The World According to Bots

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For those of you who don’t write your own blog, I want to share something.  First, a little background.  Apparently, when one writes a blog , it is customary to visit other blogs, write comments, and include your own website in the hopes of receiving reciprocal visits.  However, humans, being resourceful yet lazy creatures, have figured out a way to visit other sites without ACTUALLY visiting them.  They create little scripts called “bots”, short for robots.

Now, the web is full of “bots” and “spiders” which crawl over the internet to do real work…many of them help to organize search content.  But the ones I’m particularly fascinated by are the ones that visit websites and blogs…my own, in particular.

After I received the first few comments, I began collecting them–  a weird hobby, I guess.  Many of them are from drug peddlers, spam generators, phishers,  internet creeps, and those are generally not included here.  But others are just plain crazy or silly and just short of being human in their own way. And who knows?  Maybe some of them were actually written by humans.  But I doubt it.

Join in my fascination.  Here’s a little taste.

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Terrific work! This is the kind of information that are meant to be shared around the web. Disgrace on the search engines for no longer positioning this submit higher! Come on over and consult with my web site . Thank you =)

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What if there was a way to get thousands of visitors a day to your edgestitch.com website and make $144,000 in one month

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I’ve learn a few excellent stuff here. Definitely price bookmarking for revisiting. I surprise how so much attempt you set to create this sort of great informative website

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Now, more and more consumers want to hear to songs. In particular for individuals on your newer procreation, we love to lend an ear to pop stone, stone, harmonious flow, or anything else any duration any exactly where. However allow us to really feel moot point stands out as the more than half from the headset cannot sate our specifications. For example, some headphones craftsmanship is bad; specially the substantial symphony high-reaching property is actually terrific. A few of the headsets aren’t soundproof. Although because We’ve the Prodigy Is better than Headphones every one of these problems personally is just not the particular defect. We would choose to be from legal settlement together with my own surpasses by Dre to pay regard|consideration|advertence|alertness|attention} stone. That also features a hardy noise abridge technologies, allow me to make sure you of brain in the back garden clean atmosphere, just take attend to to my excluding electro-stone, as well as kind office from the probation laundering.

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You are my aspiration, I have few web logs and infrequently run out from brand .

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“The soul that is within me no man can degrade.” by Frederick Douglas.

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A REAL system that’s been pulling in
over $2,000 a day and $14980/week $$$ million per year!

(You’ll even see REAL examples, not *just*
his $million a year clickbank account)

Honestly – This has blown me away.

It requires no traffic, no investment and
absolutely NO experience.

And after trying out what the system is…
I can confidently say it works, too.

Don’t miss out on this goldmine

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In order a substantial information systems of a price, calculate online friends.

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I want to buy this website.

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ohh, just wanted to tell you, I will keep this post. It was practical. Keep on posting!

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When someone writes an article he/she keeps the image of a
user in his/her mind that how a user can understand it.
So that’s why this paragraph is amazing. Thanks!

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supple crinkled leather with ruffled detail and silvertone hardware. Somehow the small creases and wrinkles make this bag look so feminine. The leopard printed lining.

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It was some one who resembled him. M. Fauchelevent was not there.

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I are already examining out a lot of of your posts and i have to say fairly clever things.

 

How modern is Modern?

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Everybody knows quilting has taken a turn.

When I was growing up, even into mid-life, there simply wasn’t anything modern about quilting.

Quilting was traditional.

I inherited stacks of quilting books from my mother-in-law, all of them filled to the brim with beautiful designs pieced from blocks with special names, and techniques passed down from generation to generation. When you learned to quilt, you started with blocks that were already well-known:  Log Cabin, Nine Patch, Flying Geese, Dresdan Plate, Drunkard’s Path (!), and don’t forget Sun Bonnet Sue.

To this day, I am fascinated by my mother-in-law’s quilts:  her meticulous piecing, her hand-quilting and attention to detail, the HOURS and HOURS she must have put into many of them.  They seemed unattainable to me, hallmarks of patience and perfection, dedication and perseverance.

Thank heavens, today’s designers have set in motion a quilting rennaissance.  They’ve blown the lid off the quilting world and set new standards for what perfection looks like.

It’s fun.  It’s colorful.

And it’s original.  Of course, we all still need to learn technique. And good design never changes. It has an eye candy appeal that defies description.  Young  graphic artists have made their way into the world of sewing and quilting and given it new life.

People like Tula Pink, Kate Spain, and Angela Walters.

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Years before the latest “modern” quilt trend seemed everywhere, I created this sample for the store.  Such a simple design, taken from “The Modern Quilt Workshop” by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr.  The book was published in 2005, far ahead of its time.  Yet it paved the way for the kinds of things we are seeing out there now.  Simple graphics, free form quilting, negative space, and color color color.

I love that traditional quilting is still as popular as it has always been.  I love even more that quilting has opened up to new people who are using fabric and design in unusual ways.  And most of all, I love that people seem to be making things, spending time thinking and constructing and using their imaginations and their hands.

Is that modern?

Finally, Ready for the Rainy Season

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raincoat

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Whew.  I don’t think I’d make another raincoat anytime soon .  While the vinyl fabric sewed up nicely, bulky seams were difficult.  The sticky vinyl would grab hold of my needle and pull it out of the machine.

I switched to a titanium-coated needle and same thing.  It got to be a bit of a wrestling match.

In general, I’m pleased with the result.  More than that, I’m pleased that it is done.

I may go back and tweak a thing or two.  Doesn’t everyone?

Happy Easter, friends.

