Learn From My Mess-Ups

In this post I explained how I used my Q-Snap to make a screenprint...

... for these t-shirts.

I thought, why not try to screenprint my fabric papel picado?

Well, it worked...

 ...except!  For one hiccup.

I had my whole production set up on the patio out back, 

under the shade of the lattice.

I went inside to sneak a peek at Pinterest  do something important,

and when I came out...

GASP!!!

 The paint had dried on the screen!

And now the fresh paint wouldn't go through it!

No problem, 

I thought.

I'll just peel off the contact paper, and stick it to another piece of sheer fabric.

Yeah, that didn't happen.

So I had to start all over again, painstakingly cutting another piece of contact paper.

But, the results are pretty awesome, no?

Next time, though, Pinterest is strictly off-limits whilst screenprinting.

Zoidberg To The Rescue!

I made this excellent kitchen island last January...

...BUT it ended up becoming The Place Where Junk Mail Resides.

Another kitchen problem was my pages and pages of new recipe ideas

from Pinterest, the newspaper, the office staff room, etc.,

that just got buried under other stuff, never to be cooked.

(I think I see that Butterbeer recipe I've been meaning to try under that stack on the left.)

So I bought a wall pocket thingy from Office Depot...

...trimmed scrapbooking paper to fit the inside,

screwed it to the side of my island...

...and added Zoidberg to give me some handy advice.

Now the mail goes in two slots, the recipes in the other,

and when I'm making the grocery list,

I can just pull out a new recipe to add the ingredients to my list.

Anyone care to join me for dinner next week?

 I'm trying something new!

Gettin' My Sugar Skull On

I did some sewing!

Sugar Skull Lap/Crib Quilt, Rainbow

Sugar Skull Lap/Crib Quilt, Fire Colors

Sugar Skull Lap/Crib Quilt, Sea Colors

Want to see the whole quilts?

Head over to my shop!

The Perils of Pinterest

Y'all are on Pinterest, right?

Because it's pretty much the most awesome thing to ever hit the internet!

If you're not on it, let me explain.

You know how you'd go over to your best friend's house as a kid,
 and you'd look at cool stuff around her mirror?

There would be pictures of cute boys...

... and funny cartoons...

... and inspirational sayings.

(I found the EXACT SAME weird poster of this saying that I had as a teen, 
but it was on someone's Flikr so I couldn't use the image.  Check it out, though!)

Well, Pinterest is like that, to the millionth degree!
It's about half the internet, putting things up around their virtual mirrors!

Anyhoo, one of the pins on Pinterest I put around my mirror, 
or "boards" as they're called, is this one:

Yeah, the writer behind the wildly popular dystopian trilogy
also wrote for the gentle Little Bear cartoon!

Interesting, huh?

Well another pinner begged to differ:

"Simple, she watched Battle royal. [sic]"

.
.
.
.
.

Ooooookay.

Now, I am not unaware of the controversy behind the similarities between Battle Royale 
and The Hunger Games.  But as I replied:

"People have been pitted against each other for others' amusement since forever. I will take Ms. Collins at her word that she got her idea after flipping between reality TV and the Iraq coverage, and listening to her father's accounts of Viet Nam."

No biggie, right?

But then!  The same poster wrote:

"Youre [sic] whats [sic] wrong with the world."

What?  What?!?

Not fandom, or Pinterest, or even the Wide, Wide World of Web, but

THE WOOOOOORLD.

Now I get hyperbole, but it's like I thought we were playing badminton...

and she decided heck, no, it's STEEL CAGE DEATH MATCH TIME.

Was my tone in my follow-up post a bit teacher-ish?
Yeah, I'll grant that.

I am a teacher, after all.

But what should I do now?
Just leave our interaction at that?

Well, as anyone who has spent more than twenty minutes interacting
via their computers knows,
while rule number ONE of the internet is

"Just because it's on the internet, it doesn't mean it's true,"

rule number TWO is

"Don't feed the trolls."

But this second rule makes me crabby.

I feel like it gives the power to the troll, not me.
I mean, they're a TROLL, right?
Big and powerful and scary!

So in situations like these, I instead turn to the ever-helpful and unflappable Miss Manners.

In her book Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior,
she said that when someone behaves completely outside the realm of good manners,
there is but one solution:

The Cut Direct.

According to Miss Manners, The Cut Direct means you don't argue with the cut-ee,
you don't talk to her,
you don't even acknowledge her existence.

"What?  Does someone speaketh to me?  I hear naught."

Although my behavior is exactly the same as a person who has chosen
 "to not feed the troll,"
somehow it is much easier for me not to get into a 
"No, you're the poopyface!!" argument with a poster
when I'm reminding myself that I'm practicing 
The Cut Direct.

And that's what I've done with Miss Bad Grammar Smartypants.

Seriously, Big Bertha Will EFF YOU UP

I decided to let a zucchini just go.

I also decided to get my nerd on and document its growth.

And grow it did!

In just ten days it had doubled in size.

It grew so much I started to worry.

When would it stop?!

Had I forgotten the boundaries of science,

and begun to play GOD?!

Oh, nooooo!!!!

What have I done?!?

Run, everyone!




Run awaaaaay!!!

I Wish I Could Kiss This Woman

I hate basting my quilts.

Haaaaate it.  Even with spray-basting, it's tricky to do.

So before I spray-basted my three quilts today, 

I threw myself at the mercy of the Google gods.

(I dunno.  I pictured GoogleGod as nerdy-er.)

And, lo!  I was led to Chasing Cottons, where the delightful and helpful Kristie

had posted a tutorial, which included this super idea:

Use hand weights to hold the batting in place whilst the other layers

 are being centered and smoothed!

Sooo much easier and better!

I used to use both masking tape and  unwilling children,

and neither of them was satisfactory:

the tape kept popping up, and the kids kept trying to wander off.

Hey, you kids!  Get back here!  I still have two more quilts to do!

So head on over there to see her full tutorial;

if you're a quilter, you won't be sorry!

I'm a Free Woman!!

BadBabyQuilts, you just finished teaching summer school!

What are you going to do next?

I'm going to Disneyland sit at my computer

with a Trader Joe's burrito and a boba milk tea!

Wooooooo!!!!