Posted by SewPixie on August 3rd, 2008 in Daily Life, Scooter

Okay, I really got back on Wednesday but I don’t go back to work until tomorrow. I need to blog later with all the details but all in all I had a great time. I got to have dinner with Jen and Karen which was awesome! I also spent a lot of time with my sister and her family. My nieces and nephew are so cute! Three little smarties..I couldn’t be prouder.

I finished up the week by laying about very lazily on Thursday and going to TYF on Friday. There are some really scary holes on Apache Blvd that about knocked me off my scooter!! I assume they are from the light rail construction as they were partially covered by metal plates. I really freaked out when I hit the first one and I tried to avoid the second one but couldn’t. Thankfully I did not go flying off the scooter. I really need to get onto four wheels. But with some potential financial crapola that may be a while.

Saturday was pretty boring, grocery shopping and some knitting. Got he sewing room cleaned up today and listed a couple of new bags in the shop. I also finished one more for Betsy so only 3 more to make for her.

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Posted by SewPixie on July 21st, 2008 in Daily Life

I don’t think I ever blogged about this. Oops! Well, Shawna has created a gorgeous custom Blythe doll that she is currently auctioning off to raise money for the Susan G Komen Foundation. I donated a custom quilted dolly bag for the doll, and many other donated items as well.

Raffle tickets are available until August 1st http://effiedalshop.blogspot.com/ so run over there right now!!

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Posted by SewPixie on June 23rd, 2008 in Daily Life

So I just finished watching Little People Big World on TLC. Then comes on this dance competition show called like Dance Masters or something. The host is bald and has a pinky ring a la Yul Brenner or something. It is freaking Joey Lawrence! Whooaaa! My world view just shifted a little. New Kids are back together, Joey Lawrence is bald (and only a month older than me), I drove my scooter to the yarn store 10 miles from home, dog and cats living together…total anarchy!

Oh yes…and I will be in Indy July 26th-30th but have a family reunion on the 27th.

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Posted by SewPixie on June 17th, 2008 in Daily Life, Knitting

YAY! Vacation! Our vacation time rolls over at the end of August and silly me had 12 flippin’ days to take. So I cam taking this week off, some days in July to go to Indiana then a few other random days.

My plans for this week are to get the house cleaning under control (a perpetual quest, I have no idea how one woman, 6 plastic girls, and 3-4 pets can make such a mess!), go to TYF to practice spinning, go to TYF to work in my Mystery Bag, attend My Fair Lady at Gammage, put together an eating and exercise plan to put a halt to my ever-growing self, sew dolly bags for the shop, sew dolly bags for Shawna. *whew*

This past Saturday was World Wide Knit in Pubic Day. A little meet up was scheduled in Jerome so Candace and I took a road trip up there for the day. We stopped first in Cottonwood to visit with her grandparents and to drop her pups off. Her grandparents are so awesome! Made me really really miss mine. I did notice some similarities that need investigating! Do your grandparents have any of the following in their home (or if you are an awesome grandparent, do you have these items):

• Soap tray in the bathroom in the shape of a bathtub
• Fridge magnet in the shape of a small straw hat complete with ribbon and dried/fake flowers
• Address book that is in a box type thing with the alphabet down the side and you use a slider to pick the letter then push a button and it opens to that letter.
• Several yard sticks\meter sticks in a holder by the door that is most commonly used for entry

So with a quick stop at a yarn store in Cottonwood we headed on to Jerome. Wow! It is all up in hills and stuff. Man was I tired from walking around there with it so steep.

We found the knitting shop, Knit 1 Bead 2 and even received a gift for being the first there to mention WWKIPD! We set ourselves up at the park and I had some lunch at Haunted Hamburger. Yummy stuff. They were very packed but the nice people let me do a to go order. In all about 8 people showed up. It was pretty cool.

Okay off to clean. More later!

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Posted by SewPixie on June 11th, 2008 in Daily Life

KoKo is a dear…but dang is he clueless! Behind him (in the photo that wasn’t to be of him) is the knitting bag that I made last night.

In awesome news…the Mystery KAL started today so a happy time was had at TYF this evening. Oh yes, and tomorrow I am taking a class on spinning yarn. Eeep! Workwise I had to present some stuff to my fellow members of the technical architecture committee and I did not bomb so woo hoo.

I have all of next week off work so besides hanging out with my oldest niece on Monday while she is in town I should be able to get caught up on cleaning and sewing dolly bags.

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Posted by SewPixie on June 8th, 2008 in Daily Life, Knitting, Yarn

I have been a bad blogger once again. Actually, I never am much of a good blogger but eh. Some may notice the time on this entry then wonder if I have been to bed yet. Those of you not in the know…I am a notorious late sleeper. Yesterday I didn’t get out of bed until 2pm, though in my defense I felt a bit ill. Well, Napoleon (my ferret) started sneezing around 5am and I am such a hypochondriac about the furry kids that I had to investigate. He is fine now, probably a little cold or dander in her nose or somesuch. I cleaned out his room\cage though and out in fresh linens (I don’t use bedding like with hamsters or something), water, food, etc.

