Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life. –Adele Brookman
I suppose it is just as well that I haven't blogged in several months because the cobwebs on the decor seem to fit nicely with the theme of the day.
I'd really like to dust off the old blog and get back to regular posting. It's been one wild and crazy adventure at Bug Cottage lately, and totally in a good way. I increased my work hours over the summer to close to full-time, which is counter-intuitive since the Not-So-Little Bugs are home more during the summer, but things all worked out. When school started, I took on some new responsibilities at work and so bumping up to full-time followed.
As time has gone by, I've been keeping a mental list of all the things that I want to blog about, but the list keeps increasing and it seems so daunting a task that I haven't had the nerve to start. I've done lots of fun sewing though, and I'm hoping to get in a few posts about that soon. In case you were curious, I did finish the Signature Quilt for the woman who turned 100 in September. The party was 11 days before her birthday so it was close, but I got it done in time.
As you can imagine, I've been spending a little more time than I used to at work. They are a really wild and crazy bunch. One of the programmers pulled the best prank ever today.
Halloween is my favorite. Dressing up is so much fun. There was a costume contest today {winners to be announced Monday} and my office mate and I decided that we were going to be Minions. We were nicknamed the AdMinions {Admin + Minions}. It was a great collaboration and I think we pulled it together nicely.
Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen,
Voices whisper in the trees, "Tonight is Halloween!" –Dexter Kozen
Costumes have been donned. Faces have been painted. Chili has been eaten. Thinly veiled threats have been made in order to garner candy. It is Halloween!
I love Halloween. It runs in the family. Seriously. Check out my sister's totally awesome Star Trek costumes. Anyway, sometimes I tend to go a little overboard in the planning of the costumes. And the execution and completion of said plans often takes longer than expected. Nevertheless, this year the challenge has been successfully met. And I didn't even have to stay up all night to do it. Almost. But not quite.
LadyBug has been planning her costume since last year. She is Annabeth Chase from the Percy Jackson series of books. We bought and dyed the t-shirt the perfect Camp Half-Blood orange and then I appliquéd the logo on it. We bought the cap {which allows Annabeth to turn invisible} and we made the necklace together.
LadyBug is all about the details, so we couldn't have an Annabeth costume without the necklace. We made beads from cornstarch dough, painted them and strung them together to look like the beads the demi-god kids at Camp Half-Blood get at the end of each summer. The beads have something on them that represents the most significant event that happened in the past year. After we dried the beads for a few hours in the oven, we let them sit overnight. LadyBug put the first coat of paint on and then I put a second one on. She either painted or drew with a metallic paint marker the designs on all the beads except for the green one with the winged sneaker on it, which she asked me to do. Annabeth's beads, from left to right: Thalia's Tree, A Centaur in a prom dress, Greek Trireme, Winged Sneaker, Arrow from the Hunters of Artemis, Trident, Golden Fleece, Daedalus' Maze, Empire State Building.
Cornstarch Clay
1 cup salt
⅓ cup water
½ cup cornstarch
¼ cup cold water
• In a small saucepan, heat the salt and ⅓ cup water over medium-high heat for about 4 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Remove from heat, stir in the cornstarch and add ¼ cup cold water. The mixture should now look like thick mashed potatoes; stir until it thickens.
• Let cool for a few minutes before kneading or shaping.
Notes
• If the clay is too sticky, knead in a little bit of cornstarch as needed.
• If the clay is too crumbly, place a little bit of water on your fingertips as you work with the clay to moisten.
• Air dry 1 to 4 days. For faster drying, place items on a cookie sheet and place in a 225˚ oven for 4 to 6 hours.
• Food coloring can be kneaded into the clay as desired.
• Store clay in a zippered baggie with a bit of wet sponge or a wet paper towel for up to 2 weeks.
Grasshopper asked me to make his costume in the middle of August, so I couldn't let him down. He found a set of instructions on-line for a Magicka Wizard Robe. Putting the pattern together was a bit laborious and I've almost forgotten how to sew a seam allowance bigger than ¼" or how to use pins. Once I got going, though, it was just like riding a bike and it came together pretty well.
