not enough time to do it all...

there is enough time to whine on about not having enough time. 

i spent the morning making some bracelets. 

i may 'borrow' one to wear out to the grocery market. 

i just am not in the mood for big bling... but a modestly sized piece can do the trick. 

the bracelets are for a couple of orders that i must push out of the door...

i can't truly believe that they are precursive strikes in preparation for christmas and other sparkling holiday times. 

(thanksgiving, channukah, kwanzaa, new year's eve, new year's day brunch and more.)

i have been unable to move on all of the commitments i have amassed over the recent weeks.

in spite of you seeing properly spelled things, i think one of my commitments might be that i am in dire need of re-learning how to spell. 

the auto correct feature on this blog saves my bacon more often than not. 

here are a few of the jewel toned bracelets that a customer ordered for their store. 

i am hopeful that after i cruise in from my knitting class tonight, 

perhaps i will be able to compose a few others in more green, blue, black and neutral palettes. 

one can hope right?

a small bouquet in progress. 

little blossoms in chains. 

sounds kind of racy right?

a quick pic to show how i wear the chain blossom bracelet. 

left handed and easy to put on. 

like a watch.

just in case you thought the wrinkled old bat hand was real,

 i photoshopped the crinkly texture in for you all. 

wink, wink.

there is so much more to tell you all about. 

i broke free from my maddening jewelry obsessed craze 

to go to the flea market yesterday. 

i got some great finds and will take some pics tomorrow for a flea only posting. 

just not enough time to take pics and ramble on senselessly as i do. 

also i am itching for an apple pie. 

that too is coming this week. 

just need to eat better 'junk' food.

and building a better apple pie is one of my gifts. 

my mother used to wait for me to come home for thanksgiving and other holidays. 

she would entertain the notion that i liked making her pies and i had no other dreams of being in town to meet up with my high school friends. 

just to curry favor, i would make the pies in a dash to get out to hang with my friends.

my pies were tolerable. 

not good. 

surely not great. 

however, i think she liked the idea that her pies were better made. 

or else i bet she was just sick of cooking for the big hoedowns and wanted someone else to do that last big dessert course. 

i loved eating them, but of course, 

also hadn't adequate perspective on what a good pie might taste like in those days. 

now i do. 

i took it as a gauntlet being tossed down in front of me. 

i wanted to learn to make a pie that would humble all of those around me. 

i also wanted something so pretty, that my stinker little brother would not jam his 

stubby 17 year old finger into to taste and mar irreparably. 

i do not come from a family that always has appreciated my culinary experiences and 

successes. 

they now do. 

and i am planning to send my niece a ten dollar bill to do a favor for me this thanksgiving. 

i am going to beg her to stick her finger into her father's pie center. 

and 

tell him how much i love him in spite of his being a horrible younger brother. 

maybe she will, maybe she won't. 

maybe ten bucks is not all that these days. 

anyways, i want a crusty, flaky crusted apple pie filled to the vents with 

mixed apple species. 

brown sugar, 

cinnamon, 

and more butter than is in the all butter crust. 

take that 

younger baker family members!

take that 

mom. 

take that 

hips. 

take that 

husband who can eat no butter,

 but shall savor a small portion.

take that 

children of mine who are at college.

(and not calling home to say they miss me and miss all that i have fed them over the years!)

take that 

tessie who is working on her sixpack. 

and now for a few pics of ladies from the penultimate 2011 

providence open market:

phyllis and lynn

kim in greengage and damson

kim in cotswold garden II

kim sparkling in twinkle.

 

lynn test driving the southwest bib. 

that's all folks... 

perhaps i will entreat you to some visuals from knitting class tonight. 

i was told it is a beginner's knitting class, 

however the students are NOT

fresh to the course. 

my syllabus was thrown completely out the window last week. 

and now i find myself in scramble mode. 

dammit. 

entrelac. 

i  do not believe that you ever were an intermediate course of study. 

of course, i will be humbled tonight once again. 

this is worth about $50 to get my ego trounced for a second time. 

guess i will have to suck it up and 

teach tips on how to increase and decrease nicely. 

dammit entrelac!!!

like i said, not really enough time to do anything well today, 

except whine. 

a domani...

xoxo. 

W.

