My Thrift Store Treasure

I am always lamenting the fact that everyone else seems to find great treasures at their local thrift stores, but I never do. Well, last week, that all changed. I knew eventually I'd find something good for all my efforts.
This is my new-to-me Singer 201. I found it at the local Goodwill when I was looking for a dress. It was marked as $129.99, but it had a pink tag on it. The sign at the front of the store proclaimed "ALL PINK TAGS HALF PRICE THIS WEEK". WOW! Usually the half price does not apply to furniture, so I assumed that this machine in the cabinet would not be half price, but it was! So for $65. I got this beauty. It seems to work really well. I need to find a manual and give it a good cleaning, but so far, so good. It came with the cabinet, the stool, the attachments, and a button hole thingamajig.
I am SO happy!

Thank you Elsie!

A couple of days ago, I received a great Pay It Forward gift from Elsie.in Canada. You should check out the kaleidscope quilts that she made a couple of months ago, they are amazing!

She sent me a beautiful gift bag she made with butterflies on it. This is one gift bag that I will certainly be reusing for myself!! She also included a piece of the butterfly fabric, a dragonfly iron on, some tassles, a tube of beautiful beads. Thing One has already told me that she will be using that dragonfly on a shirt for herself! I'm going to try to inspire myself to do something artistic with the butterfly fabric, beads and tassles. We'll see where that idea leads me!!

Thank you very much, Elsie!!!

Speaking of PAY IT FORWARD; I posted this post a long time ago, but I still have two pay it forward spots open. If anyone would like to play, I will send you a gift if you "pay it forward" to 3 other people.

BONGO

I keep forgetting to mention the kittens name. His name is BONGO. He has a tendency to act more than a little bit nuts and bounce around the house uncontrollably, so we started calling him Oingo Boingo, and that morphed into Bongo. So now that is officially his name (much better than the Princess he started as when we thought he was a she!).

He has recently visited the vet again for more shots, and is now 5 lbs, 7 oz and getting bigger by the minute. The vet says he is going to be a BIG boy. Long and tall but slender. And bouncy.

Sigh of relief

Grama's Obituary

Thank you all so much for the lovely emails and comments this week!!

Oh, need to mention, I was wrong about Grama's age. Somehow I thought she was going to be 96 this fall. But she would have been 94 this year.

Sigh. Now I can rest and relax. And more importantly, my parents get a bit of a peace. I loved my grama dearly, but sometimes she was not an easy person to be around. Strong willed, stubborn and bossy. Yup, that's a good way to describe her. (Hmm...I might take after her just a little bit). For the last several years, she has made things less than simple for my parents. I have to give them a ton of credit for how patiently they dealt with her and how well they cared for her. I only hope that when the time comes that I have to care for them, I will be as patient and loving as they were.

Tonight I am going to get some sleep, then tomorrow I will start sewing the bag for Linda's bag and bucket swap and the first project for the Stitcher's Angel swap. If you haven't seen the first project Helen posted, be sure to go to her blog here and check out her armchair caddy pattern. It is so cute. I think I might need to make a few for Christmas gifts.


In the next few days, I'm going to show you my fabulous Thrift Store find from last week. I never seem to find anything good when I go thrifting, but the other day all my fruitless trips into Goodwill finally paid off and I hit a JACKPOT find. hehehe, you'll have to wait to see what it was. But I am going to do some serious playing with it this week!!!

I had a bit of car trouble last week, and I had to visit Sears to have a new battery installed in the Green Machine. Since I had an hour to kill, I ventured inside the mall and checked out the bookstore. By the time my car was ready, I was reading my two new books. The first is by Linda McGehee. Since I am always looking for a 'perfect bag', I had to take this one home. Looks like it has a lot of good construction tips and ways to combine different elements of the pattern for a personalized bag. The second one is The Crafter's Companion which features profiles (and a project) of a number of blogging crafters, some which are new to me, others are familiar blogs that I visit regularly. There are several very nice projects in here.

Oh, and before I forget, please stop by and visit Helena's blog. She is opening a new quilt shop/studio in her little Swedish town. I think that she's going to be a huge success because her designs are fabulous. If you leave a comment and post a link on your blog, she will give you a free stitchery pattern to celebrate her shops opening this weekend!

Update

Jut popping in for a very fast update. After long, tense week which included several medical moves that left me very confused, Grama is at peace. She passed away on Tuesday night, back at the nursing home. The visitation is tonight, and tomorrow morning we will have the church service and burial.
Hopefully things will be back to 'normal' for us after that. I need to find a few minutes to post in the next few days because I have LOTS of updates on several projects, mail that I received and shopping that I have done.
But first I need to go get my family dressed for tonight.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me lovely supportive notes since my last post. It is greatly appreciated.

Checking In

I have not done anything quilty or crafty this week, and don't anticipate much happening for the next week or so.

