Maggie, Batman and Crochet

I learned the basics of crochet from my mom when I was very young.  I watched my mom making countless pretty doilies, the good eastern european mom she was, making dowry for her daughter (me).  But I never really applied, or were interested in applying these handy skills I inherited from her, until several years ago when I was in my late twenties.  The first thing I made that was more complex than just a long chain, was a baby blanket I made for my uncle's Pavel daughter Athena.  It was constructed of granny squares.  Then a year later I was pregnant myself, so I made my son a blanket, booties, and a teddy bear.

He looks pathetic, even though I did follow a pattern and he was supposed to look a lot neater than he does.
Then my husband requested that I make some superheroes, so I made Batman, The Flash, and The Demon.

I started making scarfs and bags and gave them to friends as gifts.  I learned new techniques from a book called 'The Happy Hooker'.  I made jewelry with fine crochet thread.



I accumulated so much yarn and thread that I still have three or four boxes stashed up in the closet.  At that time there weren't many crochet magazines out there.  My mom gave me her old 'Magic Crochet' magazines that were no longer published, my mother-in-law got several copies of a Spanish crochet magazine called 'Muestras y Ganchillos' which luckily had the patterns in a diagram form because I don't speak Spanish.  The only cool crochet magazine was 'Crochet Today' and 'Interweave Crochet' and I used to subscribe to both.  So a week ago when I was at Joann's Crafts I noticed a whole bunch of new crochet magazines.  Imagine this: VogueKnitting - Crochet.  Vogue has a crochet magazine?????  Then there was: 'Inside Crochet', 'Crochet!', 'Irresistable gifts to crochet'.
I am glad to see that interest in crochet has grown, and maybe people won't mistake us 'hookers' for knitters.  We don't knit, we hook, ok?

This Heat

It's been unbearably hot, but I am afraid it has not reached the hottest yet.  And the thought of this being just the beginning of summer and the following three to four months it will be hot every day...ah...I try to find comfort in the fact that I do not have to shovel snow.  But snow, I miss.  Not the shoveling part, but the part where you watch it fall and hope for a snow day to stay home and cozy up.
I was used to the heat in AZ, it's only been the last couple of years that's been bugging me.  The drastic change in temperature between inside (depend on the household or business 76-79F) and the outside 110+F.  That's almost 40F difference.  It gives me a headache.

We go out at dusk, because it's a few degrees cooler.  We stumbled upon a sunflower field right in the heart of downtown Phoenix.
Or at the Environmental Education Center in Chandler.

Or on Saturday morning, Maggie and I hiding in the shade while watching Patrick's soccer practice.

Or hiding inside making more handbags.  After selling my first one, I felt encouraged to make more.

I don't have any vacation coming up.  For now the one thing I have to look forward to is a soldiering class I signed up for at the end of June.  More heat, ha ha.  I will try to stay cool and think cool thoughts.

Challenging myself

I think most of my readers are people that know me, individuals I can call friends or family.  So I don't need to explain that my husband is a photographer.  He went to school for it and has a degree.  He's uses all types of cameras, from high tech digital, to old fashion large format ones.
I on the other hand, relaying on his technical skills have left myself in the woods.  Lost!  I am embarassed to say that I do not know how to move digital photos from a camera onto a computer.  If it wasn't for my 'smart' phone, everyone will know that my smarts are not in the tech world .  At least not with cameras and fancy programs (by the way, all the photos on my blog are from my smart phone, just so you know.  I use the blogger app to load them, then I open the unfinished post on the computer to add text.  Smart eh?).
But I have to learn.  So I've signed up for an online Photoshop course through a local college.  I hope that the fear of failure helps me get through it.
The class starts tomorrow.  I was reading the syllabus tonight and it said that on average I will need to spend 9 hours per week on course work and assignments.  9 hours!!!!!!!!!!  Where will I find 9 hours?????

Making handbags

I had no idea how much time it goes into making a real handbag, a purse, with lining and pockets and all that.  I admit I have a new developed appreciation for handbags.  Depending on the complexity of it, one must cut at least 8-10 identical pieces for the front, back, and lining together.  All the ironing, basting, it's all time consuming.  I should have known this, because I had the similar realization when I took my sewing class two years ago and learned about all the labor that goes into making a shirt with collar and buttons and cuffs.  And then there is time spent on planning, the fabrics, the color, the design, the embellishing.


