Plain and Practical

Pick up lease tomorrow; meanwhile, keep busy!

the lawyer called and the lease for the shop is ready to pick up tomorrow--then taking it to Marysville, with a measuring tape, sketchbook, camera, and Pat-With-Brains and if the keys are available, going to check out the rental restaurant again, woot woot so excited.  Using the energy to hand sew yo-yos onto these placemats I just finished:

 
here's the done ones, seven more to go:

 

and then starting on these kerchief style caps I used to make years ago, they are wonderful for making you feel pretty while you're scrubbing a floor or wiping out the oven or hanging diapers on the clothesline, keeps the loose strands of hair from driving you crazy, too!

 
out of these fabrics from my scrap bin:

 
so they will look so sweet with yo yos, buttons, bits of ruffled lace, fun stuff.  Just because one hand has a toilet cleaning brush in it and the other is prying a stuck bar of soap off the shower ledge, doesn't mean we have to look unattractive while doing so!

Will keep you posted on the restaurant news.  Whether it be Yea or Nay, we know it is what God has planned for us, and will be patient and wait if this location doesn't work out for us.  Peace. 

Sewing, Cooking, Snow Again

So I started out on that pile of green towels and placemats, got five or six bundles done and inventoried but still a ways to go:

 
and while I was doing that, Boo said, hey, it's grey and yucky and I'm going to sleep all day!

 
 
yes, that's my cat.  And then the reason it was so dark became apparent--it started to snow!

 
and before long, needed to make dinner--potatoes and breadcrumbs, with asparagus on top, a nice from-scratch cheese sauce on top, baked for an hour.  And for the carnivore, five crab cakes to go with it.  Easy dinner!  Especially since dessert was fresh grapes, rinsed and served.  Rest of night for relaxing and a bit of prayer and thankfulness for all I have been given.  Peace.

 
 

 

Lease is at the Lawyer's, and More

So I picked up the lease, it's at my lawyer's, and the new phone is on my waistband waiting for a ring to come and pick it up and drive it back over to Marysville--so here is the new phone, with buttons so tiny I have to wander around and find a pencil with an eraser to poke at it when I want to dial someone.  And, the woman at the phone store who transferred my old information to the new phone was all giggly because I only have three numbers in my "history."  Three people on the planet that would come to your aid at any time of the day or night, that is plenty for the life I lead:

 
and here's the stack of green for sewing this afternoon, now that the grocery shopping, laundry, and cleaning are all done:

 
so when the coffeemaker finishes brewing my pot of Red Rose tea and I fill a big steaming mug, put on some nice relaxing music, then settle down in front of the sewing machine and it's green all the way.  Peace.

Cross another UFO off my list!

UFO, or Unfinished Objects, are all over my house, yeppers they are, but here is a basketfull that have been waiting for attention, and I got them all done today, Cupcake Pincushions, made from an old afghan that I bought.  Someone had already felted it a bit and I felted it a lot more, sliced it up, and with some trims and yo-yos and the ends of a couple of sweater cuffs, four hours and a bit of thread and a few pokes of the needle, and here they are ready to inventory and pack.  I have no idea what to price them for, so will just wait until later to do that part.

 
 
and now to put away the buffaloes in the bedroom before the light of the day is gone.  A good day tomorrow, I hope.  Peace.

Working On Small Stuff

so of course I'm all excited about hopefully picking up the paperwork tomorrow and getting it to the lawyer to look over, and this means working on stuff for the store, of course.  I made 20 more of the yo-yo fans:

 
and then I made 46 of the button cards, very pretty, yes?  quiet sit down work, all of this,

 
and then friends stopped by and gave me a box of those wonderful Betty Crocker recipe cards I love to use, set aside some to trim for card fronts, sorted out some for cooking class ideas to share with a teacher friend, others to package for the store.  This of course made me very hungry so I had a can of pears and put some potatoes on to boil to do a casserole at dinner time, something good and cheesy and creamy and toasted on top, one for husband with cooked leftover brats mixed in, mine without, both with a few pretty asparagus on top, doesn't that sound good and wholesome?  Combats our 30 degree spring day, my feet are cold and so, so ready for barefoot summer to come.  Boo gave himself a complete bath, finished with the middle of his big belly, and then flopped over in Sunbeam for a warm afternoon nap.

 
Stay busy, hum your hymns.  Peace.

