Very Inspiring Blogger Award!

Tags

blogs, politics, sewing, Very Inspiring Blogger Award

The very wonderful and talented Natalie over at Threads and Bobbins has nominated me for a Very Inspiring Blogger Award!

Thank you very much, Natalie!  I would like to think that some of the goofy stuff that I make is enjoyed by others and maybe inspires them to do some goofy themselves.  😉

To quote from Natalie’s post:

“So, what is the Very Inspiring Blogger Award?

The Very Inspiring Blogger Award is an award given to bloggers from fellow bloggers. It recognizes bloggers who work hard to keep the blogosphere a beautiful place.

Award Guidelines:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and add a link to their blog.
2. Display the award logo in a blog entry.
3. List the award guidelines so your nominees will know what to do.
4. State 7 hidden facts about yourself OR 3 things that inspire you.
5. Nominate 10 other blogger friends for the award.”

STH Hidden Facts!

1.  “STH” has nothing to do with my real initials; it stands for “struggling toward hope” and has been my online handle for years.  I struggle every day with mental health problems, but I’m always working toward becoming stronger, healthier, and happier.  I try to stay anonymous online so that I can write as honestly as I would like to about these and other issues.

2.  My past jobs have included working in Human Resources in a beef processing plant (read:  slaughterhouse) and writing logic questions for the Law School Admissions Test.  Pro tip:  working in an office full of beef salesmen is a good way to pick up new beef recipes.

3.  I generally prefer animals to people.  If I come over to your house, please allow me to cuddle your pets (expect maybe if you have tarantulas or something).

4.  If you have tarantulas, I’ll probably still pet them.

5.  I have lived in 6 different U.S. states.

6.  I really love Douglas Adams and re-read “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” every time I find myself stuck in bed with a cold.

6.  I can resist temptation in the form of sweets, but no potato chip is safe around me.

7.  I sleep best with a cat on my head.

Nominations!

Pattern Vault — Such an amazing resource on fashion history; reading this blog’s well-researched posts always gets me thinking about new ways to use fabric and incorporate interesting details into what I make.

On My Creative Side — Prodigiously prolific quilter, upcycler, and furniture refurbisher.  Love all her creative furniture remakes (and her SEWING ROOM OMG).  Regularly writes things like “. . . found another bin of 50 quilt tops today . . . ” as if this is a thing that ordinary mortals do.  😉

My Vintage Inspiration — S inspires me to be a better writer with her wide-ranging, evocative posts.  Each one makes me wish I could sit down with her over a cup of coffee and chat for hours.

Minki’s Work Table — Incredibly detailed needlework done in a very unique style.  Sweet and colorful little still life paintings in fabric and thread.

Gayle Ortiz — Wonderful creativity and amazing shapes here.  This vest!  And this one!

Diane Ericson — And so many more amazing ideas here.  I seriously need to take on an ambitious project like this shirt.

Crafting While Anxious — Another wonderful writer, who writes movingly of her personal struggles (and also makes beautiful, beautiful things).

My OBT–Regularly expands my horizons (and keeps me from getting too tunnel-vision about sewing) by showing me all kinds of amazing artworks and music and other various beautiful things.

Perry Street Palace — Iris Vander Pluym’s palace of social justice, righteous outrage, and snark.  This post on abortion–well, just read it.

Captain Awkward — the place where I have learned many of the grown-up coping and assertiveness skills I should have learned years ago.  Whenever I get up the courage to use my words (which is not nearly often enough), it’s largely because of the teachings of the Captain.

STH

ETA:  Added quotes to show what I copied from Natalie’s post (sorry, Natalie–that was very sloppy of me) and corrected the date of the post.

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Sunday Sevens 06-28-15

Tags

cats, cycling, quilting, RSC15, sewing

Sunday Sevens is a blog series in which we share seven-ish pictures from our week.  Thank you, Natalie at Threads and Bobbins for getting it started!

Busy week here, but I made some progress on my projects, so it was a good one.

I finally got around to finishing up sorting out my scrap fabric drawers.  The bins with my main stash are still pretty messy, but at least I’ve got the scraps tidied up so that I can work on some stash-busting projects.

JUST LOOK AT THIS LOVELINESS:

I’ve been doing some yoga lately to try to reduce the chronic tension that I seem to store up in my upper back and THE CATS ARE LOVING IT.  I regularly have to watch out for this little beastie, who loves her yoga.  (That’s my mat she’s beating up there.)

The neck and back routine I’ve been doing is here, and it has been helpful.  And, for those of us that are allergic to the woo that often accompanies yoga, the video is refreshingly woo-free.  😉

By Wednesday, I hadn’t done any crafting in several days and I was getting a little desperate for a fix.  So I put everything else aside and made the second block on my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt.  That Card Trick block in the center was a bit of a brain teaser, but this tutorial was really helpful.

Strange things sometimes come in the mail when you live with a bike geek.