I have been knitting like crazy lately. Candace, Suzanne, and I all joined the Mystery KAL at Tempe Yarn and Fiber. It doesn’t start until Wednesday so I am on pins and needles with my gauge swatch all ready to go. We know it will be a bag and use four colors of Cascade 220 Superwash and that is about it. Major kudos to Terry and Candy for designing the pattern and the mystery. Upwards of 60 people are signed up for the KAL! I chose the Petroglyph colorway, Candace chose her own colors, and Suzanne went with Monsoon.

I did still manage though to finally baste my latest quilt. Now just to freemotion the quilting and bind it.

I also bought a new camera. I got a used Nikon D40. I still have a ways to go in learning just how to use it but very slowly some of my knowledge from high school photo class is coming back to me. I really like the pictures I am getting form it though. I am keeping the Canon though since I don’t want to take this big camera with me everywhere.

The pets are doing well. We had a bit of a scare with Kitaro a couple weeks ago. B moved again and the housemates let Kit into the backyard and he got away. Freaked me the hell out since it is clear across town. His tag still has my number on it so thankfully a nice person found him and he got back to B’s safe and sound. He got a firm talking to by me when he was home next. That dog!

I am still going strong with my Blythe 365 project. I restarted Crafting 365 again a while back and am about 50 days into it this time. Whew.

Other than that…trying to clean the house as usual. My oldest niece will be in town next weekend so that will be awesome to see her. Also next weekend, Candace and I are going up to Jerome for Knit in Public Day. That should be cool. I’ve never been to Jerome but hear it is funky and artsy. Woo! Oh yes! And I have my flight booked for Indianapolis at the end of July. I didn’t take as much time as I had wanted all at once due to schedules at work but I am flying out Saturday the 26th and flying back on Wednesday August 2nd. Even with that vacation I still had oh about 12 vacations days left so I am also taking random days off here and there. I am so terrible about not taking my vacation days. I will be getting a head start next fiscal year though as I will be going to California in September to visit Deana since I’ve known since before Kindergarden. Yay!!

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Posted by SewPixie on May 2nd, 2008 in Daily Life

So yeah, my Internet at home has been down 4 times in the past week and a half. Not happy! One of these times was during an outage at work so I had to get someone else to cover. Yeah that was a bad weekend all round. A couple of us spent the whole weekend on the issue tearing our hair out to figure it out ’since the network was fine’ and come Monday morning someone who didn’t get called over the weekend solved it in 2 seconds…it was the network. Um yeah…I want my weekend back.

Anywho….

My team at work went to see Iron Man today, that was pretty good. I enjoyed the movie and getting a chance to get out of the office a bit and hang with the team. We also have another reorg coming, but this time it does not affect us much at all and should be helpful all round. For those who recall the deal with Ma-Bell and the Baby-Bells….and how they all seem to be reforming…yeah my work is kinda like that. Hys-ter-i-cal.

I also saw Sweeney Todd at Gammage a couple weeks back. The evening before the above mentioned networking work issue from H E double-hockey-sticks. It was a great show and very interesting how they used the one set throughout. Now I need to see the movie.

On the crafty front, next weekend Candace and I are taking a sock class to celebrate my birthday. Woot! I am getting the hang of knitting but it still is much more scary for me than crochet.

I did also get another doll, this time another Dal. So at 4 Blythes and 2 Dal’s I think I am done with my collection. I did also do something that further shows how deep my insanity has gone…I took the dolls out of a bookcase in my sewing room and put them in the ‘extra room’. It at least got me to clean that room. But it is totally crazy that I have so many shelves for them now. I am going to craft little 1:6 scale rooms. I had wanted to do smaller scale miniatures long ago when we were gong to be making a train set but since that never happened at least now I get to put those ideas to use in a larger way.

Also, some of my new bags have hit the This is Blythe shop so do go over and check that out. I am still doing ones for my Etsy shop as well but have been taking it a little slow so I don’t burn out.

That’s really about it as far as an update goes. I was going to write up some thing yesterday about my dad since May 1st was the 15th anniversary of his passing, but as I started out this post…my Internet was down. So now I have lost the steam on that and worked through some of the annual sadness that comes will counting the number of years that I have not had him here and all the events he has missed.

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Posted by SewPixie on April 13th, 2008 in Baking, Daily Life, Sewing, Sewing Room

So the house is a mess…again. You would think after thirty *mumble* years I would be able to keep a house picked up. This weekend I managed to get the kitchen and the dining room cleaned up. The living room isn’t terrible so I will get to that this week.

