FREEBIES FOR CRAFTERS: Triangle Coin Purse With Zipper

A sweet little coin purse with a zipper closure and it stands up due to its triangle shape!  I'm thinking this may be my project of the day.  If I can ever get caught up on my emails and blog readings.

FREEBIES FOR CRAFTERS: Triangle Coin Purse With Zipper

A trip to the mega sewing store

Today I went to JoAnn's.  I really dislike going there, it has more crafts than fabric and such a poor choice of fabrics that I really am not inspired to sew - and certainly not to quilt being the quilting fabric snob that I am -and it also always has a horrible manmade scent in it that reminds me of wet straw.  With my scent sensitivities i really try to stay away from candle/potpourri/diffuser places.

But, this past week I got an email update from Nancy Zieman for her new McCall's pattern 6607 and fell in love with it.  It will be perfect for either our fundraising event this October.  Or if my presence is needed, at a smaller gathering at a Board Member's home in early September.  So after getting my two cuts of foam-50% off this week and the main purpose for my journey - I was off to the pattern table and found the pattern and headed to the knits area.  tons of solids in a cheap-ey THIN fabric but nothing like I saw this pattern being made in.  Then on a round table near the front of the store was a group of animal type prints and one of them was in black and white like I thought I wanted with a bit of sporadic clear sequins on it.  2 1/2 yards later I went looking for thread. 

I always feel like I treat a trip to the town only 11 miles north of us as if I lived in the hills 50 miles from anywhere.  See I really have no reason to go to "town" anymore.  I have a Publix and a Sweet Bay 1 1/2 miles from my home.  Sam's club is only another tenth of a mile.  There is a Panera, a Starbucks, too many pizza places to count-but only one counts-East Coast Pizza.  We have a bowling alley, a McDonald's, Burger King, Applebees, Beef O'Brady's, two Chinese restaurants and even a Japanese Restaurant now.

WalMart is an 8 mile drive north or an 11 mile drive south of us and we have at least 6 WalMart stores within 20-25 minutes of my house.  All the "real" stores/mall/movie theater etc are all up in that 11 miles away place that also has JoAnn's.  So when I go to "town/JoAnns" I make sure to take care of purchasing as many things that are on sale or I have a coupon for as  I can to justify the travel time and the gas.

I got two pieces of foam.  One piece for the sitting area of the bench in the front bedroom at the condo and the other piece is for the coat rack/bench I have in my office at work.  I bought black, white, red and navy 100% cotton thread,  a black and white rayon thread to sew the fancy material I bought for the McCall's 6607 pattern.  I also purchased the last 4 packages of plastic carbiners(sp?) to use in a couple of future purse/tote type projects,  5 packages of machine needles, a skein of pink and white dishcloth cotton yarn from the Breast Cancer Awareness display for Bernat, and something else that I cannot recall.  I did not even splurge on a magazine or a book!  I was gone 2 hours from home to home and I guess the splurge was well needed as I felt great when I got back...except for the nasty wet straw smell on my clothing which I promptly switched out.

I didn't think to take pictures of my haul but I'm sure I can come up with something for you to view.  In the mean time, have a marvelous day!

in September of 2011 we went to the local boating and fishing show.  In the 1st shot I am learning to fly fish.  I'll just say that all fish are safe from me if I ever use the fly fishing techniques.  While at the show I attended three different lure/bait rigging demos.  The last one I did was to rig a nasty ballyhoo for fishing for big fish!  At one point I had to break its back and squeeze all the poo out of it.  Not only did I reek of fish, but of fish guts and waste too! And yet, I'm still smiling.  Gosh I love to fish!

 

Overwhelming projects that never get started/done

UPDATED 07/15/2012 9:27 AM
First off I have no affiliation with any of the pattern makers or any sellers of the links to patterns for sale or for free in this post.

