Yes, yes you do

I have too many hobbies. Or things I want to be hobbies... or something like that. Lets see I sew clothes and diapers, quilt, knit, spin, run (lol at that one recently) photography.. hmm I'm sure there is more but my brain, she is fried.

I keep adding more crap to my want to do list, and then I forget and dont do it. And then I add more on to the list.
The current list:
Carseat blanket
Sleep sack
Make soap
make a soap mold
Lotion bars
Mitten garland
finish knitting UFOs or frog them
stacked coin or charm square quilt
land and sea quilt for Miriams bed
Save selvedges for possible future quilt
Sparrow quilt
Lonestar
Pinwheel with parisville fabrics
pillowcase for E's bed
Diapers! Medium Diapers
declutter house

Ugh see, it's neverending. If I did half as much as I though about doing I'd well.. have a ton of shit done.

And now I leave you with the fruits of many hours of planning. Ahh Paint how I love thee...

Before and After...

Before

After


*Please ignore Snoopy's apprent dispair at the removal of the towel.

It's amazing how accustomed I had grown to having a raggy dirty old towel in my floor. For a month or so now we've had towels shoved against the base of our exterior doors in hopes of keeping some of the cold air out.
This morning E and I got to work on some draft stoppers. I cut them out and sewed them and then E and I stuffed them together. (I stuffed, she played games with the stuffing, BUT she attempted to help. <3 ) It's actually a really simple project, cut a piece of fabric the width of the doorway (plus an inch for seams) by about 6 1/2 inches. Sew right sides together, leaving a short side open then turn and stuff away. The turning and stuffing is by far the hardest part. Once stuffed turn the ends inward and sew closed. You could topstitch the other end if the mis-matched ends bothered you. For now mine are just filled with poly-fil but I'm considering throwing a little rice in there for weight. I'm more concerned with having enough rice for our planned meals so I'm in no hurry to try this out.

Oh dear..

Oh dear sweet little blog, how I have neglected you. *shakes head forlornly* So much has happened since the last posting.

My father passed away on November 26th, 2009, Thanksgiving. There are so many words and yet none.

E keeps growing and growing.

A new little one has come along, M.

And N still tolerates me. Ha Ha


I thought I might try this blogging thing again. I need a place to talk about all the things that no one in real life want to hear me ramble on about. I have a craft list 5 miles long but never seem to have time to do any of it. Hello procrastination, why don't they make a pill for you?

The last few days I have become a bit obsessed with the idea of making a lone star quilt. The IDEA of it. I'm not exactly sure how I will/would do with the actual act of it. But for now I am enjoying plotting and planning and fantasizing about all the new neat crafty things I just NEED to make it.

But in the meantime I decided to knock a few of those nagging little things of the list (post it note on my desktop.) Today I started a pair of cute little outfits for my M and another to gift to someone. The fabric for the top is in the dryer now, so maybe I'll have some finished pictures to show off tomorrow.

Warm Fuzzies

So shortly after my last post, everyone started to filter back in. My Mom and bro returned from Church and N and E came back from breakfast at his moms. The house began to fill up with noise, and I got irritable. My Aunt stopped by on her way home from church and I was admiteddly irritated with her, since she knew my Dad was sick and resting.

BUT I am an asshat. Actually she stopped by because she had asked my Mom about my Dad at church. Dad had been feeling quite shitty to be honest. The Drs had given him a pill to help with the nausea but it cost $200 for one pill. Two frickin Hundred. So my dad kept saying he would keep it til he felt worse. In their world (and mine) 200 is a ton. Anyway here he was feeling too crappy to attend church, and trying to convince himself he felt fine.

Well my Aunt came in gave him $200 and made him take the pill. :)

It gave me the warm fuzzies.

It's Quiet

Wow that word is so foreign to me I had to double check that I had spelled it correctly. We're visiting with family this weekend, and N and E are at MILs. Mom and lil bro are at church. And Dad is resting on the couch.

And here I am wanting to type something but having nothing new or interesting to relate. I just had to mark this monumental occasion. Ha Ha

Down

That's me today. I'm just down and yuck and angry and bluh. I feel overwhelmed and under stimulated at the same time.

Yesterday was my bday. It was also the day my Dad started his Chemo treatments. About a month ago N and I were preparing to go out on a Saturday. We never get out so I was fixing my hair for once. The phone rings and I sit on the edge of the tub and listen as my mom tells me my Dad has lung cancer. A lump forms in my throat but I try to remain steely and calm. I continue to calmly chat with her as I take E to her room and put her shoes on. We say our good byes and I love yous. I hang up the phone then run crying to N, my arms out stretched. It all comes pouring out in choking sobs. Why Why Why?! Hasn't this family had enough cancer? Why? E wonders in and I pretend to be fine and ask N to take her to her room to play. I cry more. and more and more. I want the past hour to disappear. I want to disappear.

