A busy three days

Friday night my nephew played the Akron Civic Theater

and opened for another fellow. The show was for only 300 people and the audience was seated on the stage.

I sold a decent amount of merchandise for the size of the crowd. I had parked at the deck across the street from the art museum and took this picture from the 4th level. Friday night was the opening of the Jun Kaneko exhibit.

I walked across the street and took a few more pictures before walking down to the Civic.

I got to bed about 11:30 Friday night and was up early enough to make cookies

to take on Saturday's road trip with the band to Lorain to play the Lorain Palace Theater. The band was the headliner and the theater is one of the oldest in Ohio. The ornate plaster decorations were amazing. This ceiling was a barrel ceiling with mirrored ends so it looked like the ceiling went on forever.

This is the lobby ceiling

and the theater

They had a catwalk and Michael used it to get closer to the audience. I am guessing between 550 - 650 people came. I was busy at the merch booth and sold quite a bit of merchandise.

It had started to expectantly snow before we started packing up the equipment to leave Lorain. Here is what it looked like Sunday morning. By noon it was pretty much gone.

I didn't get to bed until 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning (we had left at 11:45 on Saturday) so I was pretty tired all day Sunday and didn't get much done. The schools were closed for President's day on Monday so I just took the day off. Saturday a lady brought me these two bags of Harley -Davidson t-shirts. They will be for this year's fundraiser quilt.

There are over 45 shirts so I have plenty to work with!

I also got four of these tote bags made. I gave one to Michael already.

Tomorrow I will post a tutorial on how I made the boxy pouches. I made one yesterday for my knitting and took pictures of the process.

So busy!

At work I have picked up more work. I am now working on a hospital project plus I still have to finish up the school projects I have been on for years. It has been a lot to do so I have been wiped out by the end of the day and haven't done any sewing all week.

Yesterday I did stop at the Malley's store and picked up a box of chocolate caramel filled hearts for half price. The box was wrapped so pretty I hated to open it, but I did. LOL!!

Here is a picture of the hole that is in the King cake mix bag. Definitely a manufacturing error!

I found the best deal ever for zippers for making more pouches. They are 22" long which is fine because I will have to cut them off anyway, they have nice pulls, and the price is killer! The downside is they are all the same color - black - but I can live with that and it comes in a pack of 100 - yes, 100 zippers! The price - $15.00! I ordered them from Homesew.com . They were hard to find on the site so use the search box and type in ZPL22 if you want to buy any. I don't think I will have to buy any zippers for awhile! LOL!!

This weekend the Akron Art Museum has an exhibit opening for Jun Kameko. He is a fabulous ceramic artist and I have been following his work for a number of years. What is interesting is the head of the museum has worked with and for Jun.

I won't have time to see the exhibit this weekend; I have a lot going on. My nephew has two gigs and the plumber will be coming to fix an issue. I am going to take Monday off since the schools will be closed and I think I will need the day off from all the running I will be doing today and Saturday.

Have a great weekend!

Happy V Day!

All I got done was making some cut out cookies for the staff at the high school

and cleaning up the mess from the King cake box. I found where the cake mix had a hole in the bag so it was a manufacturing packaging error that cause the spill. I did find the baby!

I watched a little of the Olympics, but the only thing on was curling. Not my cup of tea. I was hoping to see some short track speed skating. Those athletics must have no fear!

One long day

I had a 12 1/2 hour day yesterday which is from the time I left for work until the time I got home. I had a three hour period in the middle of the day where I had to meet one of my brothers to fix a plumbing issue.

When I met up with Mike, he gave me the casserole pans and storage containers when I had cooked stuff shells for him. He also handed me a box off chocolates that were from Michael for embellishing his jacket. Yum! Caramels!

Then the post man brought me this box

This came from Glenda. She sent me a pattern and included a box of King Cake mix and some Mardi Gras beads!

