January 2009 - Posts

• Embroidering From Orlando to Holland to Toronto...and Back

  There are a lot of good things about working for myself at home. I can come and go as I please. I can work in my pajamas. There’s no commute. There are some downsides. I work on the week-ends and in the middle of the night. The work is always there; I can’t walk away from it. But the biggest drawback to working at home is that it’s very solitary. Days and days go by when I don’t talk to anyone except Bill, the UPS guy and the telemarketer from the Police Athletic Fund.  While I know many of you, and keep in touch through email or through my web site, I don’t get to see you or hug you or laugh with you or . . . I used to do extensive traveling to embroidery retreats and seminars, but not so much anymore. So you can understand why I’m so wildly excited about the upcoming 2nd Annual AnnTheGran Community Circle here in Orlando. We’re going to have so much fun! This time I’ll get to sit in on classes with you all to learn from the outstanding teachers we have lined up. I go back a long way, in machine embroidery on the Internet terms, with some of them and will get to meet in person a few whom I’ve admired for years. And of course I’m thrilled to have Bill’s and my spring holiday buddies, Loes and Theo van der Heijden, coming. They’re flying in a few days early and staying a week longer so this will be our 4th annual spring  holiday together. Here’s how that got started. In 2005 I got a new computer. After I had installed Pre-Design I couldn’t find my activation code, so I fired off an email to Loes. During our back and forth email chat I asked if Loes and Theo had plans to come over to the States any time soon as it had been a long time since we’d seen them. Loes said no, they didn’t have any plans to come over here, so why didn’t Bill and I come over there. Sometimes I jump into things without planning or talking it over with Bill and this was one of those times. I simply said, “Okay.” I was a little nervous, so I waited a couple of days before telling Bill. Actually, I “discussed” it with him and asked if he would like to do it. He asked if we could afford it and I said, “Not really” and Bill replied, “Well, let’s do it.” He’s good that way! That’s the same answer he gave when I talked to him about buying my first Brother combo embroidery and sewing machine.  He asked if we could afford it.  I said, “No” and he said, “Well, let’s go get it.” Anyway, we flew to Holland in April, 2006, and had such a good time that we did it again the following year. You might remember that last year we four met up in Toronto and now we’re finally getting to show Loes and Theo around on our home ground. That first trip was my inspiration for getting into digital scrapbooking and if you’re interested you can see the album I created and had printed here. I wonder where we’ll go next year. If you’ve sat and chatted with me or attended any of my classes in the past you know I tend to wander off the subject as I’ve done here. In fact, it’s so bad that one of the first things I usually do in a class is to appoint someone to remind me what I was talking about when I get so far off track that I don’t remember where I’d started. This post started with me talking about the upcoming Community Circle and how excited I am about being able to renew acquaintance with many of you and, hopefully, finally get to meet some of you face to face. It’s going to be bigger and better than last year with more teachers and a Brother dealer, with his store, in attendance. As I said, before I got off topic, I’m so excited! I'm getting ready. I plan to have some new projects to show off and I can't wait to see yours. I get so much inspiration from seeing what everyone else has been up to! Musing Here's something that's been bouncing around in my head as I'm doing things that don't require any thought or drifting off to sleep. I watch the History Channel a lot and they're often digging up some buried city or going through ancient tunnels under modern cities. It makes me think that if all the old stuff is buried under the new stuff, then the Earth must be getting fatter and fatter. Fatter and Fatter would mean closer and closer to the sun. Closer to the sun means global warming. Just a thought. Or a couple of them.It can't be that I'm the only one whose brain jumps around and into unexpected places. What's been rattling around in yours? That's gotta be it for me this week, folks. For those still without power from the ice storms, cuddle up and keep warm. I hope your team wins the Super Bowl. And everyone, get working on those projects to bring to and show off at the Community Circle.   Posted Jan 30 2009, 01:35 PM by AnnTheGran with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Community Circle 2009

• What is all this stuff and how did it get into my house?