Pretty snazzy mystical, huh? All the tweaking to the pattern paid off. The robe fits Grasshopper so well it's almost like it was custom made for him. Oh. Wait. It was.
Between you and me, I'm exhausted. I was up until 1:00 am finishing up and midnight the night before. I'm going to wash my face, turn off the porch light and go to bed early. Hopefully we won't get egged because we stopped giving out candy before 10:00 pm. And tomorrow I am going to do all the things I've been ignoring in order to pull off Halloween.
I'm taking care of my procrastination issues; just you wait and see! –As seen on Pinterest while procrastinating
By my reckoning, in the time that has elapsed since I finished the Sea Glass quilt, I should have had Grasshopper's Halloween costume finished and most of the rest of Paulette's Dresden quilted. But instead of the happy hum of the sewing machine, there's been an awful lot of procrastination going on around here.
My story goes something like this . . . after the big finish weekend before last I decided that I needed something a little mindless to work on, so I pulled out a really old Ph.D and fiddled around with that for a couple of days. When I could no longer reasonably claim that my brain needed rest, I decided to buck up and work on Grasshopper's costume. The problem with this is that I needed to make the pattern based on a set of instructions written using the metric system. {Sidebar: despite what they've been telling us since the 70's, I don't think it is likely that we're going to be switching anytime soon.} I ran all the numbers through a conversion chart, but pattern making/alterations is not one of my favorite things to do. I'm really not good at it. I can see what the lines should look like in my head, but I have a hard time making my pencil put those lines down on paper.
To make the process a little . . . easier {for lack of a better word} I thought I'd use the reference drawings in the instructions as a base and adjust them in my antiquated photo editing software {Microsoft Paint}. I sat down at my computer, full of pluck, and started looking at Halloween face paint. I wasted pretty much the whole afternoon filling up a pin board mostly with different sugar skulls{but in the non-Dia de los Muertos category, isn't this the coolest thing you've ever seen?}. I also found a really cute idea for nails and which resulted in a Halloween-y manicure.
And then I went back to puttering around with my Ph.D for a few more days. On Monday, with only 10 days until Halloween and an all-nighter lurking in my future, I buckled down and started work on the digital patterns, after I first made sure it wasn't going to cost and arm and a leg to print them out on oversize paper. It was a long and laborious process involving all kinds of funky math to convert between pixels and inches and centimeters, and reducing and enlarging by percentages as I adjusted and sized and re-sized the graphics. I worked on it from the time I got home from work until the time I went to bed on Monday night and then all afternoon yesterday. As a final test, I reduced the pattern pieces to the same scale so that they would fit on regular paper and made sure that everything fit together as it should. When they did {miracle of miracles!} I uploaded them to a copy shop and discovered that in my investigation into pricing I must have had the very smallest of the oversize papers selected because it was not the $1.79 per sheet that I'd thought, but a whopping $6.59 per sheet. At five sheets I about died when I saw the total. Trick or treat, indeed.
Mr. Bug commiserated with me and helped with alternate options; an opaque projector, transparencies, a digital projector, pencil and paper. All the time I'd already spent tweaking the patterns to perfection not withstanding, I was most concerned with distortion in the projections and absolutely dreading drawing out the patterns by hand. And that's where I left it when I went to bed last night.
This morning I still felt the same sense of dread {appropriate for Halloween, don't you think?}; none of the options was going to be pleasant. It came down to spending time or money to make this work out. I went with money since I'd already spent plenty of time. I stopped at the copy shop on the way in to work {hoping that the price for an in-person order might be slightly lower than an on-line order. It wasn't.} and left with a roll of patterns and a considerably lighter wallet.
When I got home from work, I was feeling less than excited about the prospect of cutting out the freshly minted patterns and wrangling 5 metres {5.46807 yards} of Princess Neon Blue Crushed Panne Velvet. Instead, I popped in at Pinterest, just to see if anything tickled my fancy. And it did. Pretty much all afternoon. What a waste.
