have promised the kids an album but am finding it a bit daunting to organize the photos and actually – start. I need to just sit down and jump in and then it will all fall into place. I hope.

But I’ve been a bit busy lately on somewhat of a side quest. After seeing loads of shorts and reels about brilliantly creative people turning old linens into clothing, I have started to poke through the tablecloths, blankets and sheets at the thrift store. Brianna thought it was bad when I spent ages pawing through the fabric – imagine how the poor thing feels now that I’ve added sheets! (Although, on our most recent thrifting trip she told me that since she read my last blog post she has decided that she no longer has any need to try to prevent me from buying fabric – in fact, she helped me sort through it and we found froggy flannelette!) I did find a gorgeous pale pink and sage green floral sheet, seemed brand new, excellent condition, ideal print for little girl’s wear, so I bought it with the idea of seeing how many things I could make out of one sheet, with the addition of contrasting coloured broadcloth from my stash (also thrifted). I hadn’t noticed the damn thing was a king size sheet, or I might not have been so blase about it.

“This is the sheet that never ends,
It just goes on and on my friend,
Somebody started sewing it,
Not knowing what it was,
And now she just keeps sewing it
Forever just because……”

Yeah, so there’s lots of fabric in a king size sheet. And you gain 8 inches if you unpick the hem at the top. Like I needed 8 more inches of it! I started with a sundress, moved on to a dress with a double collar, popped into the infant department with two tops (one long sleeved, the other short) with contrasting panties and corduroy pants, and I’m now working on item number five which is a dress with a scalloped collar, scalloped overskirt with an underskirt in a solid green. And there’s STILL fabric left! So far I’ve done sizes 8, 6, 6 months, 12 months, currently working on a 4, and I think I can get something in size 2 out of what’s left. If I do have grands, they’re gonna hate this fabric by the time they outgrow these things! Though I must confess, given the price I paid for the sheet, I don’t really care! Five outfits for $5.99 is exceptional value, I would say.
Moral of the story: if you buy sheets for sewing clothing, do not buy king size unless you are doing adult sizes….just sayin’.
EDITED TO ADD: After reading this to Stephen, he is quite insistent that I stress that this was not a dirty, yucky old sheet with holes and grime of unknown origins. It was brand new, had the packaging folds still visible in it, AND when I brought it home, just in case, it went through the washing machine on hot and through the dryer before I even thought about working with it! Now you know!

Camping season has begun and we were out for our shakedown trip last week. Everything went well, if you include replacing one of the wheeled thingies on the top of our shower door because the thingy that holds the wheel in place in the track broke. All fixed now though. Do not own a travel trailer unless at least one of you is handy with tools and basic repairs! Those things take a hell of a beating being hauled down the road! We dismantled ( by ‘we’ I really mean Stephen) the exhaust fan from the bathroom ceiling and I gave all the bits a much needed washing. It works much better now; so the bedroom fan is on the docket for next trip out. Stephen cleaned out the “basement” (our word for the pass-through storage compartment at the front) and found stuff we have no idea why we were carrying around and stuff we didn’t know we had but were glad to find. I learned that a female red-winged blackbird looks nothing at all like her male counterpart, and I collected photos of funny signs warning of various critters crossing the roads – like deer crossing signs, but snakes and turtles and toads and things. I was amused anyway.

And that brings us all up to date in my creative world. And the rest of my world too, I guess.

The Origins of:

Grandma’s Hope Chest.

As I recently started sharing photos of all the little things I make over on Facebook, I’ve understandably been receiving questions about – why? If not for sale, why am I doing all this?
I’ll state up front that I am not a grandma, nor are there any grandchildren expected, that I know of, anyway. I have no intention of ever pressuring either of my offspring to produce offspring of their own – I remember all too well how frustrating it was to have those not-very-well-camouflaged hints tossed my way back in the day! I have made it clear to the kids that what I am doing, I am doing for me, and it is not to be interpreted as a “Hey, I want grandkids!” move. If and when grandchildren arrive, it will be because their parents want them, not because their grandma does!

I started sewing when I was fourteen and the world of being able to make my own clothes opened up to me! I began working part time in a fabric store at sixteen and can truly say I LOVED it! I learned so much from the ladies I worked with and, frankly, from customers as well. It is because of one of those regular customers that my standard baby gift is a set of extra large receiving blankets.
I think I’d been there about a year when one of the other part-timers introduced me to the world of craft sales. We would sew up a bunch of kid’s clothes and other crafty things and go together to various sales around Christmas time. When she got married and left the store, I continued on my own, with the help of my then-husband. Remember the Cabbage Patch Doll craze? No, I never made those, but I made a killing on clothes for them! In fact, if you still have one, I still have my patterns, so get in touch!

