To keep my promise to like the holidays from now on I bid on and won a small lot of holiday craft and cross stitch patterns and kits (I want to give cross sitch another go.)
There are a dozen of them -- two are duplicates -- and they're for a variety of projects that look like fun.
The two cross stich kits are still sealed, and one is Debbie Mumm.
Just out of curiosity I looked up prices on everything, and they retail for a total of $96.34. I paid $7.99 for the lot. Savings: $88.35.
Another type of yarn that has always intrigued me is super bulky chenille, one of the kinds creatives use to arm-knit and arm crochet. Insead of needles or a hook you use your hand and fingers. Last month I collected these four skins from my thrifted lots to give it a try (the rose chenille turned out to be smaller than the others, so I put that one back.)
It's not difficult, as long as you go slowly and try to keep your stitches uniform. I thought the hardest part was dealing with the bulk and the weight of the piece, which increases rapidly.
The three skeins I used made this finished piece -- not bad for my first try.
It makes a nice pad for my sewing room chair. :)
All of the yarn lot that I fought for is pretty fabulous, especially in value. After spotting all the pricey labels I was willing to tussel for it, as long as I didn't go over my max bid (which I didn't.) I think it's really important not to get caught up in bidding wars.
Anyway, the Christmas varigated cotton yarn cone you see here retailed for $13.05 (Lily actually bought the US company that manufactured it and moved them to Canada.) The Craft-Tee recycled t-shirt yarn has a price tag of $8.99. I've always wanted to try t-shirt yarn so now I can. The two skeins of stripey pink yarn are wonderfully soft, and although they didn't come with labels I've seen similar yarns go for $6.99 each.
Chunky chenille yarn goes for at least $7.99 a skein. Sirdar is a brand out of the UK and these skeins are being sold on eBay for $6.99 each. Country Loom runs about $7.00 per skein.
Sugar n' Cream cotton yarn is $4.49 for a ball, and Peaches n' Cream (a brand sold by the same manufacturer of the Christmas yarn cone) is no longer made. Right here in this pic you're looking at $40.14 worth of yarn.
The lot is very clean and has no odor, and was probably someone's stash. It worked out to 67 skeins and balls of yarn, for which I am very comfortable assigning a $5.00 resale value, given that at least half the yarn is worth much more. That makes a total value of $335.00. I paid $18.00 for the entire lot. Savings: $317.00.
This yarn lot I almost didn't win; two other bidders came after it. They didn't persist, however, and I finally ended up with the lot at my maximum bid.
It's more than I hoped for, and this isn't all of it -- the skeins and balls of yarn wouldn't fit on the end of my sewing table for one pic.
Here's the rest. Stop by tomorrow and I'll tell you more about it.
It's not all writing and quilting with me, you know. Last month I tried a couple of times to recreate the pepperoni bread my dad loved, using my own recipe and some ingenuity.
I blew out a seam on this loaf, but otherwise I'm pretty close. Once I've nailed it I will post and share my recipe, because even when I fail it's really good bread.
I'm also still on the spring cleaning. Last month I unloaded Kat's bins from high school, sent her the pics, and then had her tell me what to keep, discard or donate. The system is working pretty well, and by the time she comes back from the islands she won't have to do this herself.
Fabscrap contacted me about making a donation last month, as they're trying to raise the funds for their operating costs. While I was at the web site I did, and I ordered five pounds of their unsorted scrap fabric, which came a week later. If you donate at least ten bucks you get an embroidered patch like mine here.
My bundle had a few really neat surprises in it, like red and blue lace, stretch black velvet, a ghostly swatch of lining, a sample of metallic denim, and a gorgeous layered print.
Mostly it was made up of solids, including several quarter and half yards of lining fabric. I love these because they work beautifully as backings to my little art quilts. I'm also going to use a few to line some bags I make.
I got quite a few knit swatches and cut outs in pretty colors, too.
The linings are micro thin polyester, which has a very silky hand to it.
I love that Fabscrap saves even the smallest bits of fabric that the fashion industry discards. Anyway, if you're in the market for scraps, you can get five pounds from them for as little as $1.00 (it's a pay-as-you-wish deal). I paid the maximum -- five dollars -- which is still an amazing price for what I got. Thanks, Fabscrap!
I'm trying to keep my two nice cameras from becoming damaged, as it would cost a lot to replace them. For that reason I thrifted an old but barely used Nikon digital camera, and after fixing it took it along with me on a day out to test it. It did fine while we were walking around the Villages.
