Lemon Tree Tales

On the road to normalcy!

We're finally getting things organized and back into our typical daily life. I'm not quite as freaked out about leaving the house empty and I'm starting to sleep better again (although I have been having some really odd dreams lately). However we do keep running into little reminders of Saturday's events. For example, who would have thought that they would have been interested in my sunglasses? Especially since they're prescription lenses and totally worthless to anyone unless they have my exact same vision. And the cable to the Skype telephone, not the actual phone or base, but its cable so it's not usable. Very, very odd.

Steve's ordered me a new computer & monitor and a new camera, yay! Currently I've been using my old iMac, and I do mean old. It's so old that no one that we knew really wanted it. And schools couldn't really get any use out of it ... a shame really. So it's been living at the bottom of the closet until we could figure out what to do with it. Luckily it works well enough for Internet and email. Oh, and I found some super old files on it too. Stuff that I had forgotten all about.  :-)

I have to make a new UFO/to-do list because the two post-it notes were on the monitor. I think that I'd better make it here (safe place for it, plus I'll have to really finish them now).

UFO's:

• Blue/Orange Wall-hanging Quilt for living room
• Memory Box Doll
• Purple Patti Culea Doll
• Bunny Doll (from Hillary's Put-Together book)
• Sock-Monkey Baby Quilt for Tina's new babe

TO-Do:

• Sock-Monkey to go with above
• Wee Bunny for young Master B
• Secret Pal Doll for December's doll club meeting
• TBD Doll for November's silent auction
• Renaissance Venetian Masquerade Doll
• Covered tape measure for Miss L

Hopefully the new equipment will show up soon and I can start posting pictures once again. In the meantime I'm going to see if I can finish that Bunny Doll .... she's so close, all sewn and stuffed, just missing features and final details.

The Meaning of Friendship

Tin Sign by Marty Mummert

"A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world. ~ Lois Wyse"

Thank you to all my friends - bloggers who email or comment or who just take a few minutes to read and send good thoughts, friends who will listen to a phone call, and friends who take time from their lives to sit and share a cup of coffee and listen. I can't tell you how much that means to me. It's definitely the sugar that turns life's lemons into a very delicious lemonade.

Thieves Live Among Us

This morning started out so promising ... Steve and I had decided last night that we would head over to The Original Pancake House this morning for breakfast. Yummy breakfast, chocolate chip pancakes for Steve, and I chose the delicious strawberry waffles. Fabulous!!! We were having such a good time that we then decided to go for a drive to Redwood City to check out the beautiful Maserati QuattroPorte sedans at the Ferrari dealership. You know, dream a little and think of what we would do if we ever won the lottery, having a good time. Then as we all know, one must come back to reality so we headed back home to the opposite of a dream ....

We opened the garage door and immediately wondered why my car had it's lights on ... why the exterior and interior doors were both open when they are ALWAYS closed. Yes, you guessed right, turned out we came home to a burglarized house!!! And it turns out that we probably interrupted them with the sound of the garage door opening. They took all our electronic goodies ... laptops, cameras, cell phones, and what's worse is that Steve's wedding band was sitting on the counter, GONE!! It belonged to his grandfather and was probably 100 years old. That's what hurts the most. Everything else are just material possessions and easily replaceable. Well, and all our work information that was stored on our laptops are now gone, not replaceable either. Luckily, Steve's computer is backed up at his work, and I may have a few CDs with some of my swimwear designs. But I didn't back-up photos .. most of my photos were stored in the computer. I guess this is a lesson to me, that I should have transfered them to flickr already.

Bottom line is that I know that Steve and I were lucky that nothing bad happened to us, that we're safe. But I still feel shaky, still feel violated and upset at the people who decided that it was easier to steal from others than to work hard to buy these things themselves.

10 little monkeys ...

I have two little post-its stuck to my monitor filled with my project to-do list. Some are UFO's and others haven't even been started yet, but alas, still need to be started soon. This is one of the latter, but it's deadline is already overdue - a sock-monkey baby quilt.

I've known my friend Tina since high school ... actually the first time we met was when we were taking the admission exam in the little room that would later be our English classroom. Oh, this was many years ago ... egads, I think it's been twenty-four years! Wow that long! We don't get to see each other often, maybe once a year. But we do manage to keep in touch via email.  Well, a few weeks ago I received an email with a picture of her newborn babe! So you can see that the deadline has indeed passed me by. I intend to rectify that by giving myself no more than one more month to complete this task. It should be getting chilly by then too, perfect for a nice cuddle under some monkeys.

I've gathered some fabric and can already see that it's missing a couple of dark brown fabrics to punch it up a notch. Also I think that I may have some pieces of cream minkee leftover from the back-tack 3 project. I don't think that I'll back the entire quilt in it this time, just use a few squares here and there to add some texture. I'm not sure yet what quilt pattern to use. This post by Material Obsession and this post by Pink Chalk Studio are my inspiration, but I also have this book with some very good ideas as well. Oh, and look at this cute coloring sheet with the little monkeys jumping on the bed. Don't you think that would make an excellent embroidered square? Or maybe a framed picture for the baby's room? And I also want to make an actual sock monkey to go with the quilt. Oooh, maybe I can get some of the little tiny Rockford red-heel socks to applique on the jumping monkey picture and just embroider the bed?