Mother's Day, my way

i enjoyed the heck out of mother's day ... 

i wish i could feel this good all the time. 

of course, 

i will not count on it hovering around 70 degrees and sunny with a soft little wind blowing every day. 

nor will i count on it being sunday every day... so i can go to the flea market.

nor will my kids pay passing attention to how many times they curse per minute. 

nor can i accept that my husband will be in a good mood. 

all in all i had a kick butt great day. 

just wanted to let you know that. 

the plan was to go to the flea market. unfortunately, as i am such an avid night owl, waking was not as easy as it could have been. my son really did try to awaken me gently and regularly... and nearing on 11:30 a.m. we all managed to scoot out of the house. 

a plan that originally included only the boy was extended to the dad, and since the littlest had a lacrosse game nearby, we combined her in the mix...to try to conserve our transportational fuel needs...

 and then of course the eldest said she wanted to come. 

so we enjoyed a full family car. 

the littlest and the hubby were piffled out by the  junk-fest at the flea market within minutes.

SERIOUSLY???

 they camped out in the car. our late start caused us to arrive as most vendors had either left or were packing at the speed of sound. 

 i was bent on checking out as much of it all as i could. and the two elder children stuck together. no one in their right mind could assess what my needs are when i go to the flea market. some days, i am looking for rhinestones and wind up with anything but. 

as i rushed around, i managed to find some rhinestones, but was not truly impressed by them or their settings. i need to maintain some standards you know?

however at the end of this same table,

 i saw a thing that had nibbled at my soul since last fall. 

and i bought it. 

a carved rose out of butterscotch bakelite. 

this is my new old bakelite rose with a pair of pics of my husband when he was a little niblet. cute stuff huh?

the guy was asking the exact same amount and in the exact same way as he did last year. 

how could i negotiate with him. he had his heart set on a certain price. 

and i had been thinking about it for so very long. 

really, i got one true material gift today, and it was from me to me. 

it fits perfectly too. 

all for $20.oo.

in my running about like a nutter, i also found something that i am interested in right now. 

LACE. 

vintage, prettily detailed and patterned crocheted lace. 

a vert pretty lace table runner.

 a funny little skirt, with a pair of nylon shorts as a 
liner. tee hee!

 a pair of pretty cloths. purpose unknown. 

perhaps an anti-macasser? seems lightweight though. 

there are two of these, both have the fun roses in the centers.

 yet another square flowery beauty... 

cute table cloth, a square. 

a pretty curtain tie back. wish i had the curtains to accompany this one. 

i am a knitter by choice.

 i am incapable of doing intricate lace. 

my strongpoint in knitting is intarsia and color work. and as i am me, 

and clearly on brag mode, 

textural work in knitting has forced me to think outside of the unidirectional box. 

making bobbles and cables and other whatnots, 

are hard to do when you need to turn the work around all the time. 

so i knit from right to left. 

just like most normal people are taught to do. 

then instead of turning work to purl back to the beginning, 

i like to KNIT from left back to right. 

so you are probably thinking, 

you have given up all cogent hope, and recognize  that i am nuts. 

you accept that i like to think about knitting. 

why the heck can't i harness that crocheting gene properly and make it work for me? 

i just can't. 

moreover, when you can buy beautiful pieces of crocheted lace

 and old embroidered pieces with extraordinary trims...

why on this finally green part of the earth, would i ever try to crochet?

seriously, i just  cannot harness that skill potential....

especially when there is so much going unused already. 

i feel a huge interest in trying to make something pretty from something old. 

hopefully, 

not only do i admire and get more use from it, 

but i can save myself the cussing,frustration and wheedling with powers that be,that might let me crochet. 

i got a bag full of very pretty pieces of lace for a whopping $7.50. 

they all need to be laundered in oxy-clean or a dissolved solution of denture tablets

or even gently washed with some lemon juice and set out in the sun to capture some 

refreshening potential. 

i suppose i can wait a day to look forward to doing this. 

sigh. 

mind you, 

i do NOT enjoy doing conventional household laundry at any cost,

 but to get some clean togs, i will. 

and if i have some elderly yet still re-purposeful linens, i am enthusiastically ready to do it.

my plan for these lacy things is to sew them onto other fabrics after having cleaned them to a pretty near white. if this is an unsuccessful premise and execution,

 then they will hit some dye baths. i love tinting things. 