The sewing room however….was terrible. I couldn’t work anymore in there without a cleanup. Now I have to admit, normally that is stuffing things into boxes ‘to go through later’. But no, today I did a real cleaning. Which meant folding up a truckload of fabric.

I really have a problem! Sheesh I have a lot of fabric. I did pick up some new baskets to hold some of it so I hope that helps with tidiness. Of course I could always stop buying more fabric at a faster rate than I use it. Naw…that would make sense.

I also manged to get some more bags into the shop. I am happy to report that they all sold! The domestic items I will ship out tomorrow and I will send the International either on Saturday or during the week if I can get to the post. Also on the finished pile is a custom doll bag that I made for the Blythe Rescue Mission. It is a collaborative piece that will be belong to a custom Blythe doll. I’m psyched!

As you can see, Napoleon was no help with any of of crafting or cleaning activities. KoKo and Pixel generally spent the weekend lounging around also. Must be nice to not have to lift a paw yet get fed and have a nice place to sleep.

To wind up the weekend I baked some strawberry cupcakes for work. I was going to do a cake but saw some regular size muffin cups at the store today that you don’t have to use a pan for. The only pan I have is for mini cupcakes and I didn’t want to ice a billion little cupcakes. This of course reminds me that I have to go to work tomorrow. Yuck. It isn’t so much that I hate work and fear it is stealing my soul, it is just that I hate how busy I am. I have a ton of things I need to do and problems that need fixed. That just gets me all flustered as I don’t have time to do them all and wind up in a funk where I barely get anything done at all. What needs to be done is I need to get back into the habit of using 7-habits type planning and get those big rocks the hell outta the way.

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Posted by SewPixie on April 11th, 2008 in Daily Life

Well huzzah and happy Friday! Guess what! Not only did I find out from Jen today that she started a blog but I found out that Karen already had one. How spiffy is that?

Now other than Jen, Karen, and my sister Kathy (who needs a blog but can be found here) the rest of you are asking yourselves…just who are Jen and Karen?!

Well, Jen I have known since what 4th or 5th grade? We spent many an afternoon drinking Diet Coke (Pepsi for me), eating Chex Mix and watching Heathers like a billion times. We also developed a driving test entirely using the word ‘dude’. Her mother’s closet chock full of clothing also helped out in a desperate time of needing something to wear to a school dance.

Jen met Karen later on in High School and she also worked at the theater with us. I then later also went to High School with Karen as I escaped the ‘ghetto school’. Many thanks to Jen for the fake address idea and to my sister for helping out with that (seriously…we drew up papers that made it look like my sister was my guardian and we were renting a house in the district…my other high school was getting too scary) Poor Karen had to live with me in a dorm room for two years in college and a year in a house. We rearranged our room like twice a month, it was crazy but so awesome. We totally had the best dorm room ever. I had a bunch of stuffed cows and she had a bunch of bears. We would randomly set up each others bears or cows in funny places.

Both these great gals put up with me and my serious lack of self esteem for ages upon ages (oh sheesh I don’t even want to think of how annoying that would have been….I’m so sorry girls!! ). But as life sometimes goes, we lost touch for a number of years. Thanks to the Internet we have happily made contact again. The flip side to that is it makes me awfully homesick for Indiana and my youth. I do wish that I had appreciated the things I had back then rather than lament so often the things I didn’t think I had. So much time wasted that can never be recovered. But such is life, so now to press onward and make the most of it!

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Posted by SewPixie on April 8th, 2008 in Blythe, Daily Life

So…this is the box that arrived on the driveway Monday afternoon. Wowzers!

Much unpacking ensued in the Arizona Spring heat to reveal the patio furniture I bought from Target.com and got free shipping. Wahoo that is like getting a ride to the store but not having to bug someone!

And now…ta-da! Somewhere to site in the backyard, although there isn’t much to look at back there yet. I do need to get around to ordering some trees for back there.

Other than that excitement, I worked the overnight maintenance window at work on Friday night and that went well. Sunday morning I moseyed on over to The Farm at South Mountain to meet up with some lovely Blythe pals. A good time was had by all that is for certain. I went home afterwards and slept until Sunday morning. Sylvia brought her little ones and they are just so darling! Vickie brought her husband and he is just so awesome about the dolls! Shannon was in town from New Mexico and it was really cool to meet her as well. Candace worked the window also but luckily her work ended early so she got to go home and get some sleep so she came too. Hurray!

Vickie brought two of her Dal’s to the meet…and well…I love them. Pamela had one up for adoption so I bought it. It should be here tomorrow. And Sylvia is lending me a Momoko and a Dolly Dolly book to see if I can make clothes for them. Oh yes! And there will soon be more dolly bags in the This is Blythe shop!

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