OOOPS--book correction

Was I ever surprised! I had read Hen's Teeth and Nightmares... but they aren't the books I remembered, lol... they are set in contemporary Scotland, the heroine is a highly educated therapist, and they're mysteries.

The books I am thinking of so fondly--with nary a clue to titles now, nor to the author's name--were set in the 1800s, in an alternate America where magic was a reality. The heroine was a young girl living on the frontier.

Ooops, lol....

Book Review

One of the things that I have always done is read craft books, and while I have recently been sidelined with illness, I indulged. *grin* We had gone to the library earlier, and I had wandered the stacks of older books this time (not the new purchases). This is how I originally found Lisa at Dorky Homemade Quilts, by reading her quilt books from the library; she's the one who inspired me to start this blog. I meant to document my quiltmaking here, but I stalled out after I learned strip-piecing.

Then I found this book.
Well! *I* have a sewing machine! I should be all set to go, right? Really cool, eh? I was alllll intrigued... until I started reading. Oh my! *dismayed look* This is quilting by the numbers, V-E-R-Y precise, methodical and mathematical.

I am sooooo not that way. Do I have a perfectionist streak? Yes, indeed I do... but am I that fussy to be so precise when I am cutting up OLD SHIRTS and such? Oh heck no! It was sooo discouraging!!

The sad thing is that I am certain the author meant to be ENcouraging, and more than likely IS encouraging to scads of quilters... but my heart just fell as I read the book and by the end I thought to myself, "forget it; I'll just never be a quilter."

So I turned to something else.

Who can't use more potholders, right? And I was hoping to pick up a lil technical detail--whatever the heck the NAME is for that stuff I've been using to pad my crafts, cuz it's the stuff that you put in the middle of a potholder--but no such luck. Still, the book was SO CUTE and this time so totally encouraging that I really enjoyed it.

One of the things that intrigued me was the history she included with potholder examples from museums. Now doesn't that make you want to giggle, everyday ordinary POTHOLDERS in a MUSEUM?

The other most intriguing thing was a crazy-quilted potholder. Hmmm!! Maybe there might be a way for me to be a quilter after all? At least on a potholder scale.

Ohhhhhhhh but then I read THIS book.....

Oh MY MY MY!!!! Here is a book which is not "cute" but absolutely fabulous, elegant, inspiring, beautiful.... And the pincushions! lol, my favorite was made on an empty salt container! It was called a sweet roll, with the tube part of the salt container supporting two pincushions at the ends.

There were more variations on pincushions than I had ever imagined, with all kinds of embroidery and beading patterns to embellish them... this book even includes that most amazing thing, patterns for fabric-covered boxes (with pincushions built in) of various shapes and sizes. The boxes were not premade, like starting with a section of the salt container, but were completely from scratch!

The whole book just made me sigh and say to Gryph, "I *want* this one!!" It belongs in my craft library. Someday I will buy it.

THENNNN, oh then.... this book is another one like the other one! Talk about inspiring! Beautiful! Exquisite! Victorian inspired sewing to make all sorts of things! And yet again, some crazy-quilting... hmmmmm...

So I went to the grocery store, and guess what I found on super close-out for $2?

Do ya think it's a message? I read this book with growing delight... I SOOO want to try this! The author separated the projects by theme--I loved the Western section, all kitschy cowboy-design looking--and she included several techniques for crazy-quilting. I loved the way she embellished her projects with snippets of lace, and I loved the patches with the seams showing--especially the denim--and her projects were sometimes elegant and sometimes too cute for words, but all of them seemed do-able to me.

See that basket on the cover of the book? It's made from a 12 yard strip of crazy-quilting. The flower embellishments are made from ribbons. The basket caught my eye at first and is the reason I opened the book, but the sheer wealth of projects and techniques is why I bought it.

And then, yanno, this author was encouraging but did not call for math and methodical precision, so I was hooked, lol...

I think I can do this!

Now to unbury the sewing machine. That might take a while; we're still finishing up on rearranging things, and of course... I want to re-rearrange the living room to make it work better. *wry grin* But in the meantime, oh have I ever got happy things to look forward to!

And, um... I got more books at the library yesterday, from the "new" section... I'll let you know if anything sparks this kind of encouragement this time. *eyebrow-waggling grin*

Just in time

I woke up before five this morning, not much sleep but hurting enough (and hungry enough, lol) to need to get up. I took the doglet out right away and am I EVER glad that I did! Cuz yanno, it's been raining for the past two hours... and just in time, too! Today was "water that squash before it wilts again!" day. *grin* Now I don't have to.

I spent an amazing amount of money on one plant the other day, $4 on a spearmint plant. I wanted to make tabouli, a Lebanese salad that is mainly parsley, mint, and wheat, and I couldn't buy enough mint in the produce section for less than $6. But there was this lonesome mint plant, bright green and lush, just huge in the pot. I meant to take a before pic but well... um... I got carried away and scalped it. *blush* The tabouli was good! *blushes again* Anyhow, when it stops raining, I'll take the poor scalped thing out with the rest of my lil garden. *sheepish look* I need to get it a bigger pot but I think that has to wait a while, at least until next payday.

In the meantime, I am ALLLLLL inspired by a new library book. Paper + Pixels is a scrapbooking book that comes with a CD of papers, tags, and frames, but the reason I loved it? It has GREAT tips for using both Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop Elements!!! These are what amounts to tutorials for using both programs to work with pictures, backgrounds, and text, and I learned a LOT from them. I had no idea that you could do so much with photos in Word!

I have an older version of Photoshop (not Elements, but the whole Photoshop program) and it so far hasn't loaded on this puter... but I am truly inspired to try it again. I loved what they did with photos and since I've always been interested in desktop publishing, plus now I have the blog, well, I've always wanted to be able to do what they've done!

So, this morning's rainy agenda? Load that program on the puter. *eyebrow waggling grin* here's hoping it takes!

Cath