Handmade for the Holidays and Baby Turtles

The Sassy Chameleon Tea and More's Handmade for the Holidays event in Aurora, Ontario is on November 28, 2013, from 2pm to 9pm. I'll have a small table there with these, and many more gifty things for sale, many not listed in my shop. (Seriously: the shipping would cost more than the item!) While $2 from the sale of each of the Baby Turtle patches will go to the Little Res Q, I will make another separate donation to the Yellow Brick House, a women's shelter in York Region. Check out the Sassy Chameleon's event flyer, and stop by, if you're in the area.

Unusual Food Object

 I wasn't sure whether I should eat this or hatch it. It's a jackfruit, or a langka, or kha-nun. I'd tasted it canned, and liked it enough to put it in a banana-jackfruit jam, but the canned fruit was kind of rubbery. I didn't realize what buying a fresh one meant.

I mean, sure, 10lbs of fruit, but I had no idea what was inside. It turns out the ugly fruit is a PEACH MOTHERSHIP!

Thank-you, this website! She Simmers had much better pictures and lots of good suggestions. Which I followed, I swear. Except...

Digital Hoarding

It's the perfect storm: new freebies, plus membership freebies, plus a sale, plus unexpected disposable income...

I acquired 40 new embroidery designs in less than ten minutes. The worst part of it is that I already have hundreds, and probably will die of old age before I finish stitching them all out just once.

Somebody in my family seriously needs to have a fairy-themed baby shower. I have a stampede of unicorns, alone!

Turtle Love

This lovely is for sale in my store (Elven Hands Unparalleled Fabric Oddities). And from the sale of this patch (and others like it, in case a few more people order one), I want to donate $2 of every sale to Little Res Q. Thank goodness they have a very convenient PayPal donation button on their website.

I want to help. Turtles aren't just ninjas to me. And things like this wall of humans in Bonaire remind me that we can do small things that make huge differences to individual creatures.

Customer Service - A Cautionary Tale

What is wrong with this picture?

I know I'm talking to the void here, so my words will have minimal impact on the particular business I used to have my embroidery machine serviced. I cannot seem to send an email with this picture to the business owner, who freely published her email on her website's blog. (Still trying to arrange a day I can go in and speak with her in person, and show her these pictures.)

As I am satisfied that my machine has not suffered for being serviced there, I won't mention names. But if you should find yourself in a predicament with your sewing machine tech shop (or any tech shop), I would like to share my experience.

Ha. We have a gap.

Nope, I didn't get buried by those bags and bags of free fabric. I still have to turn sideways to walk to my sewing machine, but they're under control. (No they're not. But if I say it enough, I might start to believe it.)

Gunny Jane is still at the tech shop for her routine maintenance. (That's the big embroidery machine.) So of course, I want to embroider ALL THE THINGS. I've been taking in alterations, in the meantime. And Baby (small embroidery machine for when Gunny Jane is unavailable) is handling the monogramming stuff... but she has only one needle, so I have to be there Every Minute Of The Design so I can change the thread.

And the same person who gave me all that fabric also gave me more than 4kg of cleaned, chopped rhubarb, so I had to preserve THAT before it went off. And my mother-in-law gave me a box of ripe mangoes, and my husband said he'd make sherbet or ice cream with them, but hasn't yet, so I have to take care of THOSE before the flies get them.

Sad thing is that since I'm the only one in the house who eats jam, I have yet to catch up to last year's preserves, and I'm making yet more! And the spring weather in Ontario has been so weird, I still haven't put out my tomato plants.

So, yeah. There's a gap in posts. I think this is going to be normal for the summer.

I truly have a problem

I just helped a friend sort through her mother's fabric stash, destined for a fabric recycler, packed up in about 50 garbage bags.

I came home with five (5) garbage bags of fabric lengths. Highlights include wool felt, polyester felt, and a natural 100% virgin wool length that feels good enough on the skin to spread on toast.