Saturday, April 5, 2008 in crafty things

I made myself a purse

One of the things we did while my mom was around, was go into town and hit up the little quilt shop. They have awesome fabric for cheap prices and a ton of patterns, including some I wanted and knew my mommy would get for me. (See previous entry where I mention I am spoiled.)

I’ve been on a quest for a decent purse for me for *ages*. Part of the problem is I’m not sure what I want. I like small bags, but I like being organized. Despite my messy creative tendencies, there’s organization in there, I swear. I am also picky about straps and how they feel and hang off my shoulder.

For some reason, I have been drawn to the Miranda Day Bag from lazy girl designs, and mom graciously bought me the pattern. We didn’t roll our eyes at each other oncethrough the whole store. (It’s tiny though.)

This afternoon, I figured I was too tired and scattered for anything else, plus I was surrounded by fabric, so I made the bag. It took four hours, including picking out fabric, familiarizing myself with the directions, skipping over a chunk of them and figuring out my alternatives. :D Initially, the sides are designed ot be quilted, but since my chosen fabric is a heavy canvas type I decided to skip it. Also, I was going for quick gratification. (ie; I’m LAZY. ) I also cooked a bit for Emma, cuddled Ron and talked to the girls. The other thing I skipped was interfacing – I’m ether out of it or I can’t find it to save my life. Like I said, the fabirc is reather heavy, and when I ironed it with the batting, the battign stiffened up a bit too. My lining turned out rather sheer for black, so I’m definitely going to make sure I interface the next bag.

See? I already said I’d make it again, it’s that nice. I really like it. Now I have to make a wallet. They have a pattern for that as well, but I’m gonna wing it. You can get Lazy girl Designs online, but hit up your local quilt shop first to support the little guys. I thought the Miranda bag was well-designed and cleverly constructed. I’d definitely look for their patterns again.

Picture will be added as soon as my batteries recharge, both for the camera and my own.
I used a beige & black fabric ofarchitectural drawings of Roman columns with a black heavy twill with a fine woven stripe. I lined it with black cotton and more of the colum fabric from the end of the piece I had that was all wrecked with the dye runs. That made it look really interesting though, and inside I’m the only one who sees it.

My Miranda day bag

Well, probably only me will see it, as the bag seems sturdy enough to keep me from dumping it upside down accidentally like the one I have now.

Friday, April 4, 2008 in all about me

Oh my

I now own one of the teeniest mp3 players I have ever seen. It’s about the size of a fig newton and just as yummy. See: creative zen stone PLUS. Yes, in black. (Edited to add correct link.)

Also, mom brought four huge bags of fabric, most of which I kept. Mmmm fabric.

Also? Chinese food takeout AND carrot cake with cream cheese icing.

Friday, April 4, 2008 in all about me

I’m so spoiled

First, I heard Ron wish me a happy birthday while we snuggled. I was coming out of a weird and disturbing dream, involving Barack Obama, scandal, corruption and… pottery class.

Then, while still groggy, I heard Emma thump down the hall. She was wondering if I was up yet and did I want my present? How about now? Mommy? Then Ron confused me horribly by continuing to come upstairs with tea and a toasted bagel. He was grinning a lot too. By the time he left and I went downstairs, I found a tin of special tea by the computer. And still! I was surprised by the butt-load of comments rolling in from the post he left here on the blog.

I tried to settle in my routine and just as I was getting to the good bits of someone’s post in my feed reader, strong arms encircled me and AGAIN Ron’s voice whispered in my ear. “Happy Birthday honey.”

Guess who took THE WHOLE DAY OFF? That sniffling was allergies and my voice was cracking because I haven’t been up long. Yeah.

So then we opened some presents.  I mean, I had to – people were staring at me and grinning. My entire day has been thrown off, but it’s been a pretty darn good one.

Friday, April 4, 2008 in all about me

Happy birthday to you

Today is Andrea’s birthday. Leave a comment to send her a birthday wish :)

Thursday, April 3, 2008 in I'm a computer geek

Tech talk

I’m about to start my work day again, in between laundry loads, checking the stove and feeding people. Looking up at my list on the whiteboard, I realized I juggle about 6 clients at once. A couple are long-term and the rest float in and out as things come up. I’m finally making some huge progress on some things, with a lot of it finishing up at the same time. There’s some vastly different sites I’ve been working on, all really cool implementations. Also? I think I’m getting used to saying “web developer” when someone asks me what I do.

