Buy Now Button Fixed

PayPal finally got back to me about fixing the BUY NOW button on my Hotcakes site. I still have a dozen of these scrap bags left and the price includes first class postage inside the US.

Food Frenzy

So I'm in Publix doing the last minute holiday provisioning. It's the baking stuff aisle and for a full two minutes I am looking for the paper thingies that get baked around cupcakes. A young woman stocking shelves on the opposite side of the aisle senses my need for assistance and asks what I am searching for. I opened my mouth and for an instant realize that I don't know what they are called. It's not Alzheimer's - I never knew what they were called in the first place. Without any other thought process I blurted out "cupcake panties". The look on both our faces must have been the proverbial priceless. In a heartbeat, she got my drift and plucked a small container from an obscure corner of the display. Made both our days I suspect.

Webwork

This is not a sane way to spend a sunny day off! I started the morning fifth in line the newest of the Gwinnett County tag offices finding out what became of the renewal sticker for our pickup and getting new plates for Colin's car. Oh the joys of being the family CFO. Compared to my near-arrest at the New York DMV, which is all the bad, evil New Yorker jokes rolled into one, this was a piece of cake for breakfast. Then I made the unsound decision to spend three hours pushing pixels and html code around to update my website for the first time in nearly two years. NO - I have not finished the gallery and I probably won't today. My brain is fried so I am going to the park to walk and then spend the rest of the day in the studio. All criticisms welcome.

Loose Ends

Cleaning the studio goes forward with the occasional diversion to finishing a UFO. Imagine, making time to sew on sleeves! This is a dye print with painted accents stitched with gold metallic thread. It's stiff as hell and miserable to sew. Finished I'd say.

the Best Gesture

Rummaging through all the scraps has worked it's magic. I'm improvising at the machine again. When I was in NY I promised my Mom some recent photos of the family and realized that with our busy lives, getting everyone together for a picture will have to wait for Thanksgiving. I could throw large hunks of turkey on the floor and not hope for such a pose of domestic bliss but here it is, warm in my imagination, the Lacativa family. This one is for you, Jimmy.

Sale!

I should be flogged for spending the entire day folding and sorting the jungle that is my studio and have only put a minor dent in things. I'm putting these (and 20 more like them!) quart-sized bags of scraps up for sale on my HOTCAKES site. Treatchaself niiice and spice up your stash.

waterworld

Yesterday, Jan Thompson and I went to see the biggest and best tourist attraction in Atlanta, the new Georgia Aquarium. There's a commercial for the GA on local TV with a woman standing in a darkened room looking up at something with her eyes and mouth opened wide in amazement. You could see that expression almost everywhere you turned. My jaw is still aching. I'm almost glad that, after a dozen bad shots, my camera called for new batteries so I gave up on trying to capture images and concentrated on taking things in directly. This turtle was flirting with everyone she made eye-contact with. Below is a cuttlefish. The acrylic tank and water was so clear that I am certain that the creatures inside could see us at least as well as we could see them. The cuttlefish seemed to be intrigued with our hands which vaguely resembled them. It made me want to paint eyespots on my knuckles so I could communicate with them better

A Witches Work is Never Done

or "Why I Carve Really Scary Pumpkins". Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. Now I realize that it's because it was chock full of tradition when I was a child way before Hallmark and Walmart got their hooks into it. My mother made our costumes and the one I remember best was a cat costume. The details are sketchy but I think she converted one piece stretchy pajamas with RIT and a fat, stuffed, black velvet tail that I'm sure I remember hitting my sisters with. She made candied apples that kids came from miles around to snag and there were always a couple of houses in the neighborhood that we just NEVER went to. Too spooky, too much in the spirit of the holiday, all year round. Frankly, that's how my house appears to me, dark and forbidding, and only the brave kids come creeping across the lawn for treats. The stuffed ghosts hanging in the trees may have festive, lunatic grins but if I were a kid, I'd pass on this one, thanks anyway.

Disconnected

I just spent a very interesting weekend fully disconnected from live input - no cable TV, no internet and (because I switched to Vonage - that's Effing Vonage according to my husband) no telephone. Last week the power company decided to prune some trees and did something to the wire that brings all our technology down the hill. At least they made sure we still had electricity, the sports. We live in a HOLLER - that's southern for "I don't care who your carrier is, your cell phone won't work down down here"- and continue to communicate at the whim of Comcast. I got the "Big Muddy" sewn together according to an actual paper mockup that I spent hours fooling with but now that it's up on the wall, I see that using that strong brown to bring some of the blocks up to size has caused design issues that will have be dealt with as one deals with cockroaches. Swift and deadly. Please don't ask how I know. So we talked, listened to music, cooked & ate a practice Thanksgiving dinner and watched a whole clutch of movies and some TV downloaded long ago. Did you know that at a certain age good sex will give you new wrinkles? What the hell is up with that? All and all, a lovely weekend. And this, from the back of the closet where a battered old portfolio mocks me. I made this up when I did some freelance work for a company that built endcap displays for music distribution stores. I have since confirmed that "freelance" means "unpaid".

Oh NO!! Another Postcard Procrastination Period

Just this one, I promise. There is too much else to do before I am seduced into sitting in front of the sewing machine cranking little wonders out one after another. There's lots of machine quilting to do and I finally got all the brown fabric I need to finish off the blocks for Big Muddy, trouble is, I am 99% certain that once finished, it's never going to leave my own personal bed.

Loot from MaryJo's in Gastonia

It would have been un-fibrous of me to bypass MaryJo's on my drive back from New York. It was a convenient pit stop for me and the car. Fiber addicts will admire my restraint. I only bought a few yards of some specific colors to complete a project, a few yards of an astounding fabric telling myself I'll use it for backing (sure I will) and then there was a box of remnants - 1 yard cuts of black cotton for .99 each. Did someone tell them I was coming?? Here is part of one of them discharged. I may never wash dishes with the stuff again.

Playland

I've been up to NY to visit family and haven't lifted a needle in a week. There was a new addition in the backyard. Yep, it's a pirate ship alright. Complete with gangplank, rigging and yardarms although my brother took down the jolly roger because a neighbor complained. Just wait until he puts the Christmas lights all over the mast! They are having the time of their lives with this. That's Rob, Emma, (one of the neighbors who is really happy about the USS Braine being docked at Port Useted) and Rob's boys Reno & Ryder...um, I think that's Reno in the choke hold. Even Debo joins in...

Whole Cloth Mania & Post Season Funk

This whopper has been lighting up the night on my design wall and will be for a while. I don't think I have any batting or backing large enough and I really don't want to cut it up - there's a lot of drama to play with here. Jimmy was home all too briefly but he lifted my mopery over baseball withdrawal and the QN rejection. We always find something to have a good laugh over. Quack-quack-quack, my Darlin' and thanks.