Hope

Have you ever had a rough time in life, and one day you hear a song that just speaks to you?  Today was that day for me.  I have been having said rough time for five months now, ever since I had a miscarriage at the end of October, and I thought I was doing better, but lately I've been struggling, feeling pessimistic, lost, hopeless...today I felt a glimmer of hope.  I was driving back to work from yet another meeting, the sun was out, it was warm and my window was down.  I was listening to my favorite artist, Joshua Radin, and the song The Rock and the Tide came on my iPhone.  I've heard this song many, many times, but today it spoke to my heart.

See a mountain, see an ocean,

see the years that bring rock and tide close together.

Settle down, I said to myself

Things that come with time

Will always be better

Sometimes lyrics and music come together with a moment in your life and clear your vision.  It's been so hard for me to struggle month after month, to see other women succeed so easily, and to feel so lonely in my loss. I'm by no means okay, but this was a timely reminder that one day, when we have the family we so desire, we'll be all the more grateful and see that all the heartache was worth it. Even that small spark of hope can carry us through.

A Post About Shapes!

Today I made something round and something square. 

My husband has had these end tables that were passed down to him from his grandparents forever.  They're nice and solid, but they just aren't my style, and I've been begging him for a very long time to get rid of them.  Well, we finally found some friends who wanted to buy them off us, so as an additional "thank you", I offered to make them the baked good of their choice, and they chose chocolate chip cookies (or as I prefer to say, chip chocolate cookies). Oddly enough, I don't have a recipe for chip chocolate cookies in my repertoire, but lo and behold, Trader Joe's printed one on the bag of chocolate chips I bought!  When I've made chip chocolate cookies in the past with other recipes, I've had problems with spreading and crunchiness and whatnot.  These. were. perfection.  I'm almost sad to give them away. And then I look at those tables.  Almost.

So in case you didn't figure it out yet, the cookies were my something round.  For my square project, I tackled...napkins!

I've been slowly creating a sewing library, and one of the books I picked up is Stitch by Stitch: Learning to Sew, One Project at a Time, by Deborah Moebes.  The first part of the book goes over the basics, like tools and your machine and fabric choices. The second part is the projects, each one building on the one before it, so by the end, you're sewing clothing.  The first project is Fancy Napkins, so I decided to tackle those.

I picked up 1 1/4 yards of quilting cotton at Joann and washed, dried, and ironed it.  The author then has me "true up" my fabric.  Now, I'm by no means an experienced sewer, but I'm not completely new either, and I have never heard of truing up fabric.  I wanted to do the project correctly, and learn the proper skills, so I followed the directions for truing up my fabric.  Hands down, this was the most tedious and awful thing I've ever had to do.  She offers two options: one for teasing out a thread along the selvedge to establish the grainline, the other, snip and rip. She recommends the first option, as it is gentler, and I went with it because I was scared to rip my fabric.  45 minutes later, I had about three inches of thread teased out, and I decided that was enough and lined it up with my new Omnigrid ruler and cut it with my new rotary cutter. It didn't look any straighter than before I trued it up, but I trusted her and proceeded on to step two: cutting out four 19" squares.  NO ONE TOLD ME HOW HARD IT IS TO CUT EVEN SQUARES.  The directions for this didn't help either.  Her suggestions were "measure out four sides, mark with chalk and cut", or "measure out two sides, fold into a triangle, and cut off the excess".  No directions on making sure your sides all match.  And this is where the truing up didn't seem to help, because after meticulously measuring 19" for each side, none of my squares came out even or to 19".  Fortunately, they're just napkins, but still, this is a basic skill that I'd like to master before tackling anything else.  The next step was to overstitch all the edges to keep them from unraveling. Easy enough.

Then, on to mitering the corners. Also fairly easy.  After pressing the corners and edges, I topstitched the edges and gave them another ironing. Et voila!

The best-looking miter of the bunch.

Embarrassingly, I had to Google how to set a table.

I think once I master the cutting part, this project will go much faster (sounds like another lesson with Mums!). I also think the miters will be neater with more even cuts.  I have another fabric waiting in the wings to make another set. Practice makes perfect!

Also, I realize that I haven't posted any pictures of my beautiful machine!  Here she is:

She is, as yet, nameless, so I am open to suggestions!

Birthday Shenanigans

As you may or may not be aware, Thursday was my birthday.  I turned a very important age...30!  I thought I would finally feel like an adult, but alas, I don't.  I suppose that's a good thing, that whole "you're only as old as you feel" thing. 

On Wednesday, I finished my first sewing project (with much assistance from my mums). At Joann, they sell this awesome fabric that is shirred along one selvedge, and is wide enough to be a long, mid-length, or child's dress.  All you have to do is seam up the back.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty short, so I did have to hem my dress, but I used the extra eight inches I cut off to make straps.  Now it just needs to warm up so I can wear it!