Maybe! Maybe! Maybe Found Our Bulk Food Place!

So, we've walked through and examined a rental in Marysville, and this seems to have most of what we were hoping to find--right in the block we had picked out at Christmastime.  So I've either been to or telephoned the various Health Department, Building, City, Electrical, Plumbing, you-name-it departments and it's almost $900 just for the fees and certificates, plus rent and security deposits and an endless list of things to do IF our lawyer and his lawyer get the lease all hammered out so everyone's happy.  So you don't get a picture yet, just that the wheels might be turning in that direction.

And wow, money is going to be really, really tight for awhile.  No thrift shopping.  Cut back on meals out and what I buy from the grocery store.  Cancel two short overnight trips.  No more buying vintage on Etsy and Ebay for awhile.  Combine trips to save gas.  We can do it, pulling together in our tandem yoke.

Made an absolutely frightening list this morning of more things I need to get made for the store, in case this is it.  I'll be burning the midnight oil at both ends.

I asked the Lord to give me some purposeful work, and it appears not only will this be happening even sooner than we expected, but it will also be good exercise--lots of cleaning and scrubbing to be done there!

Your prayers are appreciated.  We may be fools, I may pour six months into this project and not even break even, but we have the courage to try.  We'd like to help people afford more wholesome food--and best of all, there's a large kitchen with the place, and I already have someone who is interested in teaching the classes in the back while I'm in the shop in front--pickling, canning, freezing vegetables, making healthy low-cost meals and snacks.  If not this place, there will be another, I have Faith.  Will keep you posted.  Peace.

p.s.  it comes with a bread oven.

Sparkly Clean and Little Things

Usual early morning has turned into early afternoon and although I'm looking around, you can't see that I've done much but wowsa, I've hardly sat a moment and even ate part of lunch standing up while on the phone!

I've washed all the glass jars that were thrifted yesterday, and the glass droplets for making refrigerator magnets:

 
and washed three loads of clothes and seven sinkfuls of handwash, that's not exciting enough for a picture at all.  I also located a food service management certification course (Servsafe), mine runs out in a year, so going to get that out of the way in 2 months for the possibility of opening this summer--driving up to Marysville to pay the health department the course fees tomorrow and meeting husband for lunch up there.  Of course, will *need* to visit the thrift store and quilt shop in town, because my spiderweb quilt is on hiatus until I get more yellows and oranges:

 
all bundled up and pinned until more looting can be had.  Yellow is such a hard color to find for quilting.  And, all those cut up shirts means a few responsible moments on the couch with a seam ripper, removing the little buttons.  Waste not, want not.

 
A storm is coming, I can feel it, although the clouds gather and pass, gather and darken and pass.  My knees and neck know it's only a matter of hours and there will be a storm and a temperature change.  It might turn out to be a good night for knitting on the couch with the cat.  Peace.

Oy, My Exciting Life

actually, it's just about perfect, partly because my depression-era grandparents and greatgrandparents taught me to appreciate simple things.  Like knowing every bit of trash is out of the house and the yard is picked up even though what you see here is certainly not impressive at all and does NOT look like two hours' work:

 
and I pulled up loose grass and vines and made this little ivy wreath for springtime:

 

and went thrift shopping with a friend and had Chinese food at our favorite Lunch Buffet:

 
Three packages of cross stitch fabrics, two bags of glass beads, three yard hunk of fabric, a shell necklace and a shell bracelet = $9.  Oh, and there was a box of canning jars included in that, forgot to get them into the photo op here, but they are grossly dirty and I'm going to soak them overnight in the sink before scrubbing them and putting them into the dishwasher.

And my good friend Pat shared some of her goody loot with me, looky:

 
and Boo could not be bothered with any of this wholesome good stuff because he is quite occupied going from one window to another, since they were open to air out the house this nice day.  He has been busy watching the birds gather little twigs and the squirrels chase each other around the trees and yard.  It appears Boo is content with the simple things in life, too.

 
After Husband comes home and I make and feed him crabcakes and chicken noodle soup (he is so easy to please, what a quick dinner), I will be working on the spiderweb quilt.  I'd like to get four quilt tops ready to be quilted and set them aside for the store stock, when we rent a building will send them up to Sue and then they will be back and ready for selling, alongside some vintage ones.   Work hard, be purposeful.  Peace.

