Machine Quilting Five Minutes Later

Since this is a scrap quilt for cuddliness and doesn't matter, I thought I'd try my amazing new free motion quilting skillz on it.

This was the very first try, smack in the middle of the quilt.  It took only a couple minutes and look how pretty it came out!    
I had one goof-up that I had to restitch, and one broken thread. 
Since taking the pictures I've done a bunch more sections with no goofs and no broken threads.  At this rate the whole thing will be done in no time. 
It's easier than trying to crisscross the blocks or stitch in the ditch-- why?  Because without the machine presser foot, the layers move freely around and any scooting evens out instead of compounding as you get further.  Also, since there's just one area being worked on at a time,there's less muscling of that mass of rolled quilt around inside the machine!

Frugality Win - Tablecloth Dress!

As long as one doesn't mind walking around wearing a tablecloth.

And I don't.

Always Wanted a Dough Blender!

I’ve ALWAYS wanted one of these!  Not quite enough to pay the $20 ish that they sell for, though.

But this really neat one was on Freecycle.  It’s brand new in the box, with manual, MADE IN USA.  The lady I got it from had always wanted one, too!  She never ended up using it.

So now it's down there in the box, warming up a shelf in my storage area, making me happy... until I pass it on to the next Freecycler who's always wanted one of these?

This is How We Make a Quilt Out of SCRAPS

As I said, when I finished Mike's quilt, I thought I was doing something really great by opening up a real store-bought batting to trim down to size for it.  But the result was so thin and useless I was almost ashamed to give it to him. 

For the next effort I'm more sure about using "junk" for the batting. One layer of a Disney Ariel flannel sheet I got at the free swap (I despise that character) and one layer of old cotton thermal weave blanket.  Already you can tell this is going to be a NICE thick, warm quilt.

Right now it's gotten as far as lining up and pinning the layers, which is the hard part! 

Oh boy, will you (please, not) look at the sloppy lining up job on the back of those pieces!  I used some 3.5" squares I got at the free swap, with some 4" squares that were new, and didn't bother to trim.  Whenever I accidentally got a seam pushed over the wrong way, I snipped it.
Casually. 
Not going to make it into the quilting guild, I bet.

Australorps in the Mail

So stinking cute!!!

And they are Ed's project, so I know I won't hear a word of complaint no matter how literal that second word gets :-)

The New Me Gives Away Jigsaw Puzzles

The old hoarder me would have put them away on a shelf "just in case", but the new me boxes them up and gives them away at once. There are lots of jigsaw puzzles out there!

Gorgeous Walk It Out scenery

I'm done with the whole island!

Total steps: 561957
Total distance: 160 miles
Total play time: 78:26
Rainbows completed: 71

There's one new rainbow every day! 

At the end, basically NOTHING happens. 
I got a shot of what the trainer says. 

And that's it!  Luckily the play is the point.  If we had been doing all this trying to achieve some goal at the end, we would be very underwhelmed.

That's okay, I restarted a new profile at once.  I'm doing the whole thing over again, but this time on Easy instead of Normal capsule value.  It's actually very motivating! 

Here's a couple of early morning views from my new island.

Note, why the Suspension Bridge shows up at 2000-- I clicked it accidentally, and didn't want to buy it. The value on Easy level is only 300 steps. I had to switch to Very Hard level for just a minute until I could walk over to find some other capsules and knock that one out of my queue before completing it!

Two Bright Light Ideas

I read all the "build your own 10,000 lux bright light therapy boxes" and they're great-- but they all involve building.  I went on a tour of Home Depot to see what I might be able to come up with instead.  One of the associates said his friend had made one for his wife, and showed me the gigantic fluorescent light array he had used for theirs.  It was a six-bulb thing that took up, like, a whole wall.  He insisted it was supposed to be a certain temperature of light that you could only get that from those long, full-size fluorescent bulbs, but all the research I've been reading, particularly from this book "The Depression Cure" (great book, by the way, it's a six-step program; one of the steps is therapy light, one's CULTIVATE THE COMPANY OF OTHER HUMAN BEINGS-- I'm still working on that) says it only needs to be white light. 

In the book, he mentions a certain model of therapy light, and I found that on Amazon, I also found another like it but better quality and doesn't have the complaints about bad smell or tipping over like that the recommended model has.  The only downside was the price *choke gack*  $200!!! 

