Afternoon plans involve this beauty here and some lovely silk butterfly fabric.
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I started thinking about my “Arg…” and “Yippee!!!” pages. They struck me as a bit off the mark. In the sense I was all “good for me–I can deal with other people’s crap/niceness towards me and the universe’s crap/niceness towards me.”
But where does that leave my crap/niceness towards others and the universe? So the respective pages will be pulling double-duty as I am also gonna jot down the things that I’ve done well or not so well too…
Darn my conscience. Well not really, but it so much easier to place the blame elsewhere…
Does this make sense??
Off to work on my serger and ultimately the butterfly shirt. I’ve already dusted, oiled, and super-glued the broken piece back to the thread guide.
Peace,
Katy ^_^
Not that kind of sorry…
I’m pretty good at feeling sorry for myself. If you have an hour or two we could sit down to some wine and talk about all that ails me. I’ve been trying this technique for a long while now and am realizing it doesn’t work for me.
So, I’m going to try something new. I grabbed two pieces of paper–bright orange for October–an am titling them “Arg…” and “Yippee!!!” See Exhibit One below.
Exhibit One–notice I had to brainstorm some title ideas…
I’m thinking that if something is really bugging me, I’ll write it down on the “Arg…” sheet. Once it is down on the sheet I will let go of it–for good! On the other hand, if something is making me smile super-big I’ll write it down on the”Yippee!!!” sheet.
Besides having a starting point for prayer, the “Arg…” sheet will remind me all the times that things didn’t go my way. I hope see frustrations as diversions in life. I can embrace them or get sidetracked by them. I can let myself slip down that “feeling sorry” road, or I can press on towards what I want. Besides that, I can go back and laugh about the things that were making me soooo frustrated. Usually they are not that important anyways.
I’m fascinated with fashion history and what inspires designers, what causes lines to fail, what causes lines to succeed, etc. My undergraduate thesis is titled “What Makes a Designer Successful?” Designers, like all business-people have very interesting back-stories. None of them has had success with everything. All of them have faced some kind of adversity. So instead hosting a pity party for one, I hope to remind myself that successful designers, and other people have had to face adversity too.
On the other hand, the “Yippee!!!” sheet will enable me to remember all the positive things happening around me.
I’ll see how this works for a bit and then let y’all know! Let me know if you are doing something similar..
Peace,
Katy ^_^
I had my first chocolate croissant during my first summer in France–2002. I’m not sure if I’ve ever found a version in the states that was up to the tastiness of French chocolate croissants. That was, until I found these. How I love thee, Trader Joe’s. Check out the freezer section.
Here’s how they look when you take them out of the box. They are supposed to sit out for several hours.
Here’s how much they grew overnight!
And after a bit in the oven they turn golden brown.
Eric took his and left for church before I was able to take the “after” shot.
Since I was in the kitchen already, I took a photo of our new dishwasher. So far, it has not disappointed at all. Yay! for soap-free dishes.
Peace,
Katy ^_^
Here’s the skirt. I finished it last week!
I am a bit larger than Maud (the dressform) so it is sagging a bit. It is cut in three pieces on the bias and has an elastic waist. The back has a little extra fabric, fish-tail like. It looks better with a little booty in it. Super-easy to sew. Looks super-cute on. I’ll show you when I get the top finished!
Here’s my plan for the top.
I like the middle drawing. But with sleeves. Stripes will be added down the front and back to avoid the coffin clothes look. I bought some serger thread to finish the edges–silk frays something awful. I’m not sure why I bought three spools, when I’ll probably do a two-thread rolled hem. Maybe so I have three in the future? I get a little crazy when spending gift-card money. Can you blame me?
Eric has ADHD. This ADD blog posting made me laugh. A very typical exchange between the two of us.
Peace,
Katy ^_^
Here’s the video, enjoy. If you have any complaints you can send them to Sake.
**Updated ridiculously early on Sunday morning. So I waited, and waited, and waited. YouTube’s processing time is taking forever. Until that link works, here is the unglamourized link. The video is the same…**
***Upate 2- much later.. Looks like the way I exported the video it was a screenshot only. So user error–not You Tube error. ***
It should be processed soon. 
Congrats, Kelli! Shoot me an e-mail and let me know what you’d like. Perhaps something Frida inspired?
Peace,
Katy
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
So I feel like the last person on the planet to have read this book. However, I was at dinner Friday night with several other people who had just read or were reading the book. The fun thing that everyone mentioned is the end of the book takes place in East Bay. You find this out in the first page, so I’m not giving anything away! Being relatively new to this area, it was fun to see the character’s experiences here.