  We’re trying to pare down here at the old homestead. I have no idea where all this stuff came from but it’s gotta go! Okay, I know where it came from . . . . Live in the same house for 47 years and stuff piles up. Plus, Bill has a habit that I’ve heard that a lot of men have: Something is broken, like a toaster oven. It costs more to fix it than to buy a new one, so we buy a new one. I put the old one out for trash pickup. Some time later I notice that the broken item is sitting on a shelf or on a pile of boxes in the garage. I ask Bill why he took it out of the trash. You all already know the answer: I might need it for parts. Well, the mortuary for broken small appliances is going to be sitting on the curb this Thursday, our weekly large item haul away day. Usually we put large items out on Wednesday night and they’re often gone by Thursday morning. Someone else’s husband has taken then home “for parts” I imagine. Anyway, all that was by way of saying that I did two things this week for the first time and I may be hooked. First, Bill and I went to IKEA looking for a television stand so we can bring the television in the garage into the house, where it will replace the smaller one in the living room that will replace the even smaller one in the den that will replace the really little one in the bedroom which will hopefully go at an upcoming garage sale. Oh, I could do a lot of damage at IKEA and probably will once the economy turns around. How could I have waited so long to enter those hallowed blue and yellow doors? The second thing I did for the first time was to look at and then buy something from craigslist. I wanted a normal size roll top desk to replace the door slung across two filing cabinets that has been Bill’s desk and refuge these many years. He doesn’t need that much space to pay a few bills and keep our financial records on a yellow legal pad. (I know; I know. Bill just refuses to be pulled into the 21st century.) But, because he has so much space, including all that space under the “desk” he’s managed to fill it up. We’re trying to pare down, remember?  When my mother moved from her house to a retirement apartment in Tallahassee she would have gladly given us her roll top desk, but it was too wide for the space we have. I needed a desk 48” wide or less. Standard roll top desks are 53”. I looked online and 48” roll top desks are readily available, costing upwards of $1,000. Not gonna happen. Then I remembered that our DD has been selling things on craigslist so I took a look. Sure enough, there were several roll top desks, including one that came with a matching wood chair for $200. Bill and I drove over to take a look at it, paid for it and arranged for our DS to pick it up with his trailer. I’m not looking for anything else to buy on Craig’s List, but I have a whole lot of that I can be selling there, such as the entertainment center that the new IKEA television stand will be replacing. I have no idea whether or not any of that was interesting to any of y’all, but it comprised the highlights of my week, which tells you a lot more about me than I should probably be telling you. The highlight of the last week in March will be our 2nd Annual Community Circle here in Orlando and I can hardly wait for that. We had SO much fun last year and this year will be more than twice as good. More about that coming up. Also in March we will all be celebrating my mother’s 90th birthday. The family is more scattered now than it was on her 80th, and with the economy the way it is, not all her grandchildren (6) and great grandchildren (10) will be able to celebrate with her. Talking about my mother brings to mind a project that I made for her several years ago. I had a long sleeved denim shirt that I wanted to embroider for her. I could have simply stitched something about the pocket and that was my original plan. But after I chose the design I saw some other possibilities. I began with SS0030.PES from Brother Pacesetter’s Fancy Pockets Collection. I used PE-Design for my editing and the first thing I did was to delete the entire scarecrow. I then mirrored that design and saved it. Next, I deleted everything except the three whole sunflowers, saving that file and continuing to delete the sunflowers one at a time, saving as I went along, until I had three files, one with three sunflowers, one with two and one with only one sunflower. I did need to use the Point Edit tool to fill out some of the petals on the one and two sunflower designs. I opened the second file I had created, the one without the scarecrow, and deleted everything except the one crow partially covering a sunflower and the sunflower he’s covering. I now had all the designs I needed to complete my project: two different sunflower fences for the left and right chest, two sunflowers for one collar tip, one sunflower for the other collar tip, three sunflowers for the pocket (which I partially removed before embroidering so I could hoop it, and then stitched back down) and a crow and sunflower for one cuff. While the machine was busily stitching, I could already see ways in which I could have improved upon the designs. I decided to create the additional designs I would want if I should ever make this project again. I opened my second file, the one with the missing scarecrow, and added bhflorel.PES from the Cactus Punch Birdhouses collection. I chose that birdhouse because it had the shape of a barn, but I did have to change the colors. I placed the birdhouse in the blank space created by deleting the scarecrow and drew in the post for the birdhouse to sit on. I drew the post in 3 sections so that it would look to be sitting in back of the fence. Wanting yet another variation of the fence with sunflowers, I added the design of two sunflowers to the fence with the scarecrow removed. It seemed to want another crow, so I opened the file with the crow and the sunflower, deleted the sunflower, and saved just the crow as a separate file. I added that crow to the design. Since I was in for a dime, I figured I might as well be in for a dollar and saved a file of only the fence and another of that fence with a row of crows sitting along it. Now I was ready for the next time, with lots of varied designs on the same theme. I very often say that not everyone needs to be a digitizer, and I firmly believe that. In fact, if the number of designs selling for reasonable prices that are available today were available when I began machine embroidery, I would probably never have begun digitizing at all. But that doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t need some kind of digitizing software for editing designs. I’ve used PE-Design from the beginning, and now there’s a PE-Design Lite. There’s lots of other software out there, and I’ve used several programs, but PE-Design remains my favorite. I guess that’s all for now. I’ve got to get on with sorting and organizing and getting rid of stuff, a good thing to do on a very cold day. Look after one another ‘til  next time, Ann (AnnTheGran) Cobb Posted Jan 17 2009, 11:40 AM by AnnTheGran with 14 comment(s) Filed under: community circle, digitizing, pe-design, craigslist, pe-design lite

