Gaming the penguin

I have a penguin in my office that I received as a gag gift. I believe it was originally intended to be a lawn ornament. It has a hole in the bottom with a stopper which would allow it to be filled with sand to keep it from wandering off in high winds. Why anyone would want to put this penguin in their yard is beyond me (though I can see why they would not want it wandering). However, its architecture makes it the perfect piggy-bank. I cut a slot in its head for coins, and have been contributing to the "penguin fund" off and on for several years.

However, I recently decided that I needed to begin contributing in earnest, wondering how long it would take me to fill the thing and how much money it would contain in the end. So, every day after lunch, I drop the coin change I received from lunch into the penguin. I have filled the base and am about up to the bottom of the plastic wings now.

But here is the gaming part. At lunch I typically buy a salad, paid for by the ounce. So every day I attempt to create a $5.01 salad, netting me $.99 in change. However, yesterday I experienced a catch. If I'm too close to even, the cashiers just round it up. Rather than holding up the entire line by demanding my $.99, I slink off without any coin change, cursing my new full dollar, and the penguin gets nothing.

Apparently this will take both skill and art, but I feel I am up to the task. And so, the penguin fund s-l-o-w-l-y grows.

Knowing when to give up

In an effort to make progress against my YOH initiatives, I finally contacted a professional organizer. Doing some checking around, I have the feeling it's very much a personality-based business, where you want to find an organizer with similar organization philosophy. It's a bit daunting starting out though - if I knew what my organization philosopy was, I would be more organized. Anyway, I started with an Angie's List recommendation. Wish me luck!

Ten things I like about cross-stitch

1. It's portable, easy to take out and put away.
2. It doesn't require long commitments at each sitting.
3. It's fun to see the design slowly develop.
4. It's methodical and all mapped out: one square=one stitch.
5. I love handling all of those different DMC colors.
6. There is a wide variety of designs available.
7. You don't need to be the most skilled sewer in the world.
8. Equipment needs are small.
9. It doesn't take a lot of space.
10. I can hand it off to my husband to finish (frame).

The weight

Do you remember that old song by The Band, The Weight? Old projects hanging around and around always make me think of that song. I'm not talking about the started-last-month-and-am-waiting-for-a-rainy-day-to-plow-through projects (you can see my list of these to the right), but rather the started-back-in-college-and-have-been-moving-around-with-me-ever-since projects.

Notably, I have three of these of the knitting variety. One is a light pink cabled mohair sweater that resembled a large, fuzzy leg-warmer (I have no idea why I thought this was going to be a lovely sweater - chalk it up to youth). The second was a painstaking lacework and intarsia sweater, where I'd gotten as far as completing the back, front, and sleeves but had not completely assembled them, tucked the millions of colored ends, or knit the collar. The third is a dark green chenille simple center-cabled sweater that could conceivably be worn if it was finished, but I'd only completed most of the back.

So, what to do with these old projects? Here, I think, is weight that should be easy to lose. But, it's hard to throw away those old projects that I worked so hard on, and, worse, could be finished. I think it is the possibility of completion that is so difficult. I look at them and think, "All I need to do is just rework this bit and then..."

The brave thing to do would be to take nice pictures, throw away the partial pieces, and sell the remaining yarn on eBay. But here is my inevitable solution: remove the needles (they are still on the needles - yikes!), pack them away in a box, and put them in the garage to be discovered another day, when I'll pick them up and think, "All I need to do is just rework this bit and then..."

Who knows? Maybe pink mohair will be all the rage by then.

Cross birthday

Projects: Alphabet and Maze puzzles
Patterns: Original
Materials: 14-count Aida, DMC floss

Here are the two of the cross-stitch puzzles I made for my birthday hunt this year: the maze for team green and the alphabet for team violet. The alphabet turned out to be a tougher puzzle than expected, but the violet team marshaled forward anyway. Great job!

You have to start somewhere

Project: Flowery 1/2-circle skirt
Pattern: Simplicity 3834
Fabric: Linen/cotton blend with embroidery

After making five quilts over the same number of months for my birthday hunt this year, I was ready to try some other kind of sewing--any other kind of sewing. With encouragement from my sister-in-law Chelsea, expert clothing sewer, I picked out an easy pattern, matched it with fabric suggestions from Chelsea, and made a 1/2 circle skirt.

The good: It only took me about one long sewing day to get the skirt finished. The zipper went very well the first time. It was nice to sew with such expansive seam allowances.

The bad: Going by the sizes on the pattern envelope, Chelsea and I sized the pattern up one then two sizes, but when we got it together, we sized it back down two sizes again. At least I got some pattern-resizing practice!

The ugly: The lace edging I'd gotten initially was a wide-ish eyelet. Once I had it sewn on and tried to join up the ends, I realized there was about a 1/2 difference in width. Looking at it more closely, the width varied along the length of the lace, but at such wide intervals that it was totally unsuitable for the skirt. Besides, it was so stiff that it made the skirt stand out as if there were several petticoats under it. I replaced it with more sedate netting lace, which I think works nicely, though it still stands out a bit.

Wearability: I've worn it twice so far, though I keep expecting someone to stop me and say there's a gaping hole somewhere or the lace is falling off.

I'm in the process of making the same skirt again in a different fabric.

Aliens

When Riley was smaller and first started writing her name, I thought her capital R's looked like little aliens. Then one day she switched over to the more regular loopy kind of R. The new R's are more correct, but I miss the little aliens.

Yoh!

Because we had to start somewhere, Jeff and I decided to have a "Year of Health" beginning 8/1/2007. As part of this Y.O.H., these are the things I'm trying to work on (in no particular order):

• Exercise regularly at a moderate-to-high level
• Eat better foods with smaller portions; eat at least two meals per week together as a family
• Floss daily
• Maintain a skin-care regimen of some kind
• Reduce visual and actual clutter at home
• Drink water every day
• Take vitamins
• Be on time for things
• Sleep 7-9 hours per night

Jeff has his own list, but it's pretty similar. So far I am finding exercising regularly and reducing visual clutter the most challenging, but I still have high hopes.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it

Recently I held the third "birthday hunt" that I host for a few friends and family during July each year. The first year, it was my way of reconciling my love of puzzling with my dislike of turning one year older. I had so much fun the first year, I put on another, and then another. Each couple (seven total this year) is assigned a color encoded into the party invitation. Along with their RSVP, they verify that they decoded the correct color successfully. This year there were some really creative costumes that went along with the spy theme.

I write all of the puzzles for these events (with much help and from my husband Jeff), usually around 25 or so in all. This year each team recieved a crafty puzzle of some kind--either a cross-stitch work or a quilt--that was itself a puzzle. Other puzzles included identifying spice names from little unlabeled jars and a kind of four-person dance that two teams executed on a large letter grid to spell the answer.

Good times!