The chief enemy of creativity is good sense. –Pablo Picaso
You might recall, a couple of days ago, me banging on about procrastinating on the quilting for P.'s String Ring Dresden and then finding my creative quilting mojo again. I promised to show pictures of the progress soon — I'm one small smidge past the half-way mark on the background quilting and then I'll have to come up with something perfectly perfect to quilt in the 12 Dresdens. I've been tossing around a few ideas, feathers among them, but haven't landed on anything for certain. But I digress, as this is not the post with all the progress in it. Sometimes, you gotta stitch where your bliss takes you, and after several days of wrangling a big quilt {one of the biggest I've done} under the machine, I needed a little break. So I broke out the needle and thread and yet another work-in-progress.
Why, you might ask, did I pull out another embroidery project instead of just working on the embroidered labels for the Patriotic Sampler, which I have sitting on my sewing table for the specific purpose of using as a "get out of quilting free" card? Because Halloween is closer than the 4th of July, silly. And there is the outside chance that I can finish this before then if I work on it as my sit-and-wait project.
I started this cute little hat almost three years ago. I pull it out every year as Halloween approaches. And sometimes work on it after Halloween has passed in the hopes that it will bring me that much closer to a finish the next year when I remember Halloween is coming and pull it out again. A year and a bit later, I had most of the pointy cone part of the hat finished. A bit after that, I'd finished the final piece of the hat. Last year, I finished one of the pieces for the brim and started on a second {no post}. Yesterday I pulled it out again, finished the last two pieces of the brim and assembled it.
This has been really fun to work on. It's hard to photograph black fabric, so some of the photos are washed out. But I think my favorite design of all is the one with the pretty purple cone flowers, and the photo turned out nicely, so it gets its own little spotlight.
I'll work on the decorative stitching between the pieces that ties it all together crazy patchwork style, when I have a few minutes of sit-and-wait time {mostly when I go to pick up the Not-So-Little Bugs from school, who, incidentally, don't believe me at all when I tell them that I walked to and from school every day. Uphill. Both ways. In 10 feet of snow. Yeah. That joke never gets old.}. I have my stitches selected for each seam, all mapped out on a sketch with the colors of floss I want to use. I've learned to write these things down so I don't forget. I'll probably need a refresher next year.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some quilting to do.
–Thriller
Performed by Michael Jackson and Vincent Price
Written by Rod Temperton
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. It ranks right up there with Christmas as far as extensive and exhaustive preparations go. I love making costumes, although they always take way longer than I think they will. Some years I start early, and other years I decide I'm not going to make anything but end up rushing at the last minute to make something wonderful. No matter when I start, though, I usually have to pull an all-nighter to finish.
This year LadyBug is all about the capes. She wanted to be a vampire {just your everyday ordinary kind of vampire and not the sparkly kind} and since I have about a billion other things going on, I took her shopping and bought an inexpensive black cape. And of course, as I ironed it out, I thought to myself, why didn't I just make one?
I'm going as Hermoine Granger. I don't know what I did with my time turner. If I could find it, I would use it to go back and make LadyBug's cape. And then I'd use it to have a long, long nap. I was up until the week hours of the morning getting the Halloween Chili ready and putting together a Camp Jupiter t-shirt for Grasshopper. When will I ever learn?
In honor of the day, I've put together a little virtual trick-or-treating. Click on one or all and enjoy!
The Ghoulbert Report
Actor Tom Hanks shares easy and inexpensive Halloween costume ideas. Love it!
A Ghostly Phenomenon
I don't really buy into the paranormal. But hey, it's Halloween, right? So I thought I'd share this car advertisement from somewhere. When they finished filming, the ad the people who made it noticed something moving along the side of the car, like a ghostly white mist. About halfway through, you will see the white mist crossing in front of the car then following it along the road accompanied by an eerie sound that you can barely hear. You have to have the sound turned up to hear it. It is really faint but when the car rounds the second corner and looks like it's going through trees is when it starts.
The ad was never put on TV because of the unexplained ghostly phenomenon. ..... Spooky!