Saturday craft projects:  quilting and wheel building.

That fabric there became this, the third block of the RSC quilt.

Well, sort of.  I tried to make the center block (Marley) twice and just could NOT get it to work with the rather minimal instructions given.  Couldn’t find a good tutorial, either, so I did this one instead.

I’m subbing another block for the fourth one, too.

And it is officially too damn hot here.

The official high here on Saturday was 111F, which I’m fairly certain is the same temp as the surface of the sun.

Felt that way, anyway.

And we’ve got at least a week of over-100 days coming up.

SEND ICE CREAM.

W00T!

Tags

cats, politics, Scalia I'm looking at you, suck it haters

Sunday Sevens 06-21-15

Tags

bags, camping, cats, Cle Elum, CozyAfternoonQuilt, Easton, Lake Easton State Park, quilting, sewing, Sunday Sevens, travel, Washington

(Sunday Sevens is a weekly blog series of seven-or-so pics from your week; it’s the brainchild of Natalie over at Threads and Bobbins.)

Something of a roller coaster week here!

On Monday, Pooh had to go back to the vet and she discovered that what we had both thought was an eye problem was actually a tooth root abscess.  She operated on him that morning and I was able to bring him home in the afternoon.  I will spare you a close-up, but he looked pretty rough.  😦

As you can see from the picture, though, he started to feel better immediately and has continued to improve all week.

The first two blocks of the Cozy Afternoon Quilt were e-mailed out and I cut my fabrics for all 5 blocks on Tuesday.

Yep, that’s Shelby inspecting my work there.  Any time there’s anything fabric-related happening, Shelby is there.

I finished my tote bag, though it actually looks a bit unfinished to me . . . I’m planning to add a few beads to it as soon as I figure out how to attach them.

On Thursday, Pooh had to go back to the vet to have the drain removed from his cheek (yeah, I know, sorry) and she said he’s healing well and gained 1 1/2 oz. since Monday!

(I’m cheating a bit here because I took this pic today, but trust me, you really don’t want to see how he looked last week.)

On Friday afternoon, my partner and I loaded up all our camping gear and headed to Lake Easton State Park to meet some friends.

Here’s our tent all set up at the campsite:

I know, right?

This place is seriously amazing.

On Saturday, partner and his friends headed off to cycle the John Wayne Pioneer Trail (north toward Snoqualmie Pass), while I stayed in the park and tried out the hiking trails.

(If you’ve seen Twin Peaks or Northern Exposure, these woods may look familiar to you; both series were filmed near here.)

(More pics will be up on Flickr shortly.)

This was my first time camping, and it was fun!  Me being me, I was of course worried that I’d forget some essential thing, or we’d run out of food or something, but everything went well.

I’m so used to cooking for two that I’m never sure how much to make for larger groups, so I went with my general policy of “cook way too much of something you like, so that you won’t mind eating the leftovers for a week.”  We wound up with less than one serving of chili (and ONE cookie) left over, so I guess “way too much” was the right amount.  😉

On Sunday afternoon, we packed everything up, and partner and friends headed out on their bikes again; I drove the van to Cle Elum, where I met them for lunch, then my honey and I headed home.

Have a great week everybody, and get outside if you can.

STH

Sunday Sevens 06-14-2015

Tags

bags, cats, Columbia Park, Kennewick, quilting, sewing, Zintel Canyon Park

Sunday Sevens is a weekly series of seven-or-so pictures of what happened in our lives that week and is the brainchild of Natalie at Threads and Bobbins.

On Monday, I made the first block of my scrappy quilt (officially, the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2015).  This is SO VERY WONKY.

I’m so out of practice with quilt piecing!  I totally love my first wonky block, though.

Tuesday was another walk with my mother, this time to Columbia Park in Kennewick.  Squirrels!

On Wednesday, I had to take Pooh in to see the vet about some sort of eye problem.  He was just kinda grumpy about it, but the Mama Bear was a complete nervous wreck.

Haven’t seen much of him since then because he’s been hiding from the scary lady with the tube of eye medicine.

Thursday was another walk day at Zintel Canyon Park.

NEEDS MOAR GOATS

I finished two more bags for SCRAP this week; here’s the one I actually remembered to take pictures of:

(The quilt block is a freebie from Craftsy.)

Back of the bag:

Inside of the bag (the quilt block produced 8 extra squares, which became pockets):

Partner and I are going car camping next weekend.  First time for me; he’s done a lot of camping, but always hauled everything behind a bike.  So there’s been much amassing and testing of gear this week, with the result that my living room looks like this:

Not shown:  tent, air mattress, coolers, sleeping bags, etc., etc.

I cut out my tote bag yesterday, as I’m hoping to use it this coming weekend.  Love that fabric!

Yep, Sunday Nines this week.  😉

Another busy week coming up–Pooh goes back to the vet Monday morning, then partner has his appointment with the specialist a few hours later.  I hope we can get our little family on the way to better health!