• Yes, it WAS a good year!

  Long about New Year's Eve I was hearing a lot of mumbling and grumbling about 2008, talking heads saying that thank goodness 2008 is over. Well, yes, the economic messiness of the last couple of months of 2008 was bad thing and embarking on a brand spanking new 2009 is a good thing, even though that economic crisis will surely get worse in 2009 before it gets better. I have to say, though, that, on the whole, 2008 was very good to me. First, Bill and I got to visit Hawaii. Then we had our Community Circle in Orlando and that was lots of fun. After that we spent a week with Loes and Theo in Toronto where we got to have dinner with Greg's delightful family. Then, most recently, Bill and I were lucky enough to visit the Amazon, spending 26 days aboard a small ship round trip from Miami. Nothing to complain about there. Most importantly, everyone in our family is in good health and, after a two month kind of scary glitch, all the adults are employed. To top it off, my favorite, most dearest niece and her husband (Okay, my only niece, but she is most dear to me.) are, after several difficult and disappointing years of trying, expecting their first born. There was that terrible time when our son lost his job, but he begins a new one next week. It's at half the salary of the job he lost, but it's a job in his field and he's been able to drum up some part time work to make up the difference. So maybe 2008 wasn't all good, but it certainly wasn't all bad. Now, I don't know what 2009 will bring. There will probably be some bad stuff and some good stuff, just like other years. In any case, it's always nice to have a clean slate to write on. I hope that what will be written on your slate are health, joy and prosperity for you and all in your family. The photo above was taken on Devil's Island in French Guiana. Well, not EXACTLY Devil's Island. Apparently there is a group of 3 islands commonly known as The Devil's Islands. All three of the islands were used as the French penal colony. The island actually named Devil's Island, once used for solitary confinement, is pretty much inaccessible. We visited Royale Island, where some of the other prisoners were kept and the guards and administrators lived with their families. Bill and I are smiling in the picture because it was taken as we began our climb. Had the picture been taken upon our return it would look a lot different! Now, about that trip up the Amazon . . . I'll be telling you more about it in blogs and pictures to come, but the one main thing I came away with was a renewed appreciation for how lucky I am for how and where I live and all that I have, both spiritually and materially. But there was something else in a small island village at the mouth of the Valeria River. There was poverty to be sure, but all the children were well fed and appeared healthy. They were laughing and playing, running in and out under the houses. The ship we were on calls at that village only once a year and, to my knowledge, is the only ship that calls there. Our visit was a great annual event and I'm sure that the children were turned out in their nicest clothes. Yes, the locals offered handicrafts for sale and yes, the children put out their hands for payment when their pictures were taken. The cruise line sent ashore donations of school supplies and a pile of bathrobes that were promptly sold right back to the passengers. (What else would one who lives 3° south of the Equator do with a thick terrycloth bathrobe?) We made cash donations to the school and the church, purchased lots of handicrafts and took lots of pictures. As we went back to the ship I said to another passenger, "What must they think of us?" We agreed: not very much. Boca de Valeria and her laughing children will stay with me for a long time. The babies on the right are twin girls, probably identical (My Portuguese really isn't very good.) I know the one in the back is Patricia because I heard her mother call her that as she attempted to put a feathered bonnet on her for pictures. Patricia had other plans. Pushing the stroller was one of the proudest papas I've ever seen. As I said, I'll have stories and pictures for you in future blogs. I have just under 2,000 photos to go through . . . Until then, here is a small collection of Amazonion faces from Boca de Valeria, Manaus and Santarém: I reiterate my fondest wishes for you for the coming year. You are my friends, my family, my neighborhood. Let's all hope that 2009 will be good to us. TTYL, Ann     Posted Jan 03 2009, 11:50 AM by AnnTheGran with 7 comment(s) Filed under: ann cobb, community circle, happy new year, ann's travel stories, digital scrapbooking