Re: Your Brains
It's a perfectly reasonable request. I just don't get why Tom won't cooperate. Heads Will Roll Michael Jackson's Thriller debuted at special theatrical screening in Los Angeles in 1983. It was shown in the theater before the re-release of Fantasia in order to qualify for an Academy Award and most people left after the video. I remember when it was first shown on MTV. It always has been and always will be one of my all-time favorite songs. The rap was written by Rod Temperton in a taxi cab on the way to the recording studio. He wrote three verses, but only the first and third were included in the song, which was voiced over by Vincent Price. I love this fun Mash-up of Thriller and Heads Will Roll performed in the first season of Glee.
The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps — we must step up the stairs. –Vance Havner
I like to make lists. I have about six little notebooks floating around that I write down lists of quilting projects in. The notebooks take turns getting lost, so I write and re-write the lists. I keep lists for other things as well, and it is interesting to come across a list that is six or eight months old. I find that the things I write down as important will get done more often than not, even if some of those items are forgotten from list to list.
I have big ambitions for 2012. I'm hoping it will be a productive year. I'm focusing primarily on PhD's this year. I'm sure a couple of new projects will pop up. Both Ladybug and Grasshopper want me to make them quilts. I have the fabrics for them. But I'm going to try to hold them off as long as I can so that I can finish a few things. My goal is to finish all of the PhD's on this list in 2012.
The weather around here is a little chilly, so it will be nice to stay indoors and work on these quilts. And since I think Zooey Deschanel has a dreamy voice, here's a little winter {not Christmas} music to work by.
Seventy percent of success in life is showing up. –Woody Allen
For the past two years, I've been keeping an index of all the projects I finish during each year. It has been fun to look back to see how much I've accomplished in one year. I humbly submit my 2011 finishes.
One Hired Machine Quilting & Binding Job
One Halloween Costume, Two Pieces {skirt & cloak}
Two Fleece Baby Blankets
Three Abbey Bags
Four Church Bags
Four Table Runners
Five Adult Bibs
Six Aprons {one reversible}
Eight Quilts
Twelve Quilted Notebook Covers
Fifteen Fabric Postcards
Eighteen Fancy Pillowcases
In case you lost count, that is 80 finishes, and I enjoyed every one of them. I hope that 2012 is as productive!
I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up—they have no holidays. –Henny Youngman
Thanks to everyone who voted for what you are thankful for. Children and Family each took 15 votes and Friends took 16, which just goes to show that you can pick your friends but not your family. I also found it interesting that the Spouse category got only one more vote than the Parents category . Seriously, though. It was nice to stop for a minute and count all the good things and people in my life.
Christmas is in 24 days. Twenty. Four. Days. People. If that doesn't scare the pants off you, then someone else must do the planning/decorating/shopping/baking/wrapping/card sending at your house. Christmas comes with its stress. Finding the perfect gift. Making the money stretch for the perfect gift. Finding the time to do all the pre-holiday preparations. Making it through the family parties with your sanity still in tact. Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas. It is one of my favorite holidays. I love giving a thoughtful, personal gift to someone I care about. I enjoy the parties, the food, the company, the feeling in the air. There is something magical about it. Perhaps it is all the twinkle lights.
Christmas is in my top three favorite holidays. I'm not sure how they rank in order of preference, but the three I love the most are Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Each one has its merits. On Halloween, you can be anyone you want to be. Thanksgiving is filled with friends and family and good food. And Christmas is about remembering the One who gave all for us. I'm not sure that I love the other holidays any less, though. I love potato salad and fireworks on the Fourth of July, staying up until midnight to ring in a new year, pinching anyone who didn't wear green on the 17th of March, and making paper hearts for my favorite people in February. It is fun to celebrate the little things in life, as well as the big. So today, I must ask . . . what is your favorite holiday?
Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable and lightness has a call that's hard to hear.–Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine
Only 357 Days Until Halloween
I'm supposed to be working on Christmas gifts. I was really on a roll with my Twilight quilt{which interrupted work on my Halloween quilt}, but I put it away so that I could get my Christmas gifts done more than 15 minutes before we're supposed to leave for our parties. While I was organizing things, you know how you do when you change projects, I started winding some of the skeins of floss I'd bought onto bobbins. I've got all the colors of DMC floss now, but not all of them are on neatly labeled bobbins stored in containers. While I was doing that, I started to think about the 28 bobbins of floss I have separated out for Zelda's Fancy Hat, and kind of wanted to put them all back in their boxes so they'd be with their friends. But I can't do that until I finish using them. So, I started stitching.
