Retirement... or not

My boss retired this month.  <Sigh>

Who cares, right?  Well, for one thing, I wasn't sure what his retirement would mean for MY job.  I mean, he may be financially set, but I have to work until I die.  Or maybe a year or so after that.

<Sigh>

So imagine my great surprise when, as soon as people knew he was gone, I started having to work overtime!

I guess that's good, but this is definitely cutting into my sewing time.  Not to mention my blogging time!

Retirement, ha!

I wonder if his WIFE knows what that really means?

Sew on, if you get the chance!

Summer Sewing

This summer our quilt group from church is meeting on Saturday mornings instead of Sunday afternoons.  We're also skipping around on dates, instead of meeting monthly.  Vacations are getting in the way, I guess.  That's OK, it's too nice to sit inside in June and July OR IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE!!

I know it's still technically spring, but jeepers creepers, when are we going to get some nice weather??  Today's desk gadget says that here in downtown, near the lakefront, it's 66 degrees.  There was fog this morning and there is haze now.  Yuck.

People often donate things to our group, and the latest acquisition is a sewing machine.  It's a Montgomery Ward and I think the model number is 1265.  I forgot to look more closely at the manual.

So a week ago when we met on Saturday morning, I grabbed it out of the bin and tried to clean it up.  And did it need cleaning!!  Sorry to say, more cleaning than I was capable of.  It still runs well, the tension is fine, and with a  little TLC it will be put to good use for our charity projects.

The funniest thing about it was that it has a kind of unusual thread path.  I told Suzy that it has been ages since I've had to look at the threading diagram on a sewing machine!



Our new old machine!

We counted up our quilt tops, kits and finishes.  We sent 50+ dresses and 30+ pairs of shorts to the group that's going on a mission trip to Burkina Faiso.  We're well stocked on baptismal quilts and we have a large box of charity quilts ready to be distributed.  Our new fall projects might include some Quilts of Valor type projects, if we can acquire some red/white/blue and other fabrics appropriate to the cause.  (Usually we get florals and baby prints, not too often do we get themed fabric or specific colors.)

Then I saw this on a trip through some blogs the other day... lots of jeans patches, I wonder if this is something we could do for fall?  Hmmm, I'll file that one away for future reference.

Sew on!

Spam, and my apologies

I have been away from my blog for a while... things are going crazy at work, I've been putting in lots of hours and trying to keep my head above water.  My boss retired and I've been planning his retirement parties in addition to everything else.

So imagine my complete horror when I looked at the blog today and saw a gazillion comments on a post, and they were all SPAM!

I apologize for not knowing about filters, and if anyone got spammed by my spam.  Ugh, WHY do people do that?  Nothing better to do, I guess.

Anyway, today I am attempting to organize my projects and get some stuff done.  I'll try to pay more attention and keep the junk off my blog.  I'll also try to keep it up better!

I'm knitting some more AG doll sweaters and we're going to be receiving a new doll in the next UPS shipment -- Audrey Anne will be joining  the family from Target in honor of granddaughter number 3's sixth birthday.  I can hardly wait until she gets here.  They will both have blonde curly hair and blue eyes.  I've made her a box of clothes too, so this should be fun.

I also need to make myself a new red tee shirt -- my old one has faded to a soft pink and no longer goes with the jacket I wore over it.  I picked up some soft red cotton knit fabric in Beaver Dam in May so I'm ready to sew.

Now if I can just remember where I put it...

Sew on!

Another Awesome Brother and Some Stuff....

"Where have you been?"

Have you heard that from anyone recently?

Boy, these days my life has been insane!  For the last two weeks I've been working 10 hour days and trying to stick everything personal into weekends that just ooze with activities.  We had our Church quilting group on Saturday, and I signed up for a Saturday Bible study.  They wouldn't have overlapped if we hadn't spent time chatting before the 8 a.m. Bible study class -- and then I dashed home to find my house full of grandchildren! 

The oldest of my brothers, my favorite brother whose name is Dave, stopped by one evening after work.  He was supposed to come on a Wednesday but his Tuesday plans fell through so he came a day early.  He lives in the fine state of Minnesota, where we all went to junior high and high school.

We lived in a little town called Cottage Grove, south and east of Minneapolis.  We moved there when I was in 8th grade, and Dave was in 7th.  (Tom in 6th, Ken and Gail in 4th, Phil in 2nd and Chet about to start Kindergarten.)

After I graduated high school (back in the dark ages) I moved back to Wisconsin, got a job, got married and settled here.  Dave met a girl in high school, they married and he settled in up there.  His kids went to the same high school we did.  Funny story for another time, but a guy I had a crush on back then is now a teacher there!

Dave was in the Air Force for four years, where he fell in love with airplanes.  He's especially fond of the B-52 if I understand his Facebook page... 

Cool, huh? 