Have a great week, everybody, and take good care of yourselves and those you love.

STH

Sunday Sevens 06-07-2015

Tags

Bateman Island, Clover Island, cooking, Kennewick, quilting, recipe, RSC15, sewing

Hello again!  Busy week here, and a productive one, too, so I felt good about it.

Summer is definitely here (near 100F today!), so time to switch to summer main-dish salads.  I initially tried this recipe because I couldn’t imagine how the flavors would work together, but they totally do.  It’s one of our favorites.

This time I used spinach, carrot, red onion, grapes, and chopped apple.

My mother was quite adamant that we were to go on TWO WALKS this week, rather than, say, one walk and one trip to the grocery store.  This from a woman who was quite unhappy when I first started dragging her out for these walks by the river because she wanted to go to the mall instead.  (Sometimes I suspect I am adopted and she’s been lying to me all these years.)

This is Bateman Island from Tuesday’s walk.

On Wednesday, I finished up a yet-to-be-blogged blouse (the version on the bottom right here).  Not quite sure about this one.

Thursday’s walk was to Clover Island.  The big thing casting the shadow on the left is the lighthouse, but I liked this angle better than yet another boring lighthouse shot.

I’ve been trying not to take on too many projects at once, but I just couldn’t get this scrap quilt out of my head.  I kept going back and looking at it and thinking how pretty it would be if made with my scraps . . . I finally just decided to do it.

I had hoped to get the first block done this weekend–I’m starting late so I have some catching up to do–but this is as far as I’ve gotten:

I did, however, decide to get serious about organizing my scraps so that I can ACTUALLY FIND THINGS.  So I went through my scrap drawers and sorted them out and they look SO LOVELY now.

And my projects have their own little project bags:

This coming week, I’m planning more organizing, more walking, and more sewing.

YAY!

STH

Sewing for SCRAP

Tags

bags, quilting, SCRAP Tri-Cities, sewing

So, if you’ve been following along at home, you may recall that I’m looking for ways to decrease my fabric scrap stash.  I’ve been looking at scrap-busting projects and pondering which to take on.

Last Monday, I headed over to our new SCRAP Tri-Cities store for a volunteer orientation.  When the directors, Chrissa and Rachael, heard that I sew and make bags, they asked me if I’d like to contribute some bags to the ReBoutique in the store, with SCRAP and me splitting the proceeds.

On the drive home from the meeting, the idea for these bags was born.

This is the front of the larger bag (finished size 9″ x 11″):

And the back:

Everything used for these bags came from the stash.  I chose a multicolored print for the back and a coordinating zipper, then several fabrics for the patchwork on the front.  The size of the bag was determined by the length of the zipper I had on hand.

Here’s a pic of the inside:

There’s a small pocket in each one.  They’re just basically pillows without stuffing in them, which is my preferred way of making bag pockets–sew two squares together, turn, press, topstitch the top edge, then position on lining piece and stitch the other three sides.

Here’s the smaller bag (7″ x 9″):

I used the technique here to do the piecing and it is FUN.  You sew your center piece down onto a piece of muslin, then sew a scrap to one edge.  Flip, press, then repeat on another edge.  Once your muslin is covered, you just trim the block.  It’s a fun, quick technique and you can use up pretty small pieces, though strips obviously work better than squares.

The basic bag instructions are here, though I’m not completely satisfied with the way the zipper is put in . . . I want to experiment with zips that are longer than the opening and have a tab on the end so that the bag can be opened wider.

I’m really happy with these, though, and have lots of ideas cooking for different ways to make the next ones.

STH

The La Cartera Hobo Bag Takes a Road Trip

Tags

bags, La Cartera, Palouse Falls State Park, Palouse River, Starbuck, travel, Washington

As you may recall, I was recently the VERY lucky winner of La Cartera’s People’s Summer Choice Hobo Handbag.

I was so excited when I won, then I received the bag in the mail and it was BEAUTIFUL!

I love the wonderfully happy fabric (YAY COLOR) and matching zips.

In addition to the big outside pocket you can see above, there’s a smaller zippered pocket on the other side, which is the perfect size for my phone.  Handy!

And this nifty divided pocket inside:

I love that this bag has lots of zippered storage for your stuff.  I don’t know about anybody else, but my bags tend to take a far amount of rough treatment–I bang them into things, drop them on the floor, haul them onto trains, planes, and automobiles– and it’s nice to know I’m not going to lose anything important.

So I took the bag on its first road trip!

This is me at Palouse Falls State Park!

My partner and I stopped there while out providing support to the cyclists doing our local 400k and 600k rides.

It’s a pretty amazing place.  You drive for miles through rolling grassland and wheat fields, then turn off onto a dirt road for a mile or two and suddenly come upon this:

And a marmot, too!

Many thanks to my lovely partner for the pics of me and many more to La Cartera!

STH