Not Great Weather for a Craft Fair Booth...

...featuring quilts, knit hats and warm fuzzy scarves. I wasn't there until the end, but my poor friends sweated and baked and were pretty fried when I arrived. They said if they weren't selling my stuff too, they would have left after the first hour.

Being a kid carnival and not really a craft fair, people were not so much in the buying mood. Being a really hot October day, they were not really in the mood to look at anything involving warmth. Not the greatest introduction to craft fairs.

As we were about to pack up, things got cooler and the sales got hotter. I only sold one silly quilt, but by then I practically kissed the woman's feet, I was so thrilled. My friends sold several of their ADORABLE hats and scarves, so we left fairly happy. They had set it up really cute and we want to try again, at a venue with more buyers, and on a day with lower temperatures.

Natalya, the Oh So Chic Baby Quilt found a home

I did learn something about myself as a seller in the short time I was there. I am a lousy seller. I enjoy the anonymity of Etsy so much and never realized it. A person would come up to see the quilts, and I would want to hide. My friends would nudge me to go tell them how the quilts are upcycled and unique, but I just wanted to hand them a brochure or something. It's like I'm a quilt floozy on Etsy, and a quilt wallflower at a craft fair. Must work on my floozy side.

Squared Up's First Craft Fair

My first craft fair is tomorrow, and I won't even be there. I heard about a little carnival at Mission Avenue School and it has very reasonable vendor fees. Some friends who knit scarves have been wanting to do a craft fair with me, but we are scared of the professional ones like Second Saturday. This one is more our speed.

Make me money, Honey, and you are free to leave

I have an RBC weekend, so my friends very kindly are going to put my quilts with their scarves. I named the table Warm Necks and Cozy Laps, but we have no signs and I still have no business cards. I did made some new tags which turned out adorable, I must say. It would a little sad if they all went at once (HIGHLY unlikely, but one can always dream). I'm really attached to Ginger, the Cookie Quilt. Maybe naming them was a bad business decision; like how naming chickens makes them harder to eat.

White Trash Winter Gardening

They have way better dirt than we do, and it isn't fair. We live in the same neighborhood, we should have good dirt like they do. They are our neighbors with the pool and the cute kids and the good dirt. We have hard pan soil, a dog and a doggie pool. But we love them anyway. Hadassah and I usually end evenings at their house sitting on the couch covered in snuggly girls. The conversation always turns to gardening. We have grand plans in Spring about how our gardens will be amazingly awesome this year, and then Fall conversations about all that went wrong. We went to a class together a few weeks ago about winter gardening, and we got all jazzed. The jazz has worn off.

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas tubs on sale at Target

This will be my first attempt at a winter garden, and as seen from the pictures, a very lame attempt. These are some thrashed containers Hadassah gave me, which I filled (not enough) with compost and then some potting soil. I put seeds in for beets, chard, lettuce and kale. I see a problem already. As the sun hits lower in the sky, the dirt itself is going to get very little sunlight. Also, I try to never drink out of plastic, but here I am attempting to grow organic veggies in these most likely not food grade plastic tubs. Hopefully the beets don't glow in the dark. But if they grow in the dark, the plastic could be a good choice.

Wanted for questioning in the Rocky the Squirrel Murder Case

Molly's job is to chase away any cats who see these as giant litter boxes. After the suspicious death of the squirrel, I hope she doesn't take her job too seriously.

Beets, It's What's for Dinner

Nope that is not beef, it is beets. When I was younger, I thought only old people liked beets. Now I love them. Hmm, wonder what happened to me.

I'm on a root vegetable kick right now. Although the weather has been gorgeous, we have had some rainy days and the days are getting shorter. To me that means a menu change, big time. Out with the summer stuff that goes bad when you turn your back. And in with the hearty stuff that stays good for days and days, if not weeks.

My latest greatest, Beet and Potato Salad. I throw the unpeeled beets and potatoes in a pot and boil them. Then I peel both when cooled, cube them and mix with salt, pepper and hummus. YUM, except I pee red the next day, which can be a bit daunting.

This was the inside of the mystery compost pile squash. I cut it up, seeded it and baked it. I pureed it with whatever was the white liquid of the day in the fridge (Rice Dream, Soy Milk, I forget) and some veggie stock and salt and pepper.

Mystery Squash Soup was the yummiest stuff ever. We have another one I just picked, and we're saving the seeds for next year.

I think I need a bigger soup pot. This was Clean Out the Fridge Soup, onions, carrots, celery, cabbage, beet tops with veggie broth and water. I don't use olive oil to saute with anymore, just broth. And then of course I added salt and pepper and some dill. Don't worry Mom, we are getting enough protein, we just finished a huge pot of beans.

