Resolving to Have Resolutions

This year I decided to make a couple of resolutions.  I have struggled with my weight for years and decided that I would make a couple of simple changes that I hope will have lasting results.  Of course, those are the very simple changes of diet and exercise.  Easier said than done.  However, breaking the resolution does not mean an end to the effort--I have cut out virtually all bread, rice, potatoes, and noodles.  I have also made an effort to go out for a couple of 30 minute walks a week--so far the weather has been cooperative.  I also purchased a new pair of headphones to go with the iPod for those walks.  In the first week, I gained a 1/2 pound.  Sigh.  Hopefully the coming weeks will have more desirable results.

Last night I finished the Khabeelah weave for Molly.  I will be taking it to Ursulmas to hand over to her for my first weaving sale!  I'm going to write to a merchant and see if he would like to sell some pieces for me on commission.  So many of these woven pieces I've seen online, like on Etsy, are asking between $35 and $125 for 2 yard to 4 yard pieces.  I can't imagine charging that much for weaving.  What is that--$15 to $30 a yard?  Crazy.  While I'm sure that someone will be crazy enough to purchase trim at that price, I cannot imagine charging it.  So the question is, what is a fair price?  $50?  Calculating yardage of string, it's about 520 yards for the warp, and maybe another 50 yards for the weft.  The price for the materials isn't high, but I figure it takes 10 hours or more to weave the thing, and no one wants to pay $9 an hour for a piece.  I guess I have to pick a price that's competitive with the market, but what I still feel comfortable charging.  

I started a new piece for Emma--black & white & red using a pattern from Robin & Russ Handweavers' book.  On the first day, I'd started weaving on it twice using their directions, making changes, and starting again, turning the cards backwards and forwards, flipping the cards to and fro, and it didn't look like the picture.  I knew I'd have to mess with it a bit more to see what the heck's going on.  I suspected that I had it upside down again.


After some investigation, I realized that once again, I threaded it onto the frame wrong.  I need to remember to start with the end of the pattern (card #25) and work my way back.  It was on the frame upside down.  Once I took all the threads off, and put them back on in the correct order, the pattern came out perfectly.  It's weaving up very quickly--in a day, I'd woven almost half of the piece.  I will have it finished by the week end, even if I take time to quilt up a few pieces for Tina.

We have some new members of our family.  Apparently the rest of the humans missed having tweetings and chirpings, so we now have Midori  (which means "Green") and Tsrelkjmrsgmr.  OK, I can't remember it, but it rhymes with "Chewbacca."  Tsubaka or something.  It's Japanese.  I know.  Shocker.  I guess we need to explain to the girls again that the birds are native from Australia...  They're settling in nicely, getting used to human hands and starting to feed out of our hands.  The kids (and Kelly) love them!  I admit, I like them, too.

It's a busy week this week.  Monday was guild meeting where I met up with 80 or so friends (and a relative) for a surprisingly short meeting.  We did a fun ice breaker called "Quilting Speed Dating" where we formed an inner circle and an outer circle, and filled out a chart, similar to a Bingo grid, that includes statements like "Quilted for 15 or more years", "Has more than 75 UFOs", and "Has a long arm business".  You ask questions of members and see how many of these squares you can fill in. With the first 10 people, we swapped 5" charm squares.  Since I'm trimming my scrap bin into squares ranging from 2" to 6" (in half-inch increments), this will be a welcome addition to my collection of squares.  After that, it was a free-for-all and you kept going until the time ran out.  At the end, myself and five others had finished all the squares.  I think there is going to be a special drawing for us, but it wasn't disclosed what that would mean.

I brought Tara the second Packers quilt that I finished for her.  While this isn't an amazing picture, it's the only one I have.  I meant to lay it out and photograph it, but here it is.  

Tuesday was a Girl Scout day.  I gathered my materials and arrived at the school...only to realize that I had forgotten the copies of the Retro Girl Scouts section I had just completed on First Aid.  We did a long first aid discussion, which was made longer by all the stories and comments that the girls wanted to share.  It was "This one time when we went to..." and the 30 minute discussion turned into more than an hour.  We also got our cookie-selling stuff...cookie selling starts TODAY!!  If you have need of a few boxes, please let me know!  $4 a box, just like before, and the Lemon Chalet cookies have been replaced by a powdered lemon chip cookie called Savannah Smiles.

Wednesday I volunteered at school to help serve hot lunch.  It's a couple hours of work and it's fun to hang out with a couple other moms.  I got to play with one mom's baby, a little 10 month old boy.  He was very cute and we entertained each other between packing bins for the classrooms.

Thursday was going to be a day of rest, but instead I drove over to Avelyn's (about 40 minutes away) and met her quilting mother-in-law, as well as her FIL and sister-in-law.  They were there only an hour or so before leaving to go tour the flight museum.  Avelyn and I walked with the boys over to Burger King and met up with her hubby on his lunch hour.  They have a surprisingly good grilled chicken salad.  We had a great discussion about SCA stuff--heraldry, shire and barony politics, rubbing elbows with Powerful People, etc.  After a short walk back to the house, I drove back homeward to get the kidlings from school.

Today was the marathon doctor visit at Children's.  No surprises all the way around...both kids need to increase the frequency they do their breathing treatments, Ben needs a round of antibiotics to help clear the goo in his lungs that is rattling around, and he needs to increase the calorie and fat intake.  We need to try to add supplements like Boost and high-cal "energy" bars, as well as ice cream and any kind of high-fat foods we can find.  The trick is to get him to EAT it.

I got a few fun things from Amazon the other day which arrived today!  Harry Potter's Unofficial Cookbook, which includes some delights like Treacle Tarts and Steak & Kidney Pie.  I also got this candy mold to make Chocolate Frogs.  I'm going to have to make some of these very soon!  Yumm!  I also got a DVD copy of "Lost in Austen" which I have taped on two different occasions on TiVo and watched dozens of times, but I hate having to forward over the commercials.  It was in the $7 range when I ordered it, although now on Amazon, it's closer to $9.

This weekend has some lumpia in store for us!  Avelyn has been promising to make us this Asian delight for some weeks as a thank you to Kelly for his assistance in building the yurts.  Other than that, Girl Scout cookies are selling now!  Want some?  We know you do...everyone is doing it.  Just one (box) won't hurt you.  :)

I still have a lot of work to do...six or seven quilts to finish up...some weaving...some classes for the Ithra catalog...  The deadline stress is getting to me.  I'm starting to get a kink in my neck.  Hope to have a relaxing weekend.

K