Letters

This is a box of letters--one of many boxes of letters and cards. In fact, I have almost every piece of correspondence written to me since I was a small child.

What in the world I am supposed to do with all of them! Part of me says just keep them. I have had them this long, and they will be neat to have in the future.

The other part of me says throw them all away. Most of them are just cards--birthday, christmas, valentine's, etc. Somewhere in the middle would be sorting through them and keeping those with particular artistic or sentimental value and tossing the rest. Quite frankly, I find the prospect of that task overwhelming.

I know some people use old cards for scrapbooking, but I'm not really into that. Any ideas?

Quilting Group

I joined a quilting group and went to my first work session today. It was really good. I wanted to do something that fed my need to contribute to this world, meet some new people, and maybe pick up a few sewing tips. The group is through my church, and the blankets are distributed through Lutheran World Relief. Here are the instructions for making the quilts.

Some of the women had patched pieces together to make tops already, so I worked on knotting the layers together. Learned a new way to do that, which is different than the way shown at Happy Things. If I am feeling industrious later, maybe I will post some pics of the technique as well as a nifty way to thread a needle easily. (I had never seen it before, but it is probably old news to veteran sewers.)

Anyway, enough procrastinating--time to tackle the piles of paper--receipts and old check books this time.

Clutter

I seem to have a love/hate relationship with clutter, specifically piles--piles of paper. No matter how hard I try there is always somewhere in the house with a little cluster of stuff that does not have a home/needs to be read/dealt with.

I just spent the last two hours working on the "office." We moved into our house about a year ago, and this room is the last one to get any attention. It's where everything else that we didn't know what to do with ended up. The goal is to make a wonderful sewing/craft room/office.

The hall bathroom closet and under our bed are two other places where I am determined to bring order to the disorder.....someday........

Blanket #2 and Some Cute Little Bags

I finished the second blanket today and even had time to sew two little bags.

Here is the blanket. Same design as the other one just different fabric. I have been trying different places in the house to take pictures of these blankets and have not yet found anything that works really well.

This is in the sun room (see the ugly cushion covers; they are next on the sewing list.)

The big sisters of the babies-to-be will also be at the shower, so I got a few little things for them and made these bags to stash the goods. They were super easy and took only about ten minutes to make. I had the princess/fairy fabric left over from another project. These would be great for birthday party favor bags.

Sewing Success!

I am super pleased with the blanket I made today--same fabric as the earlier one, so no new pic though. I used 10" squares, and the finished project was 26" x 34".

• While fleece is a fairly forgiving fabric with which to sew, making the squares as square as possible is key. My wonderful husband, who happens to a skilled carpenter, whipped out his oversized square and helped me get everything lined up perfectly.
• Use a straight stitch--my machine was set a #4 for stitch length.
• Trim the seams severely. This really helped the blanket look more finished and sew together much more smoothly.
• If you pull gently on fleece, it will curl to the wrong side.

Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia

We recently visited the Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia (FCMV) outside of Staunton, and I would highly recommend it if you are in the area. Here is one of the pics I took, and there are more on my Flickr page.



I do have to say that we almost did not go though. I had picked up a brochure and checked the web site, but really could not tell what it was going to be like. Our two-year-old is quite flexible, but I had images of tromping around in the boiling sun with no access to restrooms, shade, or water. The museum had all of these things and more. I think the web site for FCMV does the place a disservice. Unless I missed it (which is possible), this is all the site said about food/lodging:

Vending snacks and drinks available on patio area and Museum Store.
Picnic tables are available.

What would have been extremely helpful would have been a map of the grounds. The farmhouses are actually located quite close to each other, and it is a nice walk around the paths to each one of them. There are costumed people in each of the houses, who were all super nice, informative, and knowledgeable. There are small red wagons available for rental as well as scooters and even larger golf-cart-type vehicles if there are people in your party unable to walk short distances.

There was a water fountain, water cooler, and two different restrooms available along the trail. (Yes, one of the "restrooms" was a Johnny Blue, so I am not sure if that counts; I think it does in this case.)

We had been to Colonial Williamsburg earlier this year and had a great time. If Williamsburg is living history on steroids though then FCMV is living history on camomile tea (in a calm, nice not boring way). There were very few people there the day we were there (Thursday), so you really got to talk and ask questions about what the people were doing and why.

The lady in the English house was cleaning wool that day, for example, and her fire had gone out. So my husband and son helped bring her some firewood and get the fire going again.

There was no crush of visitors at the museum store--just a yummy sample of homemade fudge, air conditioning, and a small, but interesting collection of books for sale.

It was the perfect outing for us on that day.

Death

My husband's grandmother, Garnet Elizabeth Mongold, died this morning; she was 88. She is survived by 9 children, 20 grandchildren, and 31 great-grandchildren. Wow!

I can't help but reflect on life, what it means, and how we do/do not impact those around us and the world as a whole.

My deepest thanks to all those grandmothers who love their grandchildren unconditionally, with wide open arms, lots of hugs and kisses, and great food memories. [I don't recall my granny doing much cooking at all when we visited, but I do have great food memories associated with her and her house. There were the small cans of OJ with the peel back tops that were just the right size for little hands. There was the candy at the town pool that we got to buy--you know the fake cigarettes, and she always had cookies in the apple-shaped cookie jar--often they were those peanut butter cookies shaped like peanuts. I don't think the food was particularly good, but these were all things we never had at home--special treats at Granny's.]