I had two of the sections finished, the orange “lavender” and the lazy daisies. I finished three more sections for the hat and am working on the last section now, which fits down in the bottom right corner, making what you see into a triangle with a rounded bottom, that you roll to make a cone with. I really love to do hand work. There is something very soothing about the rhythm of it. The problem is, our first Christmas party is in 38 days. And I have a lot of sewing to do between now and then. So, I'm afraid I'm going to have to put Zelda's Fancy Hat away for a while. And putting all those floss bobbins back in their boxes will have to wait too.
Gaga over Little Big Town
Recently {like yesterday}, I was introduced to a fantastic band called Little Big Town. They are mostly country, but also a little bit bluegrass, which is something I really love {see also, RSRB}. Their music is all about the harmonies, which they do beautifully. They have some really great original songs {see Kiss Goodbye and Bring It On Home}, but they've also done some really great covers. Their version of Born this Way by Lady Gaga is one part redneck, one part chutzpah and one part pure genius.
My Little Pony?
The latest movie in the Twilight franchise is only 9 days away. I've already got my ticket to see a pre-screening at 5:15 pm on the 17th. Until then, I've staked out all the late-night {and daytime} talk shows so I can catch clips of the movie. It doesn't hurt that some of the actors turn up and say really hilarious {and sometimes really off-the-wall} things. This clip from Letterman last night {a huge thank-you to the media pirate who moves at the speed of light to get this up} has a clip of the honeymoon. I loved it!
There once was a sweet little maid, much beloved by everybody, but most of all by her grandmother, who never knew how to make enough of her. Once she sent her a little riding hood of red velvet, and as it was very becoming to her, and she never wore anything else, people called her Little Red Riding Hood.
–Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales, page 140
It has been a busy last few days and this post is hardly relevant anymore. But this is the first second I've had to myself, so grab a piece of Halloween candy {if you still have any} and pretend this is two days ago.
I love Halloween. I love making costumes. And I love dressing up. But I have a serious procrastination problem, which presents itself the worst during the month of October. After my second or third year in a row of pulling an all-nighter to get costumes done, I made a “rule” that I was only going to make costumes every other year and my kids could wear something they already had on the in-between years. This year was an “off” year, but we all know rules are made to be broken. I decided that I needed a new costume. After all, I haven't had a new one since 2005. I think it was about then that I decided that I wanted to make a Little Red Riding Hood cape and this year seemed like the perfect year to do it.
10 days before Halloween, I went fabric shopping. I'd seen the perfect fabric at JoAnn's last year, and JoAnn's being what they are, I figured they'd still have it. But I guess their costuming fabrics are not like most of their other fabrics, in that they go out of print. Since I couldn't find what I wanted I decided not to make a costume. But 5 days later, when a costume contest was announced at work, it was back on. A tight deadline always makes things more exciting, right ?
{Back row, L to R: Mad Scientist, Luigi, Pioneer Woman, Dr. Who Front row, L to R: Steam Punk Vampire, Little Red, Amelia Earhart, Space Cowboy, Nudist on Strike}
It surprised me how many people dressed up and how clever the costumes were! The Steam Punk Vampire, who got my vote, won the costume contest. Besides the costumes here, there was a soccer player, a “newsie,” a witch/Marilyn Manson/Severus Snape, a baseball coach, Sally {from Nightmare Before Christmas}, Strawberry Shortcake, a mobster and a mummy. The person who got my “most original” vote put on a yellow satin gown, some beads, a sweater, scarf, boots and gloves and said, “I was playing dress-up, but my mom made me go outside.” I'm thinking that is one you had to see and I'm wishing I'd have snapped her picture.
Besides all of the fun at work, I helped with Grasshopper-Potter's classroom party, made our traditional Halloween dinner, chili with breadsticks and Jell-O, and took the Little Bugs trick-or-treating. The weather was just beautiful for traipsing around the neighborhood demanding free candy with a thinly-veiled threat.