You know, in addition to all that other stuff. :D

Havign said all that, when it comes to clients and other websites I work on, it’s much easier to start with an existing theme for wordpress and tweak around that. I’ve wanted to try out some premium themes for a while now, but don’t have the funds to do so. One designer, named Addi, is running a contest to give away a developer’s license for his themes – worth $500.

Can you imagine the havoc I’d wreak with that? :D

All I have to do is write and entry and link back to him and I’m entered in the contest. I could have put this over in my other blog, WPMU Tutorials, but I have some readers here who also may be interested, or just curious. Speaking of WordPressMU, I really want to try out one of the Original Premium News theme as a main blog page on WPMU-based system. I think it would work perfectly as a portal to the rest of the site and the member blogs. Actually, the rest of the themes make me think of all sorts of sites I could use them on…

Contest closes on my birthday too! I think that’s a sign.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008 in I Forgot To Pick A Category

Heavy travellers

Yesterday, Ron finally had a doctor’s appointment to follow up from when he was sick. I managed to get him in to see our old doctor, who still had Ron’s files and thus was still a patient. As a side note, he said he’s take us all back too. The only issue is he sees patients 2 or 3 days a week and is in Fredericton – an hour and a half away.

So after lunch we all bundled off. The girls and I had plans to roam around downtown and also drop off some tea cozies to Lynn at her tea shop. (That’s Trinitea’s Cup on Regent Street.) She thought they were awesome, and we had fun setting them around the shop to show them off to the best advantage. I won’t even mention how I put the finishing touches on some of them on the way down. Nope.

Teapot and tea cozy

Lynn has a lot of her own tea collectibles scattered around and she was telling me how many people tried to buy them. There’s a gorgeous cloisonnes teapot on the counter that someone tried to buy last week – for any amount she wanted. “But some things don’t have a price! They have sentimental value!” she told me. I agree! I said she should make up a story to go with the item, like maybe it belonged to her great-great aunt who had to escape the Nazis in Poland during the War and carried it overseas hidden in her bosom.

Yeah. I got a look. :D In my defense, it was a really tiny teapot.

Tea and cozies for sale

Also, I did that thing I do when someone gushes over anything I make – I point out it’s not perfect. Even though it looks fine and probably nobody but me and maybe someone who actually sews would ever find a thing wrong with it would notice, but I do it anyway. “Fine then,” Lynn said, “When someones asks about this one, I’ll say ‘No, you can’t buy that, it’s not perfect.’ ” :D

That’s TRINITEA’S CUP on Regent street, downtown Fredericton, almost diagonally across from Tim Horton’s. Home of the best soup in the city, selling tea and tea accesories. Tell Lynn I sent ya!

After that, we went back to see if Ron was done at the doctor’s yet. He wasn’t so we waited in the car and amused ourselves until he showed up. At one point in walking around, Meaghan stopped and started yelling. I whipped my head around, “WHAT?!?!?” She pointed and said, “GRASS! I see green!” There’s totally less snow down there than here. I also noted while walking downtown I did my city-walk pace, and even Sarah (Miss Legs) had to hustle to keep up. There wasn’t too much to be had at Value Village when we got there, so we did a run at Tim Horton’s and headed for home.

Oh, we also found a great sign on an elevator in the parking garage.

Out of order - forever ?

This morning, Ron and I got up early again and he did a one-day commute to Toronto and back, for meetings. What a life. I was a little worried because although its warmed up, we had high winds and it was really gusty. We watched for the plane to land but the end of the runway is too far from the parking lot, what with the curve of the earth and massive snowbanks, so they were safely on the ground by the time I saw them.

Ron said it was “interesting” and the pilot was told he did a nice job. *whew* I need to shake that man’s hand.

Tomorrow it’s another work day, and a grocery run tomorrow night. I can’t believe I got a bunch of stuff done today too. Oddly, even though I’m a little tired from lack of sleep, I am not dead tired and weary like I have been – even as recent as last time he went. I worked on two sites and ran around doing errands. Still didn’t feel like a nap mid-afternoon.

Friday, it’s my birthday and Mom and Carl are coming to visit. She’s bringing me fabric and presents, so it can’t be too bad, right? Saturday is whatever Ron has planned, some cleaning and laundry, whatever else needs to be done. Maybe Sunday I’ll rest. Or if it’s nice enough – which it loks like it will be – I’m gonna go for a brisk walk. It’ll be awesome.