Valerean

Since the pandemic began putting food on the table has gotten a lot more expensive. Until this last year our usual market was charging almost double what we paid before Covid-19 struck, so we quit going there and explored other options. I'm now back to paying what I was before the pandemic, and here are ten ways that helped me do it: Budgeting: I know people hate to budget, but you have to set dollar limits or you will likely overspend. Right now we're managing to feed two people for about $400.00 per month, and we eat quite well. I give myself a budget of $150.00 when we do our bi-weekly shopping. Then I give myself $50.00 twice a month for incidental purchases, farmer's market visits, etc. I can calculate prices in my head, but it doesn't hurt to bring a calculator with you and add up what you're buying as you shop. My total for the month is almost always under my budget. Sourcing different foods at different markets: I stopped trying to get ever...

I've been trying to find some old linens I can work with on an art quilting project, but everything in our local thrift stores is too big, too new or too pricey. So I placed a minimum bid on and won a small lot of vintage linens that looked like they might work for $9.99. Let's see how I did. There are fifteen different linens in the lot, most napkins, and they're pretty old, too -- I'd date them back to the 50's and 60's. They're all in usable condition, and some are hand-embroidered. One printed napkin is really pretty. So is this table topper. I've never seen vintage waffle-fabric napkins like these three. Anyway, they'll all work great for my project, and at sixty-seven cents each you can't beat the price.

When I saw these fabrics in my scrap bin I decided to make them into a book cover. I didn't really have a plan when I pieced the patchwork; I just went with the size of the scraps I had and improvised. Here's Moonstorm by Yoon Ha Lee, the book I made it for. I also embroidered the title and the author's surname in Korean on the book cover spine. It was a fun one-day project.

Back in August I bid on and won for the minimum bid without challengers this trio of silver, crystal and pearl bracelets. They arrived early last month, and I really lucked out. All three bracelets arrived in beautiful condition, and look much nicer than the auction listing pic. Pearl cluster bracelets tend to be pricey, especially when they look as authentic as this one (alas, it is faux, but a very high quality fake.) There's also not a mark on it. I found one not as pretty as mine here selling for $120.00 new. I'd be comfortable pricing this lot at $75.00 resale. I paid $9.99 fot it. Savings: $65.01. Image credit: The first pic in this post came from the original auction listing at ShopGoodwill.com.

Snowfall is a bit of a strange chinese fantasy romance drama about an abused blind girl and a philanthropic immortal vampire (sort of) set during the later Republican Era (1912 to 1949) who find a very chaste love while constantly saving each other from repetitive conflicts and bizarre clashes with not very well defined antagonists over three meteorites that bestow magic powers, all this while behaving without a lick of common sense whatsoever. I liked it despite all the script problems -- and there are many -- because it is strange and weirdly romantic at times, but not in any satisfying sense. Also, the primary antagonist (I think he was, anyway) ended up endearing himself to me and I'm still not sure why. Mi Lan (played very well by Ouyang Nana) is a blind girl who is constantly beaten and starved by her wealthy mother, who blames her for all her problems. I will put this upfront: the scenes with the mother abusing her blind daughter were very hard for me to watch, and m...

Since the end of August I have been sewing or crocheting every day. What my creative month taught me is that it's okay to work on little things, and also it's definitely okay not to finish them immediately. Here's the first thing I worked on in September: the last three patchwork blocks I bought from the junk shop. I made them into mug rugs while practicing my hand and machine quilting. Took me three days. I loved it. I'm continuing to make yoyos out of scrap fabric; as of writing this post I'm using a stack of precut squares I found in my stash, and I've made 41 in total. Have no idea what I'll do with them, but that's okay, too. It's fun and I like using the little yoyo maker. Sometimes I just pull fabrics and iron them without any notion of what I want to make, like these red, black and white swatches from the scraps bin. Dreaming while pressing is an exercise in creativity. I like accomplishing a lot, but arthritis and this y...

We made it through Hurricane Milton without harm, although I can't say the same for our trees and the roads around our home. Our niece sent us this pic of a sinkhole that destroyed a road about a half mile from us. About half of the farms and homes around us are still flooded. Power and internet are restored to our neighborhood, but with the road damage and flooding it will likely be sketchy for a few days. Most of the town has no power unfortunately, so we've set up our guest bathroom for friends to come and use to take showers so they can go back to work as we did after Irma. We'll be cleaning up for a while, and helping our neighbors do the same, but we're very thankful it wasn't worse. That was a bad one.