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Fred

As Fred Rogers is one of my personal heroes, I was interested in seeing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood when it first came out in 2019, but by then my hearing made any movie viewing without captioning impossible. When I saw Tubi had added it to their collection of free movies I was really pleased. Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers with eerie precision, and an obvious respect for the man who influenced generations of young children. The relationship he develops with an angry, damaged journalist who comes to interview him is heart-warming but seems unlikely (if you've been around as many damaged people as I have, you know they only take advantage of kindness and understanding) but I was willing to go along with it. I simply disagree with the message of bringing harmful people back into your life for the sake of forgiveness, especially when they have not changed or stopped causing harm. Women especially are almost expected to do this as part of some faith-based agenda, an...
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Way Back

I like to regularly look back at what I was doing last year by going through my photo archive. In March 2025 I was pretty busy trying to keep my balance and calm through some tough times. This quilt made from thrifted fabric really helped. I was also working on the first granny square project I'd done in decades. I thrifted and refinished this table to serve as a stand for my sewing machines. I also thrifted the curtain that I'm currently making into a quilted tote for my calendar project this year. Seeing these photos is mildly distressing, actually. I was constantly bombarded by family drama in 2025, and tolerated a lot of inconsiderate behavior from others, which I am not doing this year. It's not that the situation has changed, it's that I finally put my foot down and started saying no to requests and activities that will result in my unhappiness. Just last night I was asked again to do something that in the past I've done out of polite...
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Food Legos

It seems that the younger generations have just discovered that you can prepare and store meals by freezing prepped and/or cooked food in silicon molds that create bricks you can nuke and eat. They're calling it the " Lego Brick trend" and marveling over how wonderful, convenient and time-saving it is. My generation is just watching this and chuckling fondly. I have always frozen foods that are prepped or cooked for later use. My mother did and my grandmother did. Now granted, mine are in reusable containers and not silicon molds, but that's the only difference. My small freezer is full of them. Here I pulled four at random to show you. I use masking tape and a Sharpie to label the contents and the date I froze them (or the date to use them by, depending on the contents.) I usually label soup or stock with the use-by date because that I keep for a while. The rest I use the date I froze it. The lemon juice on the left is 4 tablespoons (I will ...
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Again and Again

I'm currently rewatching My Little Happiness , a romance c-drama that I've already seen twice, and I have to admit it never gets old. From my first review: the romance begins with childhood friends Cong Rong (Xing Fei) and Wen Shaoqing (Tang Xiaotian). Rong is a fiesty little girl who can't stand seeing shy, chubby Shaoqing being bullied, and stands up for him. They quickly become best friends, but then Rong's father passes away, and she leaves the school, promising to return and see Shaoqing again, but never does. Twenty or so years later, a very short but quite cute Rong returns from abroad to China for an internship at a law firm, and is assigned to the hospital where the towering and now very handsome Shaoqing works as a neurosurgeon. There's a lot going on in this drama, from Rong's mom not wanting her to become a lawyer to Shaoqing's poet uncle being unable to move on after being dumped by his first love. Rong also has a rich best friend who is...
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Oh Well

What Things Don't Work Out in Reality the Way They Do In My Head Reason #999: the deconstructed canvas tote is too small for what I want to use of the curtain fabric. I'm usually a pretty good judge of size, but this time, nope. This is how long I want the tote, with plenty of space above the flowers for appliques. So I will make the bag entirely it out of the curtain fabric, which is linen and of which I have a lot. That means using a foundation fabric for the applique and embroidery I have planned, so I raided my fabric stash for some leftover muslin. The first of two panels for the tote, batted, backed and pinned. These are the embroidery threads I pulled for the tote. I'm waffling a bit about the dark red; I might switch that out or just go with the brown alone. Stay tuned to the blog to see my progress.
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Repurposing for March

For my calendar project tote in March I'm set on a theme of green via repurposing. I'm going to try to use only vintage or thrifted fabrics for the patchwork that were originally something else. My first two candidates are this tablecloth and curtain, both of which I thrifted last year. The green fabric I thrifted doesn't quite go with either of the repurposing pieces, so I might save that for something else. The tablecloth is really interesting -- probably from the seventies -- and I don't think I have the heart to cut it up (it fits my kitchen table, so maybe I'll use it for that this summer.) I have no problem cutting up this pretty curtain, so this will be my primary fabric. I found an old Bath & Body Works tote in my stash that I can also repurpose as the foundation for the tote. The first step is to rip the seams so I can get it to lay flat and see how much fabric I'll need to cover it. It's not gigantic, but I can ma...
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High School Love

The Chinese movie Just for Meeting You (badly translated, my guess is it should have been Just to Meet You ) has a delightful little old-fashioned romance between two high school students. This is very G-rated, and there isn't so much as one kiss, so you really watch it for the characters. The premise: Yang Si Huo (Sonh Wei Long), a high school boy who longs for outer space but is otherwise a slacker and a goof-off, and new transfer student Xu Nian Nian (Liu Hao Cun), a lovely, smart but somewhat mysterious girl who becomes the object of his pranks. This evolves into a close friendship as they discover they're kindred spirits, but then college opportunities separate them. A few years later they reunite after Nian Nian finds a hidden letter Si Huo gave her before they graduated. I won't spoil the rest but the ending is particularly satisfying as it reveals the mystery of Nian Nian's character and why they used this title for the movie. This is a feel-good wa...
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