At that point is when I went to Home Depot to see what I could come up with instead (yes, got this narrative a little out of order  :-)
I thought I might use one of those four-bulb bathroom vanity mirror fixtures.  The trouble was, after perusing the selection of light bulbs and comparing lumens and wattage, I realized the vanity fixture only takes 100 watt bulbs and I'm gonna need something heftier.  They also sell basic sockets that you can use to build your own, but there we're back to building again, so we either have to get into cabinetry or end up with something that looks homemade.
DH had been following me around from idea to idea, just observing, but at this point he started picking up stuff from the shelves and throwing it into the cart.  Yay! I only had to pick a color! 
These outdoor floodlight fixtures come in black, grey, brown or white. 

The bulbs are 2,780 lumens each, so 8340 lumens.  The lux conversion is a tricky thing so I'm gonna go with "we've got quite a lot of light going on here."
We probably won't have 10,000 lux, but I've seen therapy lights that were only 6,000 lux, and we'll have more than that. 

Once all plugged in the effect reminds me of Dr. Octavius the Spider-Man supervillain, "The power of the sun!!  Harnessed for the good of mankind!!!"
It really does seem like a tiny sliver of sol for our personal cheerment.  In this picture below, the rest of the room is NOT dark.  That's all my digicam could handle  :-)
You can't possibly look directly at it, but you're not supposed to, you're supposed to eat or read or do whatever in its light for half an hour a day.  It's actually TOO BRIGHT for me, so I gave up after a session or two, but Karen's been using it every morning for a couple weeks now and she loves it. 
And the cost was $31...

The other bright idea was something I happened across while searching for therapy lights.

I had read about those before and wanted one, but wouldn't spend the money.  How cool it would be to wake up to nothing more than light!  
While I was in do-it-yerself mode that brought on another bright idea-- I just plugged a little table lamp into a light timer.  I had both a light timer and a table lamp lying around the premises, so the cost of that idea was an even-better $0.
It works just fine!  I wake up in the morning now to the delightful sound of peace and quiet, and soft light, AND a feeling of smug complacency, "Oh, the cleverness of me!"   :-)

Wild and Wonderful Fleece Animals - Linda Carr

Wow, only ten bucks??  And the hardbound version which is really nice, that's only $14.
I'd gone looking for it on Ebay after borrowing it from the library, and couldn't find it for anywhere near that price... I'm gonna go buy that right now!
I digress, I was just gonna share the pics of what Andrea made with it  :-)

It's a COOL book!  Andrea opened it right up, traced the patterns and cut out this little bear, and it went together with only a little help from me.

And then I embroidered the nose and mouth.  Mike told me it didn't look good and I was supposed to do it like the picture.  Gotta love honest little kids  :-)

 

The new spiral skirts in Simplicity, Butterick, McCalls

Was online t'other day looking at the big three websites and noticed some spirals. 

Simplicity 2416 and Butterick 5042 both look really cool! If I hadn't already made up my own I would totally buy one of these.

McCalls 5056 caught my eye but it's not a spiral at all.  They've colored the illustration to look like it is. Isn't that silly?

Curled Up Wat

I did have to ask, "Is that rat even alive?" which of course made her uncurl and run to me. 

Lego Klingon Bird of Prey

This is a Klingon Bird of Prey from Star Trek. 

And the boys' version in Legos! 

Here's an old picture from back when this Legos thing was first getting started.

America, Freeeeest Land on Earth

It started when I was reading on Wikipedia about Matilda of Flanders... and how did that even start?  I mean, how did I get started reading it.  

According to legend, when William… sent his representative to ask for Matilda’s hand in marriage, she told the representative that she was far too high-born to consider marrying a bastard. After hearing this response, William rode from Normandy to Bruges, found Matilda on her way to church, and dragged her off her horse by her long braids, threw her down in the street in front of her flabbergasted attendants, and rode off.  Another version of the story states that William rode to Matilda’s father’s house in Lille, threw her to the ground in her room (again, by the braids), and hit her (or violently battered her) before leaving. Naturally, Baldwin took offense at this but, before they drew swords, Matilda settled the matter by agreeing to marry him, and even a papal ban on the grounds of consanguinity did not dissuade her. They were married in 1053.