I cut enough for 4 bags, but I only constructed two over my days off.






And I learned that cutting and managing a 5 yard piece of fabric can be challenging if you have to work in a limited space with no real cutting table and having to use the floor.  But here you have them, the two bags I made and now contemplating on making more.

It's never too late to find out who you want to be

My friend Lisa from The Pink Zebra Boutique said she was looking to sell bags at her boutique.  She asked: 'are you a good seamstress?'.  And I thought, why didn't I get a degree in something practical like that.  I thought of the sewing class I took 2 years ago and the shirt that I made with two left sleeves.  I wanted to say I am a good seamstress, so I said: 'let me work on it'. 
I came home and looked at a couple of patterns I had bought at Joann's Fabric at about the same time I took the sewing class.  Lisa's question was the challenge I needed to take a closer look at these patterns.
It required a great deal of concentration to work on this.  I didn't have too many fabric choices and materials and I couldn't really afford any at the moment.  I had to work with what I had on hand.  I was feeling stressed, the kids weren't helping with their constant demands for food, or drink, or to look at this or that, or to spell words for them.  This was definitely one time I wished sooo much that I had a family or friend who could help me and watch the kids for a few hours.  It was one of those 'mom' days, where mom really needed a break from kids, but it wasn't going to happen.  It was a 'bad' day for mom, because I wasn't getting done the things that I wanted to do.
I stayed up late on Saturday night, working on this.  My husband encouraged me to stay up, even though after getting the kids in bed and reading them a story I was ready to go to sleep myself.  I made a pot of coffee that I never drank.  My husband was going to stay up too, but I found him asleep on the couch.  I kept making mistakes, ripping the pieces apart, and putting them back together, until I had to admit that I was too tired to even think logically to avoid mistakes.  So I went to bed at 1am.

This morning after breakfast my husband finally took the kids off my hands for a couple of hours. They went to Bookmans.  It was exactly what I needed to finish my bag, just a few hours of peace and quiet.

Perfume

Hobby Lobby got some new stamps.  There was a set of about 10 cling stamps of old perfume bottles.  I loved them, so I used my 40% off coupon and got them for $6. 

I couldn't wait to try them.  I know that I will find more uses for them down the road, but right now I made these cute tags.  I think you are supposed to stamp the name labels on to the bottles, but I didn't.  Instead I cut them out and tied them with a crochet thread around the bottles.

UR OK

If UR, like I hope UR, then UR "OK". 
I saw this post card at Tillie's Attic the day I went to ask about having some of my work sold there.  It was postmarked in 1918, almost a century old.  It was written to a mother from her daughter, talking about her busy day and that she really ought to read or study instead of writing letters.  I like the whole "if ur like I hope ur then ur 'ok'".  It's inspirational, something I need to remember when I have a bad day, to be OK.

I also got these two old photographs.  I am not sure what I am going to do with them yet, but I've seen some good ideas in SEW Somerset that I am sure will inspire me to make something very lovely. 

Artichoke and asparagus

Last Saturday I went to pick up my fruit and veggie basket that I ordered from Bountiful Baskets.  It's been some time since I've done this, mainly because the deadline for ordering changed from Wednesday to Tuesday and for a long time I kept missing it.

So this week's basket had three lovely artichokes.  I couldn't help but see their perfectly round shape resemble that of a woman's breast.  You didn't know I had a wild side huh?  I am kidding, but I probably wouldn't have thought to compare the artichoke to a breast, unless I read about the sexy side of asparagus in 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle'.
The writer was talking about asparagus, how/when it's the best time/place to plant it and some characteristics of it:
"Underneath lies an octopus-shaped affair of chubby roots (called a crown) that stores enough starch through the winter to arrange the phallic send-up when winter starts to break.  The effect is rather sexy, if you're the type to see it that way.  Europeans of the Renaissance swore by it as an aphrodisiac, and the church banned it from nunneries."

I've never cooked an artichoke before, does anyone know of something easy and tastey to make with it?