Rootin' Tootin' Root Veggie Roast, with carrots, cauliflower, parsnips and yams from the Croatian store plus...

...baby eggplant from the same store! It was so cute, I couldn't resist. All the stuff at that place is so cheap, I try not to laugh when they ring it up. I try not to laugh at all in that store, I don't want them to yell at me.

Mushrooms growing in our yard after one day of steady rain. Don't worry Mom, I'm not going to cook them.

One of the last hangers on from the summer garden. We had lousy tomatoes, but the spreading plants went to town. We got so much FOOD from them. I used to plant a few veggies for the enjoyment, this year was all about the food. The compost Ernst put down in this part of the yard was a miracle, the plants went crazy and gave us so much output.

Squash on steroids, the brick raised bed is where the garden is supposed to stop.

This is what I picked just today. We didn't plant most of this squash, but we're not complaining, There are three more round food-like things out there, and then that will put the Summer Garden of 2011 to rest.

this had bite marks, another mystery

these tomatoes have crop circles, the plot thickens

From time to time I make dog food with the veggie scraps. Our neighbor gave us some "iffy meat" so Molly will get some homemade pup chow. A house guest who shall remain nameless once accidentally ate some of this concoction. S/he thought, Wow Jessica is a really lousy cook and Ernst sure isn't picky!

The sewer guy just told me there's a dead squirrel in our backyard. Don't worry Mom, I won't cook it!

My Hate Hate Relationship With Glasses

In our family of seven, my Dad was the only one who wore glasses. Our family had crooked teeth, good eyes and no sense of rhythm. After many visits to the orthodontist, we ended up with straight teeth and good eyes. The rhythm thing can't be fixed.

I not only had good eyesight, I had great eyesight. It was between 20/10 and 20/15, which means what most people saw clearly at 15 feet, I could see at 20. Old Eagle Eye, that was me, always the first to see the highway sign, but I could still thread a needle with the best of them. I was so ignorant about what was ahead.

In my thirties, I would see my friends in their forties squinting and holding things away from themselves to read. How can that help, wouldn't you want to bring it closer? Little did I know how soon my time would come. I was in my late 30's when it began. Sheesh this print is fine, let me just put it a little further......AAAAHHHH, it's happening. No, it must be the light, yeah, and the print is just really small. Seems to be happening with everything... AAAAHHHH there go my eyes!

So I pushed vanity aside and made the dreaded appointment. With the doctor. The Appointment. To get my arms surgically lengthened so I could read. But stupid Kaiser made me see the eye doctor, apparently arm stretching is considered cosmetic. The eye doc informed me I was far sighted (who knew?) and far sighted people lose their reading eyes early and fast, and in my case the distance is shot too. He gave me the strength of OTC reading glasses to buy. He recommended Zeiss from Costco, still my favorite brand. 

 

This was my first pair from Costco. Very comfy.

These are my Sally Jesse Rafael pair. If you know who she is, you probably will need glasses soon, if you don't already.

These are my drugstore Mr. Potato Head pair. What was I thinking?

Mrs. Potato Head

These are my contacts. I love them. They are mono vision. I read out of the right (your left) and I see far out of the left. Sometimes I put them in the wrong eyes and I can't see anything.

These are my Quick Build safety glasses

These are my Quick Build safety sunglasses

These are my Quick Build safety sunglasses with bifocals!

These I wear with my contacts to read the weird little Romanian thing-a-ma-jigs over the letters.

Another thing-a-ma-jig pair.

My first real pair of glasses. Ernst called them my sexy secretary glasses, but what sexy secretary decides to get Transitions, which never get dark enough to look like sunglasses and never get clear enough to look sexy? I didn't like them and only wore them when contacts were not an option.

These are my sunglasses.

They are broken.

 
These are my 3D glasses I wore to see Dolphin Tale. It made me cry at the end.

 These are my latest pair. Ernst calls them my Sarah Palin glasses. For the longest time I couldn't get used to them, they gave me headaches, they sort of made my stomach feel queezy. It turns out something was really wrong with them, they remade them, but I don't know if I can ever trust them.

This is me without glasses.

Galina, a Chicken Quilt for the Soul

One of my first Moldovan friends was Galina. She is the mother of four girls, who are very spread apart in age. She is so positive and loves to laugh. After being here for quite awhile, her English is about as good (bad) as my Romanian. We lament together on our utter lack of the language gene (and there is one!). But we have loads of fun together while finding a way to communicate.

She was the person to which I said one of my dumber things in Romanian. She asked me about my father. I tried to say my father died, but instead I said with extreme confidence "The Pope is Death." I didn't know then that tata is father, not papa. Papa is pope, but I also messed up the verb tense.