On Thursday I had to attend a meeting for work, but they got me a cake, and I brought vanilla cupcakes.  I used Taste of Home's white cake recipe, and then made my own buttercream using 1/2 c unsalted butter, 1/2 c salted butter, 4 cups powdered sugar, 2 tsp vanilla, the seeds from one vanilla bean, and enough heavy cream to make it the right consistency.  Minus the vanilla bean, this is my favorite way to make buttercream, and I can adjust it to any flavor (I added cherry preserves once...yum!).  I'm a huge fan of vanilla-vanilla cupcakes, and when it's your birthday, you make whatever damn cupcakes you please! When I got home, my husband took me out to dinner to one of favorite restaurants, and he got us tickets to see Jim Gaffigan in April.

Friday I made a pincushion which revealed my still unrefined sewing skills, but I did head back to Joann to take advantage of 40% off rotary supplies, plus I snagged some clearance home dec fabric (I also had a 25% off coupon so I got some sweet deals).  My husband and I headed to my best friend's house for dinner, but it turns out they had other plans: a surprise party!  No one has ever thrown me a surprise party before, and I'll admit, I cried like a small child. So many people turned out to celebrate with me, and I felt so insanely loved. My bestie made my favorite cake ever, coconut cake!  Check out this beauty!

On Saturday, we stopped at Lowe's to get some supplies for making a sewing table for me.  My husband has an old desk that his dad put together and slathered in a dark lacquer many years ago.  We are stripping off the lacquer, priming it, and then painting it the color of my choice (I got a couple samples to try out).  I headed to a derby bout in the evening to watch two of my friends skate to a solid win!

Today, my husband and I decided today to get the ball rolling on house hunting.  We meet with a realtor tomorrow night to discuss what we're looking for and how to get started.  Perhaps home ownership will finally make me feel like an adult?

Welcome!

Welcome to my (new) blog!  Yes, I had another one, but it fizzled out, and so here's my new one, the blog that dreams are made of!

I want to take this opportunity to lay out what you can expect from me and my posts.  Hopefully, you're already interested in some of this stuff, and if not, maybe you'll be inspired to try something new!

Knitting! Oh yes, I am a knitter, so I will talk quite a bit about projects I'm working on, yarn I've acquired, techniques I'm learning, etc.

Cooking and baking! Some people might say I'm a bit of a foodie, and they would be right.  I LOVE to cook!  I'm not so much into gourmet food as I am into making things that are tasty, healthy, and time-friendly.  And while I love to cook, I SUPER love to bake!  Pies, cupcakes, cookies, bread, muffins, tarts, cakes...you name it, I bake it (and then eat it).

Running! Running is something I got into last year, then when I got promoted at work, it fell by the wayside.  I lost 23 lbs doing it (most of which has crept back on in the past eight months) and it kept me sane, so I'm making the effort to get back into it.

Cycling! My husband and I love to cycle.  Last year, my family all pitched in and got me a mountain bike (her name is Stella), and when I got promoted, I took my extra earnings and bought a road bike (as yet nameless).  When the weather gets slightly warmer, we'll be out as much as we can.  Our annual camping trip usually involves some kind of cycling.

Cats! I've got three of them, and I would have more if my husband weren't so iron-fisted.  Yes, without someone to reign me in, I would be a crazy cat lady.

Doctor Who! (and other British TV) You don't like Doctor Who?  Get off my blog.

Books! You had to know this was coming.  I manage a bookstore, for crying out loud!  I read whatever I can get my hands on, so be prepared for anything!

Sewing! This is a recently acquired hobby (or rather, recently revisited).  I know a bit of sewing from my younger days, but I'm getting back into it.  I just got a beautiful new Bernina, and my mums is going to teach me all about quilting.  I'm sure I'll be sharing lots of learning moments!

"Gee whiz, Megan!  You sure are into a lot of stuff!  Is there anything you won't be talking about?"

Firstly, I am a complex and multi-faceted woman.  Deal with it.  And yes, there are things you won't see here, such as:

Hate. Nope, not here.  No racism, bigotry, homophobic remarks, or any other nasty or vile subject matter. Also, no violence.

Religion. How people choose to worship (or not) is their business, so we won't discuss it here.

Politics. With the exception of two subjects (okay, three, if anyone from the GOP starts yammering about rape again), I won't be talking politics.  The two exceptions are
1) Breed-specific legislation.  I love pit bulls, and I hate the discrimination against them.  Education, not legislation.  This also applies to other breeds.
2) Food.  I get all hot under the collar when it comes to the way we deal with food in America.  The country most obsessed with dieting and fitness is also the fattest.  That's crazypants. Also, all the GMOs and processing is ridiculous.  I visit farmer's markets or grow what I can, and make as much of my own food as possible.  But this a whole post (or series of posts) of its own!

Meat. I'm a vegetarian, so sorry, you'll not see any meat on this blog!

Dieting. I don't "diet", and I don't encourage anyone else to either.  Eat real, whole food 80% of the time, and the rest of the time you're good.  So you won't see any fad diets or starving myself or anything of the sort.  I enjoy eating, and I don't like to be made to feel guilty for it.  Again, that's a whole other discussion.

Hopefully at this point, you're still interested in following me, my life and my hobbies.  There will be plenty of craftiness and good food and a generous helping of humor, so come back soon!