The funny part - the cake mix seeped out of the box and there was cake mix powder all over the beads and inside of the package. Thank goodness Glenda had tapped the heck out of the box so none of the mix leaked out during the transporting of the box! I can just imagine the post office calling the authorizes about powder coming out of a box. The HazMat team coming, the post office being shut down, and the HazMat team's surprise that it was a leaking box of King Cake mix. I would have missed out on the mix, beads, and the pattern! The beads on the bottom of the picture still have the powder on them.

Thanks Glenda for the fun surprise! I have never had a King Cake so I will be whipping this up and giving it a try!

Got stuff done

I got the boxy pouch made for my AHIQ threads. The outside fabric is a decorator weight linen and I interfaced it and the lining with an iron on Pellon. I don't remember the pellon number, but it was a woven iron on interfacing. Now I have a cute pouch for my threads.

I decided to make another one for my makeup so I would no longer have to keep it in a plastic zip bag.

I did other household chores - dishes, laundry - but I needed to clean up the studio. I had these bricks that I cover years and years ago. I use them all the time.

I had six more uncovered bricks in the studio that I used to weigh down my artsy t-shirt quilts and it was time to cover them. I pieced together some batting scraps, wrapped the bricks and taped the batting down, then cut some leftover heavy fabric from making the studio's curtains. It will be a good project to hand stitch the fabric while watching TV.

I embellished my nephew's jacket. He needs it for a gig this coming weekend so I had to get it done. Here is the before and after.

One of my design walls fell down. The tape let loose and that was some real sticky tape! I got out the gorilla tape and it is now back in place.

I didn't get the TV stand put together or any painting done. We didn't get any snow that had been forecasted. It did rain though.

Weekend plans

I have a list of things I want to get done this weekend starting with assembling the TV stand now that the painting is done.

I want to make a boxy pouch to hold all my threads for my AHIQ that I will be working on quilting. I dug out some fabric, the instructions, and some interfacing

I need to embellish this jacket for my nephew. I have to add the orange fabric to the sleeves and pockets then stitch the appliques on the lapels and sleeves, and change the buttons. He needs the jacket for an upcoming gig.

I got this book from the library.

It is pretty much a regurgitation of the quilts shown at QuitCon over the last few years. I had to admire the person who photographed and photoshopped the quilts. How do I know a photo was photoshopped? Here is picture of this quilt in the book which was at QuiltCon 2015 which I went to.

This is what the quilt looked like in person.

It is snowing again here and snow is forecasted all weekend so I don't plan on going anywhere.

Have a great weekend!

Crazy week

Between the yearly meetings/training and the weather, things have been crazy. The snow started about 4-4:30 yesterday morning and the roads were covered by the time I had to head out to a training session. A trip that normally takes 30 - 35 minutes ended up taking over an hour. I had to find a detour at one point because there was a truck stuck on a hill and no one could get around him. I am out in the county side and don't know the roads so I get on the maps on my phone and tried to figure another way. I managed to find my way to a road I didn't want to go on, but I had not choice. I was driving along and there was a car stopped on the road. I got closer and they were going nowhere. I slowly passed them and here they couldn't get up the hill and their front wheels were just spinning. Here is the snow coming down at the school before I left and what is in my driveway - about 3.5".

I did get a bit more knitting done in the training meeting which was only a half day.

We then had to walk over to the maintenance shop where they had a company doing fall protection demonstrations. The fellow was dropping a 280 weight showing how different equipment worked. I work for a company that does bridge and highway construction and repair work so fall protection is an important part of our safety program.

After training I headed back and the roads were clear, but after a stressful day of the morning drive, disjointed training, and trying to set up my new work cellphone I was tired. I no longer have to use my personal cell phone for work! I tried to do the set up myself as I was told it was easy-peasy, but there were questions that I didn't understand and answers that I didn't know which one to pick. I gave up and went to the IT guy and he helped me. I now can get my work email on this iPhone 8, but when the IT guy downloaded the email it put every contact from the beginning of time in the phone contacts! I had to spend two hours last night deleting stuff.

Thank goodness it is Thursday!