I have a terrible time remembering to take home everything I brought to work and not leaving something there. TWICE I have left my wonder wallet in the locked drawer of my file cabinet. The second time was the day after the accident and i needed my ID in order to go the doctor the next morning. Gratefully, the other person in my department lives on this side of Tampa Bay too and she drove it over and met us at a Wal-mart near us.

One time I left my cell phone there on a Friday.  Of course, that was the day before I was to meet east of Orlando to pick up my Baby Wolf Loom and THAT was the number they had for contacting me etc. AND resulted in the 2 hours round trip to work to get it.

So for awhile now I have been pondering (does anyone ponder anymore?) what solution would allow me to make sure that I have everything I absolutely need to take home with me on any given day.

Keys (yes, I can leave them there because dh & I carpool and I don't have to have them to arrive home each day after I leave the place in the car, except every other Friday when dh is off)

wonder wallet:  money, id, credit cards, all slightly important for gas, groceries, salon visits etc.

cell phone: which is also my alarm clock for waking up, email reading device, book reading device, websurfing device, and the basic of its functions- a phone for contact with my friends and family

work lanyard: photo ID, key to my office, key to the file cabinets

lunch bag

any personal papers etc i've taken to work on, refer to, speak to a doctor, lawyer, indian chief - oh wait no indian chief

gosh and so much more I'm sure.

Those are the basic items needed on every day of my work life.

I thought, as I am the type of person, if you always do it the same way in the same place you will not be as likely to lose/forget something... I could make a tote bag that housed all of this "stuff" I need to schlepp back and forth each day.

Dh and I also have a problem with the perfumes/air fresheners/chemicals etc that my tote bag absorbs during my time at work.  When it sits in the car for an hour on the ride home... then sits in the same spot day in and day out in the dining room so I don't forget the tote itself...it bothers our sensitivities to scent and clogs our sinuses etc.  Due to this I need something that I can make five of and wash! Then each day I will have a different tote with everything in its place and toss the smelly one into the laundry each week.

The more I have pondered this, the more I have thought of the PortaPockets Purse Insert pattern that I'm pretty sure I bought over a year ago and have somewhere in a bin.

The pondering came up with something like this.

make five tote bags with at least one clip hook easily accessible INSIDE the bag for my keys and work lanyard to clip to

make five "inserts" that house in a specific section each of the bare necessity type things listed above so at a glance I can see a pocket is empty and find the item before exiting the building and driving an hour home.

make 5 wonder wallets to use in the various bags


make 5 lunch bags with ample space for my frozen water bottle (used as the freeze pack in the bag)and all the containers/baggies i carry to eat and refuel me for the rest of my work day

make 5 water bottle holders which double as my cellphone carrier with a Nivea spf30 lip balm in the bottom of it

make 5 Maggies-large sized (Lazy Girl Designs) with lobster claw clip for my wonder wallet to fit in to in case i grab my waterbottle/cellphone holder and clip the Maggie to it with the wonder wallet in it. the barest of necessities in life for being able to do things after work or on the weekends but return the stuff to the all inclusive organizing for work non-forgetting-stuff "tote"


make 5 very protective stabilized eyeglass cases for remembering my "good" glasses each morning. I sleep with my old pair on the mattress for reading in bed at night on the .... cellphone of course!

And as you look at that lovely list, you can see why I have not made even ONE of them, as to think I need one for each work day in order to accomplish the portion of the goal that means washing the smells away daily... well it is overwhelming!

I should treat it like our gift giving thought process at 25 weeks on yahoo goups... break it down into time/item goals, KIT them up, and then figure out how many I need to do and when to get it done!

in order to even KIT the things I have to:

FIND the patterns I possess of these
1) Maggie FOUND 7/15/2012
2)portapockets purse insert FOUND 7/15/2012
3) wonder wallet FOUND 7/15/2012

PRINT off the online pattern:
1) pink chalk waterbottle carrier FOUND 7/15/2012

DESIGN:
1) the perfect tote to house the insert AND have room for my tablet when I go on business trips FOUND very old pattern from some 21+ yrs ago Simplicity 8657 7/15/2012 just need to design an interior pocket JUST for the ASUS tf201 tablet with keyboard and cover
2 )the perfect lunch bag
3) the stabilized eyeglass case


CLEAN-UGH!:
1) cutting mat area
2) arrange the Baby Wolf and weaving stuff so I can get at the sewing machine AND the cutting area in the same crafting time frame. Partially done during the search for the patterns

DO:
it all!

