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Sewing Machine!!

Well I finally broke down and bought a new sewing machine. I have lots of projects that I want to work on that just REQUIRE a decent sewing machine. I had one, but it was vair old and vair hard to work with. I got the Euro-Pro 80 stitch at Target and I finally had time to open it and try it out last night. I wasn't disappointed! It's excellent … so much nicer and easier to use than my old one. It's probably got more features than I'll ever use, but if I want to get any more sophisticated, I will have some machine to grow into.

I had looked around on the Craftster boards about good sewing machines and then I read reviews on Amazon and Target's websites. I picked the Euro Pro line based on the reviews. It can sew a lot of layers of pretty thick stuff and it comes with a 25 year warranty (which won't be up until I'm 50!!! Yikes!!).

I'm going to practice with it a bit this weekend … then I want to start on my t'shirt quilt.

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Apples 2005


During our second fall in Madison, Jess and I went apple picking for the first time. We had a lot of fun and made everything apple we could think of. We were not able to go last year since we were moving during the apple picking season, but this year we made it a point to go. I spend a few hours one day looking for an apple farm before I came across the Happy Apple Farm just outside Colorado Spring. We took Loki and FeBe and they had a blast. It was a lot of fun for us too but I have to say there were some differences between CO and WI apple picking.

1st, apples are picked sooner in CO than in WI. In WI we went in October and there was some time left in the season. This time, I think we should have gone earlier in September.

2nd, the apples in CO, or at least where we went, were a lot smaller. I would call them bite sized.

We might try to make apple dishes out of them, but we might just eat these and buy some apples form the store.

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Flea Market Finds


I know I've mentioned A Paris Street Market before. It's a fabulous little flea market with amazing stuff to find and some great handmade goods.

Above are some of the purchases we made last weekend. On the left are a pair of suitcases that I picked up for $19. Most vintage suitcases were going for at least $20 and these were effectively $9.50 a piece!! These babies need some work and I want to paint them (though Matt insists he figure out if they're worth anything before I touch them). But I liked their shapes and I think I can do good work with them.

The case on the right is … well I don't know, but I think it will make a great scrapbooking case. It's got all those cool pockets for tools and pens and stuff that you see and below the bottom set, there's a large compartment that would be good for paper, pages, stickers, etc. I'm planning to fix it up and paint it a bit too. It was $20 in case you're wondering.

We also got a pair of (fugly) end tables for $15. As I said, they're fugly, but we can definitely sand, paint and add new hardware and legs and make them something decent until we get real night-tables in our bedroom.

It was the last weekend for the market and I'm really going to miss it. But I can take great solace in the fact that I have TONS of projects to complete before it's back again. Happy crafting.

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Good News/Bad News


It's been over a month since Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast and until last night, we still hadn't heard from our friend Dan. We had gotten word from his Grandpa that he was OK and staying in Baton Rouge. We sort of guessed that he was probably going to work with his firm there until they could get back to NO.

So we were quite surprised when he told us he was in Arizona, looking for new work. We invited him to come stay with us. “Head north and hang a right at Utah, k? We've got free Wi-Fi.” I give it a 50/50 chance that he'll show up on our doorstep sometime this week. Continue reading “Good News/Bad News”

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The Search

I didn't want to write this, largely because I was hopping it would be over by now, but a member of my family has been missing in the mountains since Saturday.

Michelle and a hiking partner took off on a (long) day hike near Vail, CO. When she got too tired to continue, she encouraged him to go on. They were to meet up after he had summited the mountain. She has not been seen since then.

Yesterday, a load of volunteers including my Dad and Matt and two great people I work with went up to join the rescue. They had at least four dog teams on the ground and at least two helicopters in the sky. They had so many volunteers that they had to get extra maps. Still, at the end of the day, little had been found. Found or not, it was moving and encouraging that people can be so great. You've got to believe that humanity is more good than bad.

Of course, this is all very personal to me. She is not in my immediate family (she is my third cousin), but I probably know her at least as well as most people know their cousins. She used to babysit for my sister and I and taught some of my other cousins how to swim. More recently, I've seen her with her beautiful family.

We're all still hoping for a happy ending. We look for all the good thoughts and prayers (as your religion or non-religion allows) that we will find her safe and well.

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USB Ducks

A while back, I posted an entry about craving sushi and posted a photo of sushi with it. I liked the photo, but I was in a bit of a hurry and failed to realize that these were very special sushis. They had USB plugs attached to them. As I looked back to the entry over time, I was kerflummoxed. What the hell were USB plugs doing on sushi?

Luckily, my old friend Google was able to help me out. I googled “usb sushi” and came up with this site they make all kinds of crazy looking usb thumb drives including the little friend up there to the left and some other colorful duckie thumb-drive bretheren. Check it out. You have to see some of these to believe them …

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PodCasting

I have to share my latest interest/obsession with you all: podcasting. I had a small sliver of my brain interested in it for a while now, slowly gathering data about it and this weekend, it finally hit critical mass. I couldn't tell you why. But I found myself on Fri night downloading iPodder and subscribing to 10 different podcasts.

What, you may ask, am I blathering about? Well, my friend, I am blathering about the latest and greatest (well prolly not, but it rhymes) form of entertainment. By now we're all aware of site feeds, little xml-formatted pages that allow aggregators to get the latest headlines from our sites (jesser.org's is here in case you want to see it). And we all know about mp3s. Basically, podcasting merges the two. Folks make podcasts, record them in mp3 format and then syndicate them using an XML feed. Podcast software allows you to subscribe to these feeds and will then download them to your computer for you when they're updated. Continue reading “PodCasting”