Coats of many colors

This weekend I met elinor peace bailey at the San Mateo Sew & Quilt Show. Wow, she is even more of a hoot in person than I ever imagined! Very nice lady, one who isn't afraid to show her true colors. She put on a fashion show of all of her colorful coats and had ladies from the audience model them for us. Her philosophy is to use just one pattern and then embellish it to her heart's desire. Many of these coats were her mother-of-the-bride/groom outfits for her many children (she has ten!) ... the last one was just recently wed. There's a lot of patchwork, quilting, applique and lots of 3-D dolls sewn to them. Each one tells a story for the world to see, visual reminders of a life fully lived. That's incredible and very inspiring. (Pardon the picture quality, I forgot my camera and had to use my phone's camera instead.)

Barbara Willis, Sally Lampi and Betts Vidal were also there with a booth selling their patterns and little odds and ends. I bought a couple patterns and these delightful vintage buttons that Betts had collected over the years. I loved how she displayed them all on different little mat board cards - each decorated according to the button type.

There was a great booth with many old suitcases open with all sorts of goodies spilling from them. These were pieces of beaded/fringed scarves and some french jacquard ribbon. All very delightful pieces, good for dolls. And then the best booth of all, the one that I really came to see ... Pamela Armas' Treasures of the Gypsy. Oh, this is truly a booth that you could spend hours just gazing at all of the gorgeous fabrics and trims. Pamela travels to India and other exotic parts of the world to special order and design these fabrics. She sponsors a doll challenge every year (here's a link to 2003's doll winners) where you must use her fabrics and trims to create some type of gypsy. The results are spectacular and amazing. I chose these fabrics and trims and think that they would be perfect for a Renaissance attired doll. There is a little piece of a vintage sari, genuine silver threads, and another piece of a fringed scarf. The only thing really missing is some fine off-white linen for a chemise.  I also envision some beadwork and embroidery to go with the dress. Ah, and I really like masquerades, so I think this should be a Venetian lady at Carnivale time, strolling the Piazza San Marco.

Finally, here's a picture of our new climbing rose ... it's called Joseph's Coat because it starts out yellow, then becomes coral and finally ends as a deep pink shade. Yes, this does mean that our backyard is finally complete after just six months of starting, stopping, waiting over and over again. I'll post pictures next week after I get a really good sunny day to take the best pics.

Specimen #132 - button americana

This is the only creative thing that I've been doing lately ... organizing my crafting space. For some reason I just can't get busy on the actual creating until I get something done on my organizing list. Number one was to put up shelves to showcase all of my embellishments - buttons, rhinestones, beads, ribbons, etc. I figured that this would accomplish three things at the same time - 1) organize the little stuff, 2) free up space in the closet for my fabric and 3) be inspired by the rainbow-like display on the wall.  So far what I've completed is to sort all of my buttons into categories and put them into these cute little glass jars.  Aren't they cool? They remind me of specimen jars in laboratories. Ooh, guess that means that I'm the mad scientist. Now I'm thinking that I'll just have to count this as something checked off the list so that I can work on something, anything as long as it's art-related. Wonder if it should involve electricity?

Let the light shine ...

My FIL flew in Friday afternoon to spend the weekend with us. We haven't seen him for a long time so this visit was really good. He was kind enough to hang our Waterford chandelier in the dining room. My husband and I were so excited to finally get it installed. We've been intrigued by these ever since we went to Ireland on our honeymoon and saw the glass-blowers at work on one at the factory tour. We always said that we'd get one if we ever bought a house. Since we've now been home-owners for a year, it seemed like a good time to treat ourselves to this little piece of Irish light. Our little dining room seems a bit changed by it ... somehow it's more grown-up. Maybe that's just a reflection of Steve and I - not wide-eyed twenty-somethings but fast approaching 40. Either way, we're happy with this change. But the best thing was spending a couple days with Steve's dad who really reminds me of Steve.  It's good to see father and son together.

On a somber note, I must'nt forget that today is the fifth year anniversary of 9/11.  To answer the question of where was I ... I was home watching the newscast (living in Burbank, CA so it was early in the morning) not really believing what I was seeing. It seemed so unreal, like something out of a horrible action-movie. Called my friend in NY just to make sure that she was safe. What I really think of more than that, is the first anniversary when Steve and I flew to NYC just to say by our actions that we weren't going to be afraid, not letting terror get to us. We flew over ground zero and saw the people gathered for the ceremony. That's what I think of more ... that we as a people didn't let this tragic event cripple us as a nation. Here's to all our soldiers keeping us safe, home and overseas ... thank you.

Mail Call: Get Smart Girl ATCs

Today our mailman (his name is Lenny) brought these diminutive pieces of artwork from the ATC swap I participated in a month ago. The theme was "Get Smart Girl" and I was happy to see that someone else also thought of the 60s TV show.

Clockwise starting at the top left: Leta, Jen, Maria, Holly and Kristin (with a lovely hair model from a Good Housekeeping Magazine circa 1962).

All five have a different style, but are great mini artworks. It was a nice surprise to get them today.