He's also a motorcycle enthusiast, and owner of a Harley Davison -- don't ask me what kind of cycle it is, there are so many different models and I am NOT an enthusiast.  I think he inherited the love of cycles from our dad.  I remember how Dad used to bring one home in the fall in bushel baskets with a bare frame and spend all winter cleaning and assembling it.  I can see pieces laid out in rows as he pulled apart the engine, cleaned and oiled it, and put it back together.  Then he'd paint the body and shine it all up and ride it all summer.  When winter was coming he invariably sold the bike and bought more parts and pieces!

Dave is a member of the Minnesota Patriot Riders.  Well, I think actually this year he's the Ride Captain I think they call it.  They turn out for all the veteran funerals they find out about, and they ride to honor the fallen. 

Dave is in the center in the denim shirt.

 My sister-in-law, also named Sue, has been putting up with his shenanigans for a zillion years.  She was behind us in high school.  Dave had already joined the Air Force and was going to be sent to Guam.  She would not be able to join him unless they were married, so they got married during her senior year, as soon as she turned 18.  That meant that she graduated from high school with the same name as I had, only differing by the middle initial!  I told all my other brothers they needed to marry girls name Sue too.  (One did, and when someone said "Aunt Sue" we all said "Yes?"... too much fun!)

 

She still looks the same, except for the sparkles in her hair...

So Dave dropped by to say hi while he was in Wisconsin, and we had a nice chat.  It's nice to see the big lug once in a while!  He had work the next day and so did I (groan)... so he left for his hotel and a stop at a local book store he read about.

He's turned out to be a very good man, one of the good guys.  I'm very proud to be his big sister,

Sew on!

Family Across the Country -- and Just ONE of My Amazing Brothers!

I've posted about family before, how I have six siblings in various parts of the country.  One on the east coast, one on the west, one in the south and the rest in the Midwest.  I have a brother who lives in the great state of Washington. 

He's married and although I have not met his wife because of the distance, we're getting to know a little bit about each other through Facebook.  Hopefully we'll meet in person some day.


not him... but he was this cute!

This brother was not the youngest but was always the baby of the family.  He was an adorable baby and small child.  As a teen he was a crack-up comedian and seemed to move at a frenetic pace most of the time.  He was a sweet boy, and could always be counted on for a cuddle in the early mornings before I went to high school and he went off to elementary school.



Now he's a grown man, with a gray beard and glasses, and he looks so much like my late father that sometimes I have to smile. 

I knew his exes, two of them.  I make no judgments of any of them, and who knows why people break up, or even get together for that matter?  This one is different from the others in a lot of ways, and I have to say that I think they're so right together.  She seems to appreciate the right things in him and he in her -- I was teasing her about some goofy thing on FB and I said I think they're a perfect match.

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone had that?   Although maybe what I mean is a perfect FIT or a perfect PAIR.  Sometimes opposites attract, and that works too.  My DH and I are probably 180 degrees apart in personality and likes and dislikes.  I'm a people person, and he's the Grinch's much crabbier brother, who thought that story was GREAT right up to the end where he gave the presents back!  LOL!  Just kidding... maybe.

Whichever kind of match or pair you are, or even if you're one sock on your own, I hope you enjoy life and get the most from everything you do.

Rock on!

Think...

Auction Follow Up -- Doll Sweaters

Who knew  those doll clothes were going to be so popular??

A couple of weeks ago I posted about some doll clothes I made, suitable for the 18" dolls, American Girls or similar, for the church's youth auction.  I made several outfits, probably about a dozen or more items.  If you were buying the items from a store or craft sale, I estimated you'd have to spend about $8-10 an outfit.

The auction on was held on a Saturday night, and that following Sunday, a lady came up to me after church and said "Well, I managed to get two of your outfits."  I was kind of confused, not really connecting the conversation and the auction and not remembering what exactly I had donated.  The confusion must have appeared on my face, because she said "The doll stuff... I was outbid by that darned Roger on the outfit with the sweater!"

Turns out that they had split the outfits into three groups, and there was one with a skirt, pants, tee shirt and sweater that generated a fierce amount of bidding! 

It looked similar to this one, but the yarn was in blues and reds with some gray and white.  It's a pretty easy pattern, it's made with self-striping shock yarn.  The only thing I'm not totally crazy about is that when you go back and forth instead of in a circle you get non-matching fronts -- you can see where the dark stripe ends up on the edge of one sleeve and in the middle of the other.

So far, the dolls are not complaining! (Nor, I gather,  are the grandmoms and grandpops!)

Self-striping, for you non-knitters, is yarn that forms a stripe because of the way it is dyed. 

They come in lots of colorways, and will make either thick or thin stripes depending upon your garment size and the length of yarn in each color.  Here are some socks knit with self striped yarn:

No, not knit by me... borrowed from Pinterest.  But aren't they gorgeous?  Sometimes if you don't start the second sock at exactly the same place as the first, you end up with two different patterns.

I'm working on using up my 'end of skein' balls of yarn and making more sweaters, some like this and some long sleeved, a few with a cable in front and fasted in the back.   I have a denim sweater being blocked on my ironing board which is shown below, along with pieces of an oatmeal colored sweater that still needs some sleeves.

One sweater takes about 2-3 hours to knit and sew together.  This is so much more fun than trying to knit an adult-sized sweater!

More later... sew on!