I read almost the entire book Friday. I started it on Thursday reading about 20 pages. The story was captivating (obviously) and I didn’t have other plans for the day so read I did.
I don’t want to be too much of a critic because I have never published a book, let alone a best-seller. In spite of that, I have definite opinions about the story. I found the book a bit formulaic at the end. Every single piece of detail, except the detailed descriptions of some of the doctors at the end, played a role in the story. Not having superfluous details was not a bad thing is generally a good thing in writing–I think. But they came across as zestless. Another way of putting that is think about eating a chocolate bar. Pretty good by itself. Now think about eating a chocolate bar with cayenne or other unexpected spice added to it. The spice is hardly recognizable, but the chocolate bar experience is much tastier. Try it if you don’t believe me!
So all in all I’d give this 4 out of 5 chocolate bars. It definitely had me crying and angry and emotionally invested for the majority of the first half. I think it could have ended a bit stronger though.
Peace,
Katy ^_^
Knitting at the Library went really well. Four of us showed up and we were all at very different levels. The instructor was super-sweet and really helped us all out a lot. I learned to purl, add on, and take off. Here’s my work.
The kitties helped me pick a contest winner. It’s a video so it’ll take me a bit to get it uploaded…
Here’s a glimpse into our backyard. I haven’t spent much time out there yet. This little toy car has been sitting outside since we arrived. I wonder who has played with it and how old it is. And lest you forget him, Scotch is peeking outside too. 
Thanks to our Gourmet Chia Herb Garden, we’ve got a few herbs growing. I started them and Eric jumped in and ran with them. He’s the son of a florist, grandson of a florist, great-grandson of a farmer, etc. So it is fun to see him re-claiming his green thumb. Prior to the herbs we couldn’t manage to keep a plant alive–so we’re proud of our 3-1 ratio!
Here’s Cilantro, Sweet Marjoram, Dill, and the Chives that never sprouted.
I love our back patio. I want to string some lights–I spotted Christmas things out at Target already–c’mon it is only September!!
Here’s the covered portion of our patio, and the uncovered portion.
Just taking the photos I could envision an awesome party happening out there. Soon!
I think the clothesline is also a cool feature. I remember my great grandmother’s clothesline. We’d climb it and use it a goal posts in soccer games. I hope to use this clothesline more, but after the first experience our clothes were a lot more “crunchy” than I was comfortable with. Does anyone have a secret to this?
There is a bit of dirt back there and we’re hoping to plant some things. My vote is raised beds, but we’ll have to see. There is a lot of shade cover from all of the trees and I’m not sure that plants would get enough sunshine. I think I’m way inspired by Finny’s success in gardening. I need to remind myself that I have only now for the first time not killed a plant and hopefully that’ll keep me humble.
I’m headed back to the library tonight for a knitting group–I’m a square/rectangular knitter at the moment wanting to be a fancy winter sweater knitter. So I plan to pick up a book on gardening, another on knitting (maybe), something fictional, some magazines, and a cookbook and we’ll see where it takes us.
Peace,
Katy ^_^
So, really I didn’t do this on purpose. It just happened. The universe aligned all neat-like and the hundredth post coincided with the one-year anniversary of the blog.
Promise.
I know it seems awfully suspicious, but I had to write 3 posts today.
I HAD to.
I just happened to be poking around in my stats yesterday and realized that today is my year-blogging anniversary. And then I just happened to notice that I’d written 97 posts. So there you have it, now I’m at a hundred.
To celebrate I wanted to do something fun–and have a Give-Away.
I know I am very original.
So here you have it. I bought some supplies from Little Windows when I was at the Long Beach Quilt Show in July. It was an anniversary gift for Eric who is obsessed with photography. Did I mention that we have a photo studio in our back room? I’m serious. He has purchased umbrella lights and everything.
So here’s the during.
I used a scrapbooking letter for the “K”, and part of photos Eric took. I did not use the cropping software…
Here are some more. In the center oval one I placed threads.
Here is the mixture half-gelled. It was fun to play with at this point.
This afternoon when I got home from work I popped them out of the molds. And here you have it.
The craziest part–for me–was drilling a hole through Eric’s forehead–to clarify, the photo of his forehead–so I could create a jump ring to attach it to the necklace. It was a bit crazy. I probably won’t ever wear the necklace, but it makes for a nice photo. Silver reacts with my skin leaving me with a rash and the silver turned permanently black.
Anyway, to get to the Give-Away. Leave a comment and I’ll randomly draw a winner sometime Saturday morning. I’ll make a photo charm necklace for you. Once the winner is selected we can consult and decide on a shape, image, etc.
Good luck. Here’s to another year and continued projects–the original purpose of this blog-venture.
Peace,
Katy ^_^