Triangles Make Squares, Yes They Do, Yes They Do

the only kinds of mathematics I've ever enjoyed are the concrete, provable ones.  For example, if Farmer John has three and a half bushels of apples and there are 42 apples in a bushel, how many apples does Farmer John have?  Well now, knowing how to figure that out, would be useful.  And soon as I figured out that Geometry was a secret code word for Quilt Patterns, I was quite all right with that subject, too, but don't even bring up algebra around me.

Triangles are the shape of the motif needed for the spiderweb quilt, which I called a Pizza Quilt for the longest time before I knew the proper name, so this one will be rounds of yellow and orange prints settled into a background of blue sky (the star shapes) when the rows are assembled:

 
and when those four are sewn together you have:

 
See?  those yellow parts, four of them will meet, and make a bright yellow-orange circle (octagon) as the rows are assembled.  Will let you have that pic when I get them done.  Going to send it to Sue (see sidebar) and have it quilted on her machine.

Thrifty treasures are washed and hung up drying, with the last of the weekend's fabrics:

 
 
and these sheets were 90 cents each, love the color!  and a pink sheet also, 99 cents:

 
So today, ran errands, sent a friend a goodie box, thrifted, grocery shopped, sewed a stack of those triangles in the first pic, about to straighten up a little around the house.  Husband is getting a round steak for dinner, a treat, when I was growing up we called it "pounded steak" and you more or less coat it with flour and beat it senseless with the edge of a plate, then fry it in butter, serving it with brocolli and his A-1 sauce and he will be just the happiest guy on the block.  Tonight, need to work on the PNP newspaper so when Pat comes over for lunch tomorrow we can hike it up to the printer's and get it done.  And some knitting.  A storm is approaching from the southwest, getting some thunderboomers I think.  Peace.

 

I Rode Shotgun to Athens, Ohio

Headache, headache, go away

I have things to do today!

All that breathing outdoor springy muddy different air from seven or eight counties in two days.  Ugh, my sinuses are stinkin' awful this morning.  Vicks is my friend, for sure.

Remember me mentioning that great Marysville, Ohio, Methodist Church rummage sale, where I got a pile of cross stitch stuff, and husband picked up two binders of old 78s?  Well, we delivered those records yesterday to his good friend down in The Plains, Ohio, the guy collects old foxtrot tunes, and judging from the expression on his face, it was a winner for him.  He insisted on paying us the $1 back for them.

While the menfolk occupied mall husband-benches, I wandered around in a neat fabric store there, and got these:

 
she is doing an independent fabric store, not a chain or franchise, and I like to support those as much as possible.  I told her I'd send a box to help her out, some handmade things and patterns she can publish or just use herself, that sort of thing.  That's a couple yards of MODA black, and strawberries, yarn balls in tangles, tiny tomatoes, and a pink print that I think Pat might end up with most of that one, swapswapswap.  We got to talking about MODA, which is made in Japan, and what might happen with imports now that the radiation seems to be spreading there.  I saw on the news where a couple of countries have now sent back imports because the items registered radiation.  I hope the U.S. is planning to do a good job keeping radiated things out of our country.  It's all so scary and I admittedly am a science flub on all levels, I trust my government and experts to protect me.

My cat, having no one around during the day on Friday (I went shopping, husband at work) and we both took off on poor Boo yesterday and didn't get back until after dark, so this morning he meow'd and meow'd even after all the treats and tuna and catnip and everything was in place.  He wanted to play.  So here he is under a quilt in the livingroom, which was followed by putting the quilt on a chair and playing with a wood bird, then a blue string, then he stopped playing and I looked under there and he was asleep.  Like a child, he just wanted to be reassured he was loved and then everything was fine.  Quilts can do that.

 
and after breakfast gets made, I need to do some salt dough today or tomorrow, here's the prototype, want to do peas, corn, peppers, carrots, to mount on these rafter braces I got for 40 cents at Home Depot.  A little paint, drilling, wire work, papier-mache, they will be nice when done and easily hung on a kitchen wall somewhere--will put them in store stock:

 
The dishwasher is running, I woke to a disaster in the kitchen, we bolted yesterday and just left it, ugh.  Washer has second load of fabrics in it now, there's vintage pillowcases in the sink soaking in oxyclean, the whole house has been ignored for two days and I need to go room to room and pick up a bit.  It's all good, decongestant is kicking in, jar of vicks next to me, husband snoring in next room.  My wonderful life.  Peace in yours also.