I also used to mix up Galina with găină, the Romanian word for chicken, so the Chicken Quilt is affectionately named Galina. I told her about the quilt, well I tried to, and her daughter Laura ended up translating. She wants to see it. They all hope the quilts named after them will be gorgeous and beautifully elegant, so I hope she isn't offended. This one is rustic and farm themed. 

so chic-k

Her husband Vasile is the resident butcher around here, they say "cutter." If someone needs an animal "cut" he is the expert. Once we stopped by her brother's house, and the kid's pet goats had hopped onto the kitchen table. The goats (and the kitchen) were covered in sugar and butter and were bleeding from the broken glass of the sugar bowl. They had to face Vasile and all enjoyed a Moldovan bar-b-que of roasted goat. I had named them Costal and Penta, and wanted nothing to do with eating them. They were adorable. Moldova was a tough place to live and like the rest of the family, Galina and her husband are intrepid survivors. I'm keeping my chicken quilt away from Vasile.

The sun came out for my photo session

Galina, the Chicken Quilt

What Rhymes with Bob and is Really Hard to Find?

It starts with a J ends with a B and has a big fat O in the middle!

Next month would have been one long year of unemployment, and the official end to my dearly appreciated unemployment checks. I was hoping that all my temp jobs would extend my checks, but they did not. But I don't need an extension, I finally got a job!

Ernst has been bugging me for the longest time to look for work at EdJoin, the site for jobs with school districts. I couldn't believe there would be any jobs there, after all aren't the school districts laying off hundreds? So after getting fed up with Craigslist, I gave it a shot, but I had serious doubts at getting a job at a place that is all about kids.

My lifetime resume of working with children is long and rich, but there is nothing recent to add. "Goo gooed with Adela at the Romanian meeting, played pots and pans with Elliot, charmed a baby at Trader Joe's" is not exactly what they are looking for in a teacher's aid. So I went to the site with a huge load of doubt. But there it was, a job that just screamed out, THIS ONE IS FOR YOU!

There on the site was a job opening at Maintenance and Operations (M&O) for a local school district. It is a substitute position for a dispatcher, the person who gets calls from the schools regarding maintenance issues and vandalism, copper theft, broken stuff etc. Then the dispatcher calls the proper department or authorities. A few years ago I would have just passed this up. Me, a dispatcher? Work at a school district? Video cameras? Alarms? Me? But, that was several years ago, since then...

...my last job at KMM which I loved and where I had the world's greatest boss, was heavily involved with them. We (they) were (are) updating the low voltage systems for all the schools in the district, one of the largest in California. The aging schools are getting much needed new fire alarms, speakers, clocks, bells, and video surveillance systems. I worked with the people from M&O to keep their hard copy records up-to-date as we finished each school. Many times I went to the M&O office, and my boss gave me a tour of all the new video surveillance they have keeping watch over the schools.

I have never felt so comfortable walking into a job interview, I knew where it was. I had met the director, who was leading the process. I have never had such a serious interview either. There were two people conducting it, they had sheets of paper in front of them with little circles to fill in rating how I answered the questions. (Give me a 5, please give me a five, no wait that is upside down, fill in the other one). But you know an interview is on the right track when you spend several minutes talking about how great your last boss was, they agree and say what a great man he is, and you know he is the first person on your list of references! The man who will be my new boss actually asked me, if you get this job would you leave it to go back to your old one? Yikes, was that a trick question or what? He answered it himself, of course you would, they are a great company. I'm glad I let him answer that one.

I had to wait a week to find out, but HR called today to offer me the position. I still don't exactly know what my schedule is, it may be quite erratic and may include the graveyard shift at times. At this point, it doesn't matter. It is a job with the schools, the pay is so much better than anything out there on Craigslist, it is fairly close to my house, and did I mention it starts with a J, ends with a B and has a big O in the middle? After almost a year of looking, I am thrilled. I can't wait to tell all the little kids I know that Jessica will be watching them on hidden cameras!

Goodwill Hunting

The cool name in fabrics right now is Amy Butler. If someone makes a hip and pretty quilt and lists it on Etsy, it most likely has Amy Butler fabric in it. And that name will be in the first sentence of the description and in the title too. She is hot. If you do a search for Amy Butler on Etsy, there are 14,630 items that come up.

Amy Butler Fabric

I thought about talented Amy today as I reached like an orangutan over some ill-placed rolling carts at my local Goodwill. They line them up right in front of the fabric, making my cotton searches unpleasant. (I typed in Goodwill on Etsy and it showed 59 items, but most included the phrase Peace and Goodwill.) Adding to the shoulder injuring gyrations, today there was a crazy lady in a scooter who wanted to talk. I am great at talking with strangers, but not so good at talking to over the top lost their mind and it ain't ever coming back strangers. She kept saying "Thank God I have my health, I don't have no HIV, Thank God". Yes ma'am I am so happy for you, but I am looking at FABRIC here, please don't run over my toes.