I saved up for months to buy myself a serger back when they first became available for home use, and I still have that beastie today, running as smooth as it ever did. I was drooling over a self-threading one recently but when Stephen suggested I should treat myself to a new serger, I found I was unwilling to give up my old faithful. If it starts to mis-behave, then we’ll talk.

I also did dressmaking for a while, but ack, that was a thankless job. I didn’t really enjoy it – I just wanted money for the serger purchase! I used to make dress shirts for my husband, all my own clothes, many holiday gifts for others and just whatever needed to be made. And I simply assumed that if I ever had kids I would of course sew all their clothes for them.

And then I did have children. Two of them, one of each gender, so I should have been in sewing heaven, right?
Wrong.
I grossly underanticipated just how much time those small creatures would devour. I sewed the occasional Halloween costume, and a few dresses for Brianna, but mostly the sewing machine and serger sat lonely in the basement, unused. But that was okay, I thought, for when I have grandchildren I will surely have lots of time to sew for them, won’t I?
No, I won’t, necessarily. Now that I am of an age to potentially be gifted with grandchildren, I realize how much time I still spend on other things. I work, maintain the house, have several other hobbies, and Stephen and I do a great deal of travelling and camping, so when should I fit in sewing for hypothetical grandchildren? Not to mention that pesky ailments like arthritis and carpal tunnel are threatening on the horizon. Will I even be able to sew much longer? (That’s a dumb question; I’ll move heaven and earth to keep sewing!)

I was downstairs one evening a few years back, sorting and cleaning and purging, and I looked at my box of childrens’ patterns. I had kept every one. Just in case. I also looked at my bins of fabric, most purchased over thirty years ago in anticipation of being turned into little clothing. And my bags of lace, ribbon, trims, collars, and sew on appliques. Whatever should I do with all this stuff? And then, just like the Grinch, I got an idea. Just a kernel of an idea, really, but it grew. Why, I asked myself, why can’t I use all this stuff up and just make whatever clothing catches my fancy and put it away in case I actually do have grands someday? I could just – have fun. And clean out the basement in the process.

So I started. I sorted through the fabric, chose one piece I really loved, and matched up an adorable pattern with it. And I had perfect buttons for it, and a lovely lace collar, and it turned out simply charming and I was as happy as could be, because I had used up some of my stash and had a little dress that perhaps someday a potential grand could wear. And I chose another pattern and another piece of fabric, and made another one. And that’s how Grandma’s Hope Chest began.

And somewhere along the way it changed. It became less about “using up” and more about re-discovering that love for the creativity of sewing that I had lost somewhere along the way. I reminded my fingers of old techniques, and learned new ones from YouTube! I used old patterns and fabrics, and started to find new ones in thrift stores! I realized I can still sew a 5/8 inch seam allowance even without a guide. My fingers remembered exactly how to feed elastic through a casing, and I learned new ways of securing elastic from a Facebook reel! I challenged myself to learn to use snap tape for the inseams of baby-wear, and did so, thanks to YouTube! And I am loving every minute of it!

A real high point for me comes when I dig through tins of buttons owned by my mother, my grandmother, and my great-aunt, and find the perfect ones for a little dress or romper! I store the clothing in individual large Ziplock style bags in bins according to size, and each garment has a tag with the size, date made, fabric composition, washing instructions, and any pertinent details, such as “buttons on back were from the child’s great-great-grandmother’s button box”. I think they should know that. And if I’m not here to tell them, they will.

When I first started, it was all about the ‘using up’, and Brianna had strict instructions not to let me buy fabric in thrift stores. She tried, valiantly even, but was often unsuccessful. And you know what? I’m glad she was, because that has let me develop my new outlook on this hobby of mine. I’m doing it for ME, because I LOVE to sew, I LOVE to create, and it makes ME happy! I may never use all my stuff up, but that’s ok; it can eventually be donated to thrift stores to make someone else happy! And if I never have grandchildren to wear the things I make, that’s ok too; we’ll just have a massive clothing sale to provide my children with an inheritance!

And so I sew on.

And that, my friends, is the origin of Grandma’s Hope Chest.