Posts….

Etcetera…

…just random bunches of fleeting thoughts…(they get more entertaining as you go through them….)

This past Sunday, thanks to someone linking my blog post, I had my all time high of readers. Almost 300 people visited this site that day, almost 500 over the course of the weekend—and I got ONE response. (from my husband) Just curious, folks. At the bottom of every post, there is a place to leave a comment…

Have you tried and it’s too difficult? Do you have to do something like register? (NOT be rude, I just sometimes don’t realize that it’s so difficult, because “I” am signed in….)  I totally get not responding to everything I read. It just seems like pretty low percentages…

Three or four people did search out my email and take the time to privately comment….which seems like much more bother….

A few people have asked me how to Subscribe to the blog. That makes me happy. (Will they comment though?? Ah, that is the question! LOL) To subscribe there is a column to the right, titled “Subscribe Here…” If you choose Entries RSS, you can subscribe via whatever Reader you use (I have a Google homepage, with a tab set up just for blogs I follow. Whenever someone updates, it shows up. There are other types of readers that I know nothing about. But, that is the button to get you started! )

More importantly, that little countdown clock I mentioned I had on my homepage indicates that there are only 90 days left now till Christmas!!  Did my post of 10 days ago shock your system into thinking about the holidays? Have you done any list making? Bought any gifts?

I  have!  Sitting in my studio are almost all the makings for the gifts for my employees and co-workers, my quilting buddies and stocking stuffer-ish things for the family in general. Obviously since they all READ the blog (let me re-phrase that… I guess they read it…lol.) I can’t really say what it is… but I’ll take a pix and post it after Christmas—then you can use this idea next year!

And, because he is a cute, but dimwitted creature, who has for a friend a cute, but somewhat prickly creature, here is a story about our cats. IMG_3740

(Hamish, ‘the Red’ or ‘the Bad’ or ‘the Scared’, hiding in the vanity in the master bathroom, because of a thunderstorm. He opens the cabinet door with his paw, and climbs in to cower behind my personal products)

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(Miss Tatiana, with evidence of a recent kill beside her)

You have to go to my husband’s blog to read the story of the little excitement at our house the other night around midnight…

Anyway, back to the comments thing. (I know, let it go!! LOL)

I opened my Photo website up the other day, and have had some serious inquiries from people interested in purchasing my art!! Yippee!!!! And, although there have been in the past week or so, over 5,000 hits, there has been ONE comment.

So, to summarize. Silly Cats. Christmas—it’s coming, ready or not. Subscribing and commenting. Buy photographic art as Christmas gifts from home in the comfort of your jammies.

Remember, comments are like virtual HUGS. High fives! Or, as Sally Field once said, it shows, “ You like me. You really LIKE me!”

(I promise to come up with a more entertaining post next time. Really.)

Fabric 401K…

(Totally stole the title from my best quilting buddy, E.T.)

I was at my quilting group today. Surprisingly, after an hour or so of chatter, out of all the bizarre subjects we could have touched upon with a dozen women sitting in front of sewing machines…the conversation actually turned to FABRIC!

The color, feel, texture, ownership, collection, lusting, cutting and quilting of fabric. Believe it.

This is my theory on collecting fabric.

Fabric has to ‘age’ like a fine wine…

There are so many kinds of fabrics for quilting. Solids are like vegetables; good for you and all that, but hardly sexy or desirable when you start trolling around the quilt store.

What catches your eye are the sparkly things; the bright colors, the fascinating patterns, shapes, the hand-dyes, the novelties. All the candy shop portion of your diet. You know, the tasty bits. Those are the pieces that you can’t forget if you walk out of the store with your hands full of sensible solids.

The adorable snowmen, the Bali batiks, the swirly kaleidoscopes, those are the fabrics that you’ll dream about.

I can’t claim to remember all of what I own, (and I choose to put the blame squarely on a faulty memory rather than a surplus of fabric, thank you very much!) but if I find myself on multiple trips at multiple places buying (or lusting after :P) the same fabrics, chances are it will age well.

If it has been in the stash for a few years, pulled out and packed away repeatedly because it hasn’t found a quilt to call home, it doesn’t necessarily make it a bad piece of fabric. After countless auditions with so many other pieces of fabric, I will eventually bring home the right mate for it, I will find the pattern that will make it sing.

I have this secret aversion to using fabrics designed to go together together. I may like and even purchase multiple fabrics from the same line, but if they accidentally all end up in the same quilt it makes me crazy!

(If there is an easy and a hard way to do something, well, yeah…with me, the hard way wins out every time! I guess I figure ANYONE could come up with a nice quilt if the fabrics all matched!!! LOL)

I did ONE quilt, a Trip Around the World, for Arlie’s 16th birthday, and unwittingly collected a series of matching fabrics over a period of time…I did use them and it did look nice; but I had to purposefully go and find a few pieces that didn’t ‘belong’ and include them, for my own piece of mind.

tripWorld

So, the 401k. It’s like this. Our economy is uncertain. Times are tough, what will retirement be like in 20 years?  But, a yard is a yard is 36 inches, and THAT will never change.

I rarely buy fabric because I need it for a specific purpose, I tend to buy on ‘spec’, I buy what speaks to me loudest!

…. In twenty years, those vintage pieces of fabric will be full of unique, no-longer-trendy shades of brown and aqua. Their designs, by blending them with bits and pieces from here and there, will result in quilts which  will have a flavor all their own.

Oh….and having NOTHING to do with anything else except shameless self-promotion, don’t forget to go to my photo site, (to the right) and look, and BUY something pretty! 🙂

I hate to even mention it…

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….but Christmas is less than 100 days away…. (99 to be exact, and I know this because I have a  countdown thing-y on my homepage…)

What that means, folks, is that THIS YEAR, we’ll be having Christmas on December 25th. I know, I know, you are saying, “This chick has a screw loose, it’s ALWAYS on the 25th!” 

But I have spent the last 19 Christmas seasons in a variety of retail endeavors, and it seems that way too many of you out there don’t seem to BELIEVE that Christmas was on the 25th last year, too.

The number of shoppers who truly and honestly stare at you dumb-founded when you tell them it’s IMPOSSIBLE to accommodate their demands at the last minute is astonishing. The number who say to you, “But I need xxxxx for a Christmas present!” Like it was a private holiday for THEM.

As if all of the other gazillion souls you had to play bumper cars with in the parking lot were all out for a Sunday drive.

Yuh huh. Bring it on!

That also means there are only 75 days till I start my second annual Christmas “Photo of the Day.”  You want in on the excitement this year??

Subscribe to my blog and you won’t miss a thing, because this year, I am going to post a photo on my blog every day from December 1st through Christmas Eve. I’m even thinking of having a give-away, if I can work out all the details.

If you were on the list last year, don’t worry, you are good to go… I will send out an email to kick things off on December 1st. (Click on this to see last years images.)

Hmmm, now to get cracking on some photos…

PS… if you like the wreath above, get thee to your local Michaels Crafts store before Halloween. It’s a BLACK PVC wreath that I added bright glass Christmas ornaments to so I could hang it in my kitchen, with all my black appliances, and teal walls!