Laundromat

A few weeks ago a pillow that was in our washing machine caused the washer to get off balance during the spin cycle.  You know what happens then, your washer migrates about a foot or two from its original position and it's no big deal, you push it back when it's done washing.  Well something else must have happened to our washer, because ever since that I have a draining problem.  And the handy-woman that I am, I did my usual checks: I watched the machine go trough a cycle to figure out when and where the water leaks.  This way I found out that nothing is wrong with the hose that goes from the machine into the drain pipe.  It drains just fine if I had it drain in a bucket.  But once it goes in the drain pipe, it starts shooting water out of it.
So it's the drain pipe that's causing all these problems.  I got a pitcher of water and poured it down and it's going down just fine, it's only when the amount of water is much larger (like when it's coming out of the machine) that's not draining.  I called our handy man and he suggested I put some drain chemicals down the pipe.  This didn't fix the problem.  I called back and he suggested that I snake the pipe.  And I can't get the snake to go pass the elbow of the drain pipe.  I called the handy man back, he suggested that I call a plumber. 
Well I can't quite afford a plumber at the moment and twice this week I've been at the laundromat by our house.  I wash the laundry there, and I take it home to dry it.  It's an experience, I even made friends with the owner who is from Jordan.

And today I was taking pictures of other people's laundry in the driers.  I really liked watching this green fluorescent garment flying in the dryer.

An old wedding dress

I finally made it to the City of Gilbert Museum.  Over a month ago I saw they had a quilting exhibit, and although I am not a quilter (yet), this was something I wanted to see.  There were many interesting quilts, mostly modern, with fancy fabrics and appliques.  The quilt that made the biggest impression on me was one that was still a work in progress, stretched on a loom.  An older lady who spotted me admiring the quilt told me that it's called 'Old fashioned grandma's garden'.  I didn't take a picture of it, but the photo below I found on Google is the closest thing to what I saw.

In one of the rooms there were old fashioned wedding dresses.  There is something very romantic about old wedding dresses.  The idea that most of these were made by a relative, or passed on to the bride from her mother, grandmother and so on, brings a wonderful feeling of love, romance, butterflies in your stomach.  It makes me want to have a wedding again.  A small wedding, and me wearing one of these vintage dresses.  Here is the one I loved the most.




And the runner up was this one:


I saw some vintage sewing patterns, but I have some of these myself.  I actually found a bunch at the thrift store by my house for .25 a piece and got a few.  What is with me?  Was I born at the wrong time?  I sometime feel that.  I can make a connection with people in their 50s, 60s, 70s etc. in no time.  But I find myself clueless and uncomfortable around most people of my own age.




Here is something that I think I'd like to try to colaborate with my husband, a photo quilt.

I think I would actually like a small quilt like this, something that you put on your walls.  So maybe one day, when I find a break from work and from being a mum.  For now, I will only dive into projects that take no longer than a day or two to complete.  Otherwise I risk that it never gets finished..

Sunday night Blues

Most of my days are routine:

• get up
• eat breakfast
• feed the kids
• dress the kids
• water my garden
• play with the kids, maybe go to the park
• make lunch
• get ready for work
• go to work
• work
• go home, maybe relax if the kids are asleep
• go to bed

Of course there are beautiful moments that come spontaneously in the daily routine, but here is a little something that is so unimportant, but as a busy mom it's almost the highlight of my week that I know for sure I can look forward to and it will happen without anything interfering with it:
I look forward for the 20 minute drive back from work on Sunday nights when I can listen to NPR (KJZZ 91.5) Sunday night Blues and no one or nothing will interrupt it.  This is the time when red lights are welcome.  I drive the speed limit, no rush.  I roll the windows down, no A/C.  Just the warm Arizona air, me and the Sunday night Blues.  

Love Is

During my college years I worked at the college library and at the end of the week when they would discard the newspapers from that week, I'd get them before they were gone and cut out the Love Is cartoons.

I was looking through some boxes recently and found a stack of them. I am not sure what to do with them, but I am not ready to part with them. 

It's not right to keep them in a box.  It's not right to seal their fate in the recycle bin.  I thought about making a mixed media piece with them.  I thought about starting a journal and using them in it.  Actually that sounded like the best place for them, but I haven't been able to find what I need inside me to start a journal.  It's like I am afraid to ruin a perfectly blank piece of paper.

For now they are back in the box.  And the ones in this post are not it, these I found by searching on Google.

Girlfriends

My visit in Omaha last month didn't go without some much needed visit with two wonderful women I am proud to call my girlfriends, Ann and Inge.  Ann used to be my boss when I worked at the Fort Library, and Inge was one of my co-workers.  I am so glad to have had a chance to see both of them during my last two visits.  We were able to catch up on our lives, laughs and other matters of the heart.