Sara sent this cute postcard that she found while shopping for Christmas gifts in downtown Arcata. This year, she and Shawn are visiting Newport for the holiday.
Fun discovery. While looking up the artist, I discovered that the company distributing the postcard is based in Portland, and their location is not far from my house. They have a lot of cute stuff, so check out their website.
This was a very fun sampler. I fell behind due to baby blanket construction and general holiday preparations, but here it is. Sadly, I photographed it without natural light, so the white looks a little yellow. Imagine that it’s old dress shirt white.
The stitches this time are:
This time, the idea was to practice on Aida cloth and then do the same stitches on normal cloth. I really liked the Dutch stitch on Aida—the repeating squares are super trippy. It was harder to pull of on normal fabric.
The big winner for me this time was threaded chain stitch. So easy to do and provides such a dramatic effect.
A backside, for those of you who like to see them.
There is one more sampler for 2022!
Postcards for episodes 4 and 5 arrived in the mail today!
Episode 4 is a Daniel Palladino episode and Ariel wasn’t a fan. Though she did enjoy Michelle Fanny interactions. She gave the episode 5.5/10 semi-stolen toe shoes.
And with Episode 5, we turn a corner. It’s the first episode she’s enjoyed the girls. This also had Fanny’s great Paper or Plastic ballet, which was hilarious. Both Ariel and I enjoyed it. Ariel gives this 6.5/10 psychotic check-out girl ballets.
My first two cards featured snowmen. That was a fun happenstance.
“Silver Bells” has long been my favorite Christmas Song. Many years have included singing as my aunt plays the piano accompniment. So it was nice to hear Booker T and the MGs rendition this morning.
The date on this magazine is December 5. Given that Christmas is 20 days after that date, I don’t think there is any real way to lose 2.4 pounds a day other than cutting off a limb, or maybe two. At least with amputation, that weight would stay off, unlike every single crash diet.
And, as usual, First for Women comes through with the ridiculous weight-loss claims and the elaborate dessert.
The Columbia Pool isn’t coming back, and that means I have a very long wait until the new aquatics center opens in 2029. But perhaps by attending ALL the meetings, the time will go by quickly. Today’s meeting involved wandering through the displays and giving feedback via post-it notes.
There were a variety of professional people to chat with. I learned from a swimming pool builder that Olympic sized swimming pools are very expensive to heat, and very large. There was a diagram showing that an Olympic size pool is bigger than Pioneer Square.
Knowing that, I could give the feedback that it wasn’t super important to have an Olympic sized swimming pool. Though I would like to swim in one at some point.
My coworker Sarah is due in February, so there is a baby shower on Thursday. I made this little blanket for the new parents.
I think this is the first baby blanket I have hand monogrammed and I’m quite pleased at both the chain stitch and how swoopy the C is. I did not draw the C, but I grabbed it from one of the alphabets I had squirreled away.
The theme of the party was Space Dinosaur Cowboy and I was trying for all three things, but JoAnn’s was not connecting me with any cowboy stuff. But I did like the stars and then the not-at-all concerned dinosaurs hanging out in the snow.
I ended up making the bias binding. When I do that, I always make extra because it’s a really mood killer to come up a few inches short of bias binding. (How do I know? Because I’ve done it.) But then what to do with the extra bias binding? I had the idea to poke two holes in the plain brown wrapping and make a bow with it.
I had planned on riding my bike to the memorial service, but then this happened.
It wasn’t really snow, but more like flaky ice, as shown in this photo of the cover to a downtown Max station.
Despite the weather many people attended Leora’s service. I was glad I did as I got to hear about many different stages of her life.
One thing I learned at the service was that Leora was not only an avid biker, but also a writer of biking-inspired haikus. Here are some of my favorites:
Riding in low gear
Eyes were bigger than panniers
Curse you, bulk aisle
White cherry blossoms
Look just like shards of windshield
Ahead in the road
Biking in a skirt
You just got passed by a girl
Sorry I flashed you
Cheap margaritas
Do not mix with rolling hills
Pedal home to barf
Morning hastiness
Is not a bike rider’s friend
Where are my panties?
Think I have a flat
Keep checking my tires’ air
No, just out of shape
I think the humor here is that listening to NPR still isn’t cool. But I started listening in 1993, so you can decide for yourself if I listened before it was cool. Or “cool.”
Sara reports that she is back in Arcadia and that this is racing with the postcards coming from Iowa. She said her mom was popping them in the mail on 11/28. We’ve established that Iowa won.