And then what happened?  A clickable encyclopedia is sure a fun thing. 

There's a hundred reasons why America is not a free country.  I don't think many even claim it is, any more.  The phrase "it's a free country" it still used to make a point. 
I don't mind America!  I'd rather live here than anywhere else I know of.  Only I prefer things to be labelled AS THEY ARE.  
No patience with pretense, unless it's obvious pretense... and don't let that one get started.

Anyway.  Something I clicked led to something which led to something else and here we are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_simple

There can be no pretense of freedom while we're under the feudal system. 

    Allodial title constitutes ownership of real property… that is independent of any superior landlord. In common legal use, allodial title is used to distinguish absolute ownership of land by individuals from feudal ownership, where property ownership is dependent on relationship to a lord or the sovereign… “allodium” is “land which is absolute property of the owner, real estate held in absolute independence, without being subject to any rent, service, or acknowledgment to a superior. It is thus opposed to “feud.”

    True allodial title is rare, with most property ownership in the common law world– primarily, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland– described more properly as being in fee simple. In particular, land is said to be “held of the Crown” in England and Wales and the Commonwealth realms. In England, there is no allodial land, all land being held of the Crown; in the United States, all land is subject to eminent domain by the federal government, and there is thus no true allodial land.

    In English law, a fee simple… is an estate in land, a form of freehold ownership. It is… ordinarily the most complete ownership interest that can be had in real property short of allodial title, which is often reserved for governments. Fee simple ownership represents absolute ownership of real property but it is limited by the four basic government powers of taxation, eminent domain, police power, and escheat…

Stop paying your property taxes and you’ll find out quickly enough who owns that land.

My daddy always told me that a true RIGHT is not subject to taxation or regulation. We still have the right to breathe. There’s no oxygen tax and no limit to how much we can do it, no regulation, no license required.  For anybody else to interfere with us breathing is a crime.  Okay, then breathing passes the right test.

Does anything else?

Barbie "Be a Real Fashion Designer"

I had a $20 coupon from Mattel. What to spend it on? Well, it would have to be something that we would never buy otherwise!
So Andrea got this kit. I never would have spent money on this. It was kinda fun though. We had a good time decorating. You get five simple dresses and a bunch of stickers and glitter to put on them. It's a good concept. My biggest complaint would be that the dresses aren't very well made-- photo of back of the purple dress is to prove that-- if I made a dress that came out like that I'd call it a do-over!
I'm going to make a few more simple Barbie dresses so she can use up the rest of the stuff that came in the kit. That's the plan anyway, don't hold your breath for it happening :-)

PS, forgot to mention how I got a $20 coupon from Mattel! I bought Apples to Apples for Christmas, and the bottommost card in one of the decks looked like it had been through a machine. I sent it to them and asked for a new one (it was the "chocolate bonbons" card or I wouldn't have bothered) and they sent me the coupon instead. 
Hmph.

Free Motion Quilting - I got it!!!

My attempts at free motion quilting before have had bad results.  It was all tangled thread and broken needles.  I managed to make it work, once, a little, which came out very awkward looking, as if a wrestling match had taken place between me and the machine (which isn't far from the truth).

Was thinking of taking a quilting class next month.  I wouldn't usually, because there aren't many things I can't figure out on my own, but I was seriously having no luck with this and decided to actually pay for help.  Reading the supply list for the class, and it says I have to have a walking foot and darning foot.  My lovely gift from God, that Pfaff, has the IDT built in, so I don't need a walking foot.  It came with a darning foot too.  Light bulbs started going on.  I knew the Pfaff had a "free motion quilting foot" available, but I hadn't gotten to the point of purchasing it yet.  But what about the darning foot? 

I hadn't carefully read the instructions in the Pfaff manual for darning before; I read them now.  "Darning" is free motion, that's the whole idea.  There's a special setting on the Pfaff for darning, wherein the presser foot is half lowered and the thread tension is engaged.  Lower the feed dogs and away you go. I tried it and it worked perfectly! 

Can NOT believe how simple this is.  Amazing once you get it right.  Amazing what the German engineers built in there for our stitching pleasure (that's my favorite part).

It's a breeze!  Just like one of the Youtube ladies had said in a video that didn't help me at all, "It's just like doodling."