The batteries in my camera were dead first thing, and it was a busy, fun day. I finally managed to snap photos of LadyBug and Grasshopper in their costumes {I stuck with the wear-something-you-already-have “rule” for them} just before bed. The lighting isn't that great, but when it gets dark by 7:00 pm, you work with what you've got.
Officer LadyBug handcuffed me for making her eat chili for dinner and we haven't been able to find the key. It's made getting around interesting. And Grass-Potter still owes me a detention.
Halloween is huge in my house and we really get into the "spirits" of things. –Dee Snider
I'm doing a little happy dance. I got the Boo to You! quilt top finished and I really like how it came together. I was worried that the row of Jack-O-Lanterns might not fit in with the rest of the quilt since I added it to the pattern, but I think the scrappy border brings it all together nicely.
I've also got the scrappy borders on one of the place mats, but my batteries ran out before I got a picture, so I'll just have to show you it later. It is kind of big , but I suppose that doesn't matter too much since no one will ever eat off the place mats. They are for decoration only.
It just wouldn't be a picnic without the ants. –Unknown
Yes. I still have a migraine. I can't be absolutely certain if I've had three different ones since Friday, or if it is just the same one that won't go away.
No. I'm not going to give you the run-down of what is and is not a migraine. And, no. I'm not going to give you my complete medical history. I just thought that The Anatomy of A Migraine was a sort of compelling post title . I'm really trying not to be whiney about this, although I know I'm not succeeding. Blogging is about what's on your mind, and a migraine is what's on my mind lately. I have to say this much, though. My mom gets migraines too. And she just goes on doing whatever it is she has to do; work, kids, grandkids, dinner, chores, whatever. She just keeps on. I used to wonder how she could do it because my migraines used to be the kind that made me want to curl up into a ball in the dark, under my covers, with an ice pack on my head until it went away. As time has passed, the headache part of it has devolved from a nauseatingly intense and debilitating pain to ranging in sensation from an almost intolerable and still quite nauseating pain to a dull ache in one side of my head that I can almost — but not quite — forget is there. I can still go to work and do laundry and cook dinner, but I move at a snail's pace, coherent thought is elusive, and there's not much left over for anything creative.
So, I'm asking nicely. Migraine, please go away, because I really want to get back to quilting the Pinwheel Sampler. I haven't worked on it since last Thursday.
In the meantime, I got the sixth Halloween placemat together and ready for borders. Scrappy piecing and sewing in straight lines doesn't take much brain power, although this one is ¼" shorter in the width than the other five. We'll blame it on the non-coherency, rather than the fact that I really just forgot how to do math for a few minutes.
I'm going to work on cutting fabric for the scrappy borders now. The potential for goof-ups is minimal and at least I'll have something to keep my hands busy.
Q: What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by it's diameter? A: Pumpkin Pi.
Hilarious! I know!
I had a difficult time deciding what to post about today. My first thought was to complain about the migraine I've had since Friday and to tell you all that a migraine is not just a really bad headache and in fact the opposite of what causes a headache is what causes a migraine. I was going to explain in detail the four stages of a migraine and the ways that migraines bother me and tell you my whole history with migraines.
But I decided to go with the other option, which is to post pictures of more Halloween place mats in progress. As you can see, no matter which way I posted, there's nothing very exciting going on around here, but aren't you glad I chose the less whiney option?
First up, pumpkins {hence the most awesome pumpkin/math joke ever}. I like how this one came out.
And bats! I think this one is fun too.
Only one more to go and then on to scrappy borders.
As a side note, does anyone else have trouble with Blogger/Picasa flipping their photos when you upload them? It flips about half of mine and then I have to go in and edit them in Picnik, which sometimes flips them back for me automatically when I go into the editing tool, as if to say, sorry for having caused you to waste time editing photos you've already edited because we flipped them for you.
. Seriously, though. It was nice to stop for a minute and count all the good things and people in my life.
?
, but I suppose that doesn't matter too much since no one will ever eat off the place mats. They are for decoration only.
Hilarious! I know!