There in one of the bins, she sees a baby doll that she must have. I fish it out for her, and we agree it is a nice healthy looking baby, not like those skinny baby dolls they are making these days. Thank God for healthy baby dolls without HIV, that is what I always say. She hugs the doll, starts talking to it and not me (thank you so much little fat baby) and I get to continue reaching over the rolling bins looking for 100% cotton fabric.

I found some cute stuff: some gorgeous white and red toile, some cute bunny fabric for the upcoming so named quilt, a few yards of yellow and blue beach-themed cotton, and a piece that has wheat on it for the chicken quilt. Corn would have been better, but this is the Goodwill, no gluten-free materials are available. I walked up to pay, and of course the gluten fabric had no price. They had to call the manager, which got the toothless lady behind me who was already in a bad mood in an even worse one. (I should have handed her a chubby doll with a clean bill of health.) Amy Butler, I would like to see you beat that shopping experience!

A Quilt for Sulamita

Sulimita, nee Violeta

A new family from Moldova moved into our hall recently. They have an adorable little girl named Mihaela (Mee-HAY-lah) and a little baby named David (Dah-VEED). Some new names, but ones I can remember and say correctly! Mihaela is incredibly animated and speaks like an Italian with lots of gestures. She just talks full speed Moldovește to me, and her face and voice light up and smile the whole time. It took her awhile to figure out I had no idea what she was saying. Now we just hug.

Mihaela's mom is going to have another baby, a girl. Yesterday I asked what the baby's name would be. Sulamita (Soo-lah-MEE-tah), they said, a Bible name. Come again? So we got out the best Romanian/English dictionary there is: the NWT. They turned to Cântarea Cântărilor (Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon) and pointed to Sulamita, the Shulamite girl! They were so proud to show me, and  I understood. Not a typical Romanian or Moldovan name, this family has imagination.

The shower is today but I have no time to make a quilt, in fact I have a temp job so I can't even attend. But I grabbed The Quilt Formerly Known as Violeta off Etsy, and that will have to do. I am freshly laundering it with Downy, and sending it to the shower. This leaves one lone baby blanket on Etsy, which is fine with me. The competition is huge, I think I'll stick to lap throws for grownup and keep the baby ones custom made. This one is so not custom, but I think they will like it for our new little arrival, Sulamita.

O is for October, O is for Organize

is for Organize

At what point did it all come crashing down? Was there an exact day, or was it a series of events that I failed to recognize? Maybe after The Big E's stroke and heart attack, it became less important? Just give me a date so I can know.

When I married Ernst at almost 29 years old, all my worldly possessions fit into the back of a pickup truck. My roommate before that was my sister, and she made more money so she just bought what we needed for our apartment. My kitchen stuff before my bridal showers consisted of a set of 4 dishes, a frying pan and a wooden spoon. My clothes fit in a tiny utility closet that was so shallow I had to use children's hangers. Life was so simple.

Then came the showers, which were so fun. I loved the kitchen gifts. Bowls! Pans! Baking supplies! Stuff! I was finally an adult. I set up my/our new apartment with such care, nice and neat, nice and organized. Then came Ernst. And his stuff. And more stuff. But wait, there was more. After months and months, I worked hard through mono and new marriage to incorporate our two styles: Feng Shui meets Dumpster Dive Depot. It seemed to hold together through six different places and three towns. Our life was more complicated, but still under control.

After wasting another half hour of my life last night looking for something that could not be located, I had a thought. Why own it if you can't find it? Why have it if you don't know where it is? My family went through a one room everything burned up fire when I was younger, so I know the heartache that losing things all at once can cause. But what about those disasters when you have about 20 minutes to get out all the sentimental stuff and legal papers, and then all the other is just gone? Could a garage tornado be arranged? An office tsunami? A closet flood?

October will be for Organizing, that is the plan. If I take one little thing a day: a drawer one night, one shelf the next day; not looking at the house as a whole, but in 31 segments, after the month is over I could make a decent dent. Touch it once, that is the goal. Find a home for it or shred it or donate it or toss it. Where are my cute little letter stamps? Why here they are, right where they belong! Where are those adorable little stickers to add to little kid cards? Well, by George here they are where they belong! Molly's Skunk Be Gone, heart worm meds and flea/tick stuff?  Wow, how cool, they aren't in the kitchen with our food, but with all the other dog stuff. WHERE IS IT? IT IS RIGHT HERE. What a concept! O is for October. O is for Organize. O is for chOcOlate?