Lunch at Ruby Tuesday's for me was soup and salad bar.
The backstory on the camera: when it first arrived the memory card would not accept any new pics, and I couldn't adjust it with the lock switch (or taping over that.) When I put the card in my computer it wouldn't work there, either, so I suspected that had been corrupted. Because it was fourteen years old my guy told me I should have just bought a new camera and I was wasting my money tinkering on this one.
I didn't want to give up. I found a new low gb memory card online and ordered it, and when it arrived I put it in the camera that resolved everything; the Nikon itself was fine. This camera originally sold for $280.00 fourteen years ago, but I only paid $15.00 for it. If anything happens to it on our adventures I won't cry.
We scored major savings at the Russell Stover outlet store; they were selling 3 lb. boxes of sugarfree chocolates for $14.99 becase they were bloopers, aka less than perfect production mistakes. They taste the same, and they had all my favorites. (A 9 oz. bag of sugarfree chocolates usually sells for $7.82 at Wal-Mart, or 87 cents per ounce. Bloopers cost 31 cents an ounce.)
On the way home my guy stopped so I could take a pic of this old barn. It was a lovely day, and my cheap little Nikon worked perfectly.
While I sorted and meassured the fabric in my 13 lb. lot, I admired the gems, like this 1-1/2 yard cotton with a sewing notions print.
What I thought was a holiday print is actually a panel featuring some adorable snowmen.
Five pieces in the lot were more than 3 yards each, and that included a really neat crinkle synthethic with sheer organza flowers. The total is 32 yards, and I would price this for resale at $5.00 per yard, for a total of $160.00. I paid $9.99 for the lot. Savings: $150.01
A 13 lb. lot of fabric and trims arrived last month that had some nice surprises.
Along with quilting cottons there are curtains, organza, printed canvas, flannels, lace yardage and a big roll of green felt.
These two lengths of floral sheers are really pretty.
A bag of vintage seam binding, hem tape, rick rack, pom pom edging and other trims was fun to sort and admire.
A little bag of ribbons had some lovely vintage pieces in it, too. Stay tuned to find out how much fabric I got altogether, what it's worth and what I paid.
Spring cleaning is reuniting me with a lot of old projects I made for Katherine as I go through her things that we're storing while she's out there roaming the world. I designed, embroidered and hand-quilted all three of the bags in this post back in 2017.
I went through a thankfully brief black-and-white phase that year, too.
This is the bag she liked the most, I think, because she took it with her everywhere in those days. Aside from the straps becoming a bit wilted I think it's held up well.
Halfway finished on the improv slow stitch piece. I'll probably finish this in another week or two (in April, by the way, but I'm so far ahead on writing posts for the blog this update won't publish until late May.)
All the bigger projects were making me nervous, and getting back to art quilting on a smaller piece was just the thing I needed to boost my confidence.
Stay tuned to see the end result. :)
I just want to toss up a warning about the Chinese movie August Never Ends, which is well-acted but so depressing I had to stop watching it about halfway through, as I saw where it was heading. The poster for it is completely wrong; those girls should not be smiling. Also, I admit I fast-forwarded to the end to find out how it all turned out, and that was worse than what I was able to watch. This film just stomps all over romance, mothers and daughters, best friends, and fidelity, and leaves you wondering why anyone ever bothers with any of it. Anyway, you have been warned.
While I'm working on the emergency pantry, my day job, my regular housework, etc. I'm also spring cleaning as I go along. Part of reorganizing the emergency pantry was cleaning off the shelves in my laundry room directly opposite it, which I did to get rid of some old cleaners we don't use anymore and clear the top shelf for our non-food emergency supplies. You can see I had enough room leftover to store some empty gallon jugs for emergency water storage.
Today I'm planning to spring clean the downstairs guest room; I keep that ready for hurricane season, in case our nephew and grandniece need to come and stay with us. I keep it tidy year-round and we never use it, so it won't take long. I just change the sheets on the bed, dust and vaccuum. If I have enough time I might finish tidying up my office after that. Then there are all the closets, which have gotten messy and overpacked again.
Experience in years past has taught me to tackle little jobs first during spring one at a time to work up to the bigger, more complicated jobs. I've been working on an entire room filled with piles of stuff, one pile at a time. I'll show you before and after pics of that one when I finish.
