Fixing Up Vera Part One

What led me to bid on a lot of Vera Bradley bags up for auction in August is a sad reality: all of my purses have now worn out and are coming apart. They were handmade by a very talented maker who no longer sells her work, too, so I can't replace them. I got fifteen years use out of all of them, so while I'm sad I think I'm pretty lucky.

The lot was noted to have "some stains and rips" so I was the only bidder, and got all seven bags for $9.99. When I looked at them I found the damage had been exaggerated, with five being undamaged and three of those just a bit soiled from use. Two were in unused condition.

The large tote had some brown stains on the inside. It looked like some kind of coffee or brown beverage had leaked in the tote.

These stains barely showed on the outside, so I treated them with Shout stain remover and put the bag in the wash with the others.

The large duffel bag had a tear in one of the outer pockets that I saw I could patch, and did the repairs in about an hour.

To see the results, stop by the blog tomorrow.

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Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Store Closing Haul

The mega Books-A-Million store over in Sanford is closing, and offered an extra 20% off on their current stock -- all sales final -- so I went over to do some shopping. Safely but sadly there was no one in the store but me the entire time I was there. The Holly Jackson novel is for Katherine, the Halloween board book is for Oliver, and the copy of Garden Spells is to keep on hand because I give that book to everyone. The rest of the books are for me. I love Anne Cleeves, and the Galbraith novel sounded interesting (the first couple weren't, but I'm willing to take another chance.) The Escape Room is by a new-to-me author, plus it was cheap. The GreenCraft mag is just a guilty pleasure. Hopefully the smaller BAM nearer to me won't close. I don't buy many books from brick-and-mortar stores these days, but that's really the last one within reasonable driving distance.

Valerean

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