We went to the American Idol concert last Friday. While it was good, it was not as good as last years. The format was a bit, um, boring. #10 sang 3 songs, then #9 sang 3, etc. Once the #10 thru #5 sang 3 songs each, they sang one together, then it was intermission. Then more of the same: #4 (Jason) sang 3 songs, #3 (syesha) sang her 3. Then David A sang about 4 songs, David Cook sang about 5 songs and then all 10 of them sang one together. Last year the format was a bit more interesting, it was a lot more mixed up order-wise and noone just sang 3 songs in a row and then wa done. Last year there were a bunch of duets and trios, and it was less predictible. But David Cook, Carly, and Michael were all awesome and made it worthwhile to go. Thing One was over the moon thrilled about it all, and that is what counts the most.

Somehow, I've lost a set of car keys. It has keys and remote for my car, the house and all my store cards on it. I'm not so worried about the keys, but those store cards are a big problem for me...you know it is, you can't get the discounts at the store without the scan cards. Sigh. My CVS card is on there, and I can't use my extra bucks unless I find it. Oh, and all of our library cards are on those scan cards, too. I've searched everywhere and can't find them. I feel like I'm going crazy. Sigh.

My Grama is in the hospital and in very poor conditon. She is almost 96 years old. She fell about 3 or 4 weeks ago and broke her hip. They did a surgery to repair it, but she got some sort of an infection that is causing huge problems now. Apparently she is on super-stong antibiotics and they aren't helping at all. Now her blood is all messed up. Oh, and she's had pnueumonia on and off since the fall, and that is back in a big way now. I went to visit her yesterday and she is not allowed to eat or drink anything because of the pnuemonia, something about it leaking into her lungs when she eats? The minister has been in to visit her and gave her last rites already. So now we just wait to see what happens. It has been 2 days since she ate and they are doing minimal IV fluids, so I imagine that it won't be much longer now until she passes.

So cute!

Oh my goodness...this is so sweet. Leah just let me know that I should go to her blog to see a message from her son, Lucas. I guess he really liked the Pez that I included in her swap package! Check this out!
Thanks, Leah!

Last Thursday's Accomplishments

(since I didn't manage to get this uploaded earlier, I'll do it today).
I did manage to spend a bit of time working on some of those things on my list in the previous post.

For starters: I added the label and the hanging tabs to the Cyber Stitching mini banner. Try not to notice the pin holding the hanger. This is just temporary. Most Likely.


I also finished the 4Th little table mat that I made. You might remember that I made three as PIF gifts a little while back. At the time, I used charm squares to make them, and each used 1/4 of each charm square, so I made 4 rather than three. I figured that I could use it when I needed a little gift. So tonight, I put the binding and the label on this one and it will go out in the mail tomorrow to its new home.



I continued on, and I finished the stitching on the July block for the Capricorn Quilts Block of the month. I still need to do the bonus block, but I did get a small start on that.



Then I cut some 30s scraps and put the borders around the Noah's Ark blocks that I have completed so far (no, the giraffes didn't even get started). They look so cute now...I think I may need to redo the cow blocks...there is a spot, and I was attempting to get rid of it (thus the wet spot).




I guess you could call that a productive Thursday afternoon. I didn't really have any other choice today, the weather was absolutely miserable. Thunder all day long, torrential downpours for most of the day and a few brief periods of sunshine (while it was still raining). Overall, very dreary, a good day for sewing.

just checking in

Sorry that I haven't been around to post this week...my parents are here in Vermont visiting for a week or so, and I've been going to and fro with them as they visit all the touristy things around here.

Over the weekend, we also visited The Norton House here in town.

On Monday, Dad wanted to go to Sugarbush Farm in Woodstock, as he wanted to buy some of their wonderful cheese and a gallon of syrup. We also visited the Vermont Country Store. Mom and I insisted that if we were going that far, we had to visit our favorite LQS,Country Treasures in Chester. My dad 'generously' gave us a HALF AN HOUR to shop there! LOL. Talk about a whirlwind shopping trip. The good part of that was that I didn't spend a ton of money (I didn't' have time!). On the way back home, I started to feel sick to my stomach and dizzy, so I slept for almost the whole ride. I figured that I was getting carsick because I was sitting in the back seat, which I never do.

Unfortunately, It was not carsickness...I have been feeling lousy ever since. As a result, nothing quilty, touristy or otherwise productive has been happening at all. I do have a number of projects in progress or in planning that I am itching to get done. I suppose that they will all have to wait until next week.

Mom and Dad left yesterday to go see friends up in Derby up on the Canadian Border, they'll be back over the weekend, then they are going up to see my uncle in Maine. Later on next week, they'll be back here. I'm tired just thinking about it!

Tomorrow, DH and I are going to take Thing One to the American Idols concert in Hartford. She has been looking forward to this for a long time (okay, so have I).

Projects on the list for next week:
-finish the BOM stitcheries from Capricorn Quilts for July (plus the bonus one)
-Stitch the Giraffe block for the Noah's Ark BOM
-Quilt and bind the Peppermint Sticks Quilt
-Finish binding on the cheater quilt
-Add hanging tabs to the Cyberstitching wall hanging
-Begin working on the bag for the bag/bucket swap
-Pincushion for my Yahoo Group swap

I guess I'll be busy. At least most of these projects aren't things that will take forever. I've got other things I want to do, too. But these are the priorities at the moment. Until I get DH to make the quilt frame big (it is currently set up at half size), I can't quilt some of the bigger projects that need to get done. Hmmm... maybe I need to start nagging him about it?