Oh help me all, I'm awash in dreams of this solution and the enormity of it all.

Have a grand day, and remember no elephant is so big it can't be eaten one bite at a time. Yea, right.

hugs! Prayers! luv that you're in my cyber life
denise/deBRAT

A video ... hopefully

If you can view this, here is a video of a sting ray.  It is not easy to determine in this video, but it was surfing in the waves!  It would swim out a bit and then ride the wave in about 4-6 feet.  It was very intentional and brought a smile to my face as i watched them over and over again.  If nothing else, you can hear the very small waves soothingly in the background.

Stingray in the surf - July 2012

A Quick Catch Up

Gosh not only have I been not blogging for a very long time - long story that probably will never get told - but this is my first post after the changes to the new and improved (don't you just cringe whenever you read, see or think those words? blogger.   And when i clicked the pen -must be to "write", therefore to "post" I found myself looking at a  VERY blank screen.

Do you remember the writing exercises in high school?  We would have to write for so many minutes, but with no theme provided most of the time.  The idea was you would just write anything and allow the words to flow from pen to paper without thinking about what you were writing.  This is all well and good for free-writing time, but here in blog land people will not wish to read your free-writing barf.  They will click to the next blog and move on!  Life is short and time on the internet is shorter.  Or rather, too consuming of a limited resource - free time, so we need to be very choosey of how we spend our free time.  So before you go moving on, if you have read this far, let me do the blogging cure all for writing barf (man I really just want to say it - vomit) and snag you with a picture!  Ah, a picture is worth a thousand words, and so much easier to write too.  And faster to read by you oh blog reader of mine.   So here is a quick review of the many months I've been "away".

Shortly after my last post we were able to go to our lovely vacation now/retire later condo in northern Florida.

 MARCH 2012

Where and when I did plenty of this >>

We did this each day>>

 I am still intrigued by the seagulls and this one was ever so protective of his chicken bone>>>

 Of course there were a couple of these>>

  MAY 2012

When son arrived for a brief weekend to see our darling Ashley (his girlfriend) graduate from The University of Tampa and ready to participate in the education of elementary school children.  Great job Ashley!

JULY 2012

 Back to the vacation now/retire later condo to check on things after Tropical Storm Debby did so much damage in Florida.  Where and when we enjoyed seeing the healthy sea oats>>>>

 Walked on the beach and collected more shells>>>

 Enjoyed the many ways people showed their pride of country & service>>>

 Where TS Debby left erosion of the beach looking like this.  That is about 12 inches in depth>>>

 We ate dinner at Dockside in Port St Joe and I got to see this boat>>>

 FLY!!!!!  >>>>

 And of course, the ever protective of his meal...  seagull >>>

 When a mystery bar showed up on the touch screen of the smaller Nikon camera I found that I could get a blue sunset!  >>>

 Or an over 50 years hatter one of red and purple >>>>

 that truly looked more like this... hazy and lacking an actual sun in the sunset! >>>

 Followed by amazement that someone would kayak out at dusk to the end of the pier where they pull in sharks of all sizes.  It was much darker looking than the auto setting on the camera made it out to be. >>>

 The moon rise on the other side of the pier.  >>>

 Look at me!  I'm king of the pelicanpoocovered rocks!

 And I found out I can do this on the camera too.  Why I would ever want to, I have no clue.  But I did it just the same.

Now you are all caught up.  Mostly anyway.  I'll try to find something much more interesting to write about next time, but for now I'll just hope this really loads so I don't have to attempt the post again.

hugs and prayers for each of you,
denise/deBrat in a hot hot hot Florida