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of driving to visit them every weekend and then trudging through a slow week. A few years ago when my mom had cancer, members outside of my family told me what a relief it was for my family for me to be around. I cheer them up, I am the jokester the fun one.

I am the sad clown, a painted on smile and a tear sparkling in my eye. Its been eating me. Making me angry when I'm not "performing." I've said some mean things to N. Some horrible mean things. I'm the ornery alligator, the sleeping dog, the wicked bitch of the east. Anger is so much easier than sadness. So that's what I did. I got angry. I bet if I had a lawn with kids on it, they would've gotten a stern fist shaking.

Anyway I cracked. It all came pouring out and I'm trying to deal with things as they come. And I guess that means being sad. I am sad. I still want to go back in time.

After months of sending him around my dad is no closer to answers about his cancer than I am about this time machine I'm planning to build. Final result is 3% of cancers is unknown, and this is one of them. Course of action is to treat and test, til something shows positive results.

Sigh I'm sad and don't know how to be happy. I sit, I am ...but I am not.



Oh and for my birthday yesterday I ordered a yard of sparrows. Fuck the no spend.

Yum Yum Fiesta!

So an innocent discovery while scouring a junk store led me to a new obsession; Fiestaware! So purty. Last summer my mom and I were looking for a sand box for E, and stopped at a junk store. This is not just any junk store this is THE junkstore. And for anyone that knows where I am from, it should go without saying that it was Calvin's. Though now that I think about it I don't know what the real name of the place is. Everyone locally refers to it by the owners full name. And the junk has long been piled higher than the name painted on the building. Hmm now I'm curious.

Let me paint a picture of this place for those who haven't seen it. Imagine a building with rooms randomly built on for years. Imagine none of those rooms being built to code. More or less just stuck on in the cheapest easiest way possible and making very little sense in the overall flow. (Kind of like my first Sims house.) K got it... now imagine this building on the side of a hill.. well cliff but just a cliff high enough to kill you if you fall off. Maybe a couple hundred feet. Yea that's it. And imagine that when you go inside each room has its own slant, so you windup walking like you're sailing on rough seas. K sufficiently scared enough to never take your children inside? But the catch is, he has some really great finds in there (And some things that should long ago been dumpstered.)

Well anyway, my mom and I decided to stop to see if they had a sandbox. (They didn't.) So we wondered around a bit. Well downstairs and about three rooms back, in a room that feels oddly like its about to slide over the hill, is fiesta. Each wall has 4 shelves running the length of the room, each about 24" deep, stacked with fiesta. The middle of the room is filled with old records, but I ignore them. I am there for the dishes.

I had always admired fiestaware, but put that aside because of the price. And did so on the day I found it as well. Months past and then for Christmas I got money for a present from several people, because apparently I'm hard to buy for. So one cold morning my Mom and I bundled up and went to the hole in the ground where they hide the dishes. Ha Ha

Knowing the I was going to hang my quilt in the dining area and planned to make matching placemats, I picked a few pieces that I could set out and coordinate with that color scheme. 2 teacups, 2 chili bowls, and 4 saucers was my haul for the day. And best of all only cut $21 out of my Christmas money. Well the poor dishes had to wait nearly 3 weeks before I finished my placemats, but I finally did.

And I loved it. So much so that I decided I needed to go back for more. I still had $30 stashed away from Christmas, and with very little convincing my Mom and I journeyed back, back into the mines of Moi.... umm I mean the basement of the junkstore. Once we got there my Mom informed me that she wanted to get me some fiesta for my bday so pick out what I wanted. Woots. So with some digging and thinking I wound up with plates, 4 cereal bowls, 1 large serving type bowl and a mug. This time I decided to go for colors I didn't have yet. The total this time $23. Ha I love the way the owner adds up prices, he looks at what you are holding, mumbles a few numbers knocking a bit off verbally. (exp "$3 minus 50c") I told my Mom later that perhaps next time we should get even more, since he seems to have a set price for an armload of fiesta.

This weeks haul:

And all together now:

Ahhh, So purty! I have to invite someone over to show them off now. And I have so much more to write after slacking for a couple weeks, but this post is already overly long. So hopefully more tommorow.

** For some reason my pictures are being cut off.. boo!**