I've just finished inventorying, labeling and organizing our emergency pantry supplies. The first thing I did was clear the non-food hurricane supplies from the cabinet (they're going to live on some shelves across from it) and rearrange the foods as I was labeling them with their expiration date. I was able to move almost all the food from under the sink to the top cabinet. Now anything I add to the emergency pantry will need to be labelled and placed in first-in-first-out order.
I also created an inventory list on word that will be easy to check before I go shopping, and update as I add new supplies. I have one version in alphabetical order by item, and another sorted by expiration date. At the beginning of each month my guy and I will check the expiration list, and rotate foods that need to be used before they expire into our regular pantry.
Here's how much space I created by reorganizing. This should be enough room to hold our larger items, and maybe even another month's worth of food.
I started watching the chinese romantic comedy series Everyone Loves Me to boost my spirits after the again dismal Three-Body, and it was a good choice. It's a college-to-business romance (one-sided on both sides at different times) set in the gaming industry, and if you don't mind too many coincidences you'll probably enjoy this one.
The story begins with soon-to-graduate art student Qianling (Zhou Ye), who has a huge crush on her classmate Gu Xun (Lin Yi). They cross paths at a gaming company as she ends her internship while he is hired to develop a AAA game. Although she's taking advice on how to entice the boy she adores from Campus Hunk, one of her online gaming friends, everything she does is misunderstood by Gu Xun at every turn. When she finally works up the nerve to confess her feelings he crushes her in front of their entire graduating class. Meanwhile, Gu Xun has fallen for a tough, no-nonsense extremely skilled female gamer who goes by the online handle Sticky Dough Twist (she's Qianling, of course.) Did I mention that Gu Xun goes by the name Campus Hunk online, and has been telling Qianling how to snare her guy without realizing it's him she's after? Yep.
The relationship tangle plays out as you'd expect -- both the leads discover the other's secret identity, and are horrified (Gu Xun) and furious (Qianling.) Gu Xun then pursues Qianling, who wants nothing to do with him after the way he humiliated her. They both end up as neighbors as well as working at the same company again, and eventually find ways to work out their problems. Just as they're starting their relationship, a series of problems with the game they're developing threatens to tear them apart and destroy all their dreams and hard work.
It's a fun, mostly not-too-serious romantic romp, and for once the female lead doesn't appear annorexic. I thought Lin Yi was an interesting choice as the male lead, he's definitely got a different look than most Chinese lead actors (which endeared him to me.) There are a couple of subplots in the series that are fun, and overall it's pretty well written if you don't count the coincidences. I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a romantic distraction. Available on Netflix and Viki.com.
To be fair -- and because I'm slightly masochistic when it comes to SF -- I watched Three-Body, the Chinese 30-episode version of Netflix's 3 Body Problem that I so disliked. I preferred the Chinese version, as it seemed to have less finger wagging and more story (I found out later it's also more faithful to the book.) The gender of one of the main characters was flipped, and there were a lot more characters in this one. It still proved rather disheartening. It's also very slow and doesn't get to the point as quickly.
There were a couple of outlandish bits of technology that required so much suspension of disbelief that I couldn't really accept them in the Netflix version, and they're back in this one, so they must come from the novel. No, I'm not reading the book, either. The technology is utterly ridiculous no matter how you dress it up or change the characters. Actually, the pivotal scene with one was basically identical to one of the more gruesome scenes in the American horror flick Ghost Ship. Finally there's a scene with a police officer shooting a nuclear device that is so beyond what would actually happen if that were done that I cringed a bit. Okay, that's all my gripes.
On the upside, the special effects were more interesting and involved in this one. You get a true sense of the antagonist, but also why they got there. There's one character who annoyed me from the start (the cop) and ended up being my favorite of the entire cast. I also found it startling that they basically criticized so much of the communist movement in China during its fledgling years; I never would have thought they'd get this past the censors.
I'm on the fence as to if I want to recommend this story in any form to anyone, but I'm glad I got another perpective on it. If you don't mind all the gripes, the silly technology, the disgusting scene and the depressing aspects, it's available to watch on Viki.com.
All my socks are pretty worn out, and I need more sneaker socks for walking. I decided to thrift them. $9.99 bought a big lot of brand new women's socks (and socks for my guy, and two bras, and pantyhose, and gift items.)
I've wanted to try loom knitting on a long loom. They run about $15 to $20 at the craft store. For $7.99 I thrifted one, as well as a nice lot of yarn, vintage bias tape and rick rack. I'm looking forward to making something out of the super bulky chenille yarn that came with lot, too.
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