it is magical to me to see how easily things can be colorized. 

last year i took to buying tons of ribbons and tie dying them. then when they were all  scrunched up and still in their rubber banded bondages, i put them into the microwave oven. 

after they were dried, they had all kinds of crinklage to them as well as subtle gradations of pretty pastels. 

fun ... 

experimental... 

and totally off of my original mother's day posting. 

what could you expect from me ever... to stay on topic?

not very likely. 

so now i will try to revert to the original topic i was trying to stay on...

the flea. 

finally, 

since we were expecting to take the little one to her LaX game, i tried my best to hurry some. 

i erred. i was conservative. never my best mode. 

big mistake for me. now i surely will have to go back to the market next week. 

shucks. 

i found a cute tray with loads of rusty spots on it, with a rooster in its center. 

i asked how much, and was repaid with  a request for $3. 

i knew i had that amount of money left, but while i was scanning the tarp for anything else, the guy said

"how about $2?"

i was not actually bargaining, at all, just so slow in answering... 

so he said," ok... how about $1?".

you know i had  to have that rooster tray absolutely now. 

and so i do. 

but along with it, there was a box of weird wooden legs. 

kind of an out of furniture body experience. 

all kinds of things. all kinds of shapes. 

mostly in great shape. 

and i NEED stuff like that. 

(my husband the carpenter just hates when i do this, however, he holds his skills to himself more often than not. i never have my carpentry needs truly met here. the kitchen reno started and finished in 3 weeks ... only it was a 4 week job. that was when the boy was one. he is off to college in sept. 

you must see my point about this right?)

i had a plan to make some jewelry display items for shows later in the spring. 

and now i think i actually have a plan for that. 

i may even have figured out how to make them come together. 

for this, i will be making a trip to the home depot or lowes later this week. 

of course, i really, really, really, really, REALLY 

want to go to Brimfield more, but i will stick to the housing repair mega-store to sate some need for progress. . 

 i can see nothing but trouble coming from a trip to brimfield right now. 

i need to have my kids teeth straightened and that costs more than i could realistically hope to get away from brimfield and not spend. 

then there are the two college tuitions. 

GULP!!! 

another thing that scares the pulp outta me. 

(yet another digression or three... truly i apologize. your having held in with me this long is just enabling this behavior on my part. let's all hold hands and sing together now. ommmmm.)

so in conclusion with this guy, with the rooster tray, i also splurged for 6 leg parts. 

at FITTY cent each, 

my total racked up to a whopper of $4.oo.

in spite of all of this, 

all afternoon and evening, 

i am simply sick about passing up on something i should have dug from the bottom of that leggy box. 

there were two, then another two of the largest round bedknobs i have ever seen. 

they were sorta creamy white , not split or cracked or anything ....

and an odd kind of 5 inch diameter globular shape. 

WHHHHHYYYYYYYYY?????

whatever possessed me not to take them home? 

now i have to go back. 

 the trick will be for me to awaken and go with my son only. 

he is great company, enjoys the mockery that i do. 

drinks his coffee the same way as i do. 

will get cash from the atm machine inside the shell station for me, with out any fuss. 

and will  do advanced sorties to spot what he has named 

sneeze guards... aka jewelry cases. 

he knows my needs and my quirks. 

i think he just wants to see what is in the next episode of 

"mommie dearest"

... the  moniker i sign off my texts to him with. 

gotta keep him a little off balance, cause i think he actually may have a future with an income associated. 

the eldest already has stated her college career is dedicated to art. 

groan. 

don't we have enough of that going on around here?

so the rest of the day was spent in managing needs such as:

having a nice cuppa coffee with the clan while the first half of the big game was on. 

 torturing littlest one at the second half of her game.

going home to take a nap. 

making dinner for myself and the shockingly now mushroom eating crew. 

and doing the laundry( right? i know??? i actually did this while enjoying "Masterpiece Theater"!)

finally, after a full day, i get to do the dishes too. 

at least no blood was spilled. 

and everyone got along nicely. 

like i said. i had a really nice day. 

thanks world, i appreciate how it all seemed to align so well. 

thank you for that. 

i hope you all had a nice mother's day too, after all, you are all somebody's 

baby. 

xoxo. 

W.