The Beauty of the Cranes

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In almost any culture, crane sightings are meaningful.  They are signs of joy, life, wisdom, beauty, elegance, and grace.

My family drove out to see the Great Crane Migration.  In case you are not familiar, every year between mid-February and mid-April, 80% of North America’s Sandhill cranes come to eat and bulk up in a 50 mile span of the Platte River in central Nebraska.  The area is estimated to feed around 500,000 cranes.  This year, the experts thought there were even more than that.

Jane Goodall rated it as one of her top ten nature attractions in the world.

The birds spend every night in shallow water – the Platte River. It offers them protection because any predator could be heard splashing as it approaches.  But during the day, the cranes spread out to all the local farmer’s fields.  They will gain approximately 32% of their body weight in preparation for the rest of their journey.  Eventually, the cranes will spread out over North America, including arctic Canada and Alaska and some will travel as far as Siberia to roost and lay eggs.  The young will grow to full size in the summer and travel the whole distance back with their parents in September.  Like many birds, cranes mate for life.

Sanchill Cranes in flight. Keep in mind, these birds are almost 4 ft. tall.

Sandhill Cranes in flight. Keep in mind, these birds are almost 4 ft. tall.

We spent time in a bird blind, waking at 4:30 am.  This experience itself is almost supernatural. We awoke in the dark and joined others at the Rowe Audubon Sanctuary.  It was 17 degrees outside with a straight 20 mph wind.  The sanctuary has no lights outside, as that might disturb the birds.  The guides walk you down the half mile to the river in pitch blackness, with an occasional red light so no one falls.  Everyone must silently enter the blind making as little noise as possible.

Unfortunately, on our day, someone the night before had used a flash camera and so the birds got spooked and were a bit of a distance from the blind.

But as dawn approached, the birds began to stir.  The sound is incredible.  As they take flight, their sheer numbers are nothing short of amazing.

During the day, you really see them everywhere.  In the sky, in the fields.  The behavior is fascinating, as they never seem to change.  This has been going on for 600 years, maybe more.

If you’d like to see them yourself, visit http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rowe-sanctuary-s-crane-cam

Watch the crane cam around 7-8 pm at night as they gather to rest, or 7-8am in the morning as they take off for the fields.  You get a real feel for the auditory experience as well.

The lesson for me is to recognize our role in nature. We belong, but we don’t own.  We can celebrate it, but never control it.  Peaceful harmony is the goal.  And it only took 500,000 cranes to remind me.

Cranes eating in corn fields.

Sandhill Cranes eating in corn fields.

Cranes take flight in the morning.

Taking flight in the morning. My view from the blind.

The Making of a Raincoat – Part 4 – Slowly but Surely

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Like most of you, time is the culprit on all projects.  And with this one in particular, I take one step forward and one step back.  Learning curves:

–Patterns can be perfect. Patterns can be imperfect.  It’s not always easy to get into the head of the designer.

–The Teflon foot is great on vinyl-covered fabric.  Regular feet work even better as long as I’m working with right sides together.  A big hangup at that point is the vinyl-covered seam allowance running against the bottom of the machine.  It sticks.  Wishing someone would invent a teflon stitch plate.

–The zipper foot with dual feed is almost as good as it gets for attaching piping.

–Don’t rush.  It’s miserable to backtrack.

It’s looking more like it might actually become a coat.  All that’s left is to attach the hood, sew the lining and coat together, then finish up the hems and topstitching.  Still a lot of work but I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

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The Making of a Raincoat – Part 3 – A Tale of Two Sleeves

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Just as anticipated, the answer to the sleeve dilemma appeared when I least expected it…in the form of a petite white-haired woman who walked into the store.

We chatted for awhile, and I invited her to join some other customers in having a little cookie treat in the back classroom.  I sat down with a cookie myself, and almost thinking aloud, I mentioned  the “speed bump” I had run into using vinyl-covered fabric.  It’s actually a dream to work with.  It sews and folds and presses just fine (with a pressing cloth).  But vinyl-covered fabric doesn’t have a lot of “give”.

When setting the sleeves on the muslin and on the lining, I had no trouble because I could ease the fabric.  Not so with this.  So I ended up with two sleeves that appeared to be too big for the armhole.

The petite woman looked at me.  “Why don’t you undo the sleeve seam and the side seam, attach the sleeve, and then sew up the sleeve seam and down the side?”

I looked at her, disassembling and reassembling the coat in my mind.  It was an obvious solution – and I never would have thought of it.  “That just might work…”  I said slowly.

“Mmm-Hmmm,”  she said, taking another bite of cookie.  “I used to do a lot of garment sewing, and you know, you can forget about pattern instructions.”  She waved her hand dismissively, with a twinkle in her eye.

Sure enough.

The next day I went back to work on the project, and tried what she suggested.  Voila!  Two (almost) perfectly set sleeves.

IMG_1329[1]Onward to the next set of challenges.

And a special shout out to all the women who help other women every day.  You make the rockin’ world go ’round!

The Making of a Raincoat – Part 2 – The Saga Continues

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Even though I don’t have much time to work, I’ve been diligent. At this point, I have completed the lining and facings, as well as the hood.

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So far, so good.  I also got most of the piping created, as shown below.

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Yesterday, I started on the body assembly.  I had to stop last night because no matter what I did, I could not get the sleeves to fit the bodice.  I finally put down the work and went to bed.  Unfortunately, it will be a few days before I can get back to it.  I’ll have to think about what is happening with the sleeves and see what adjustments can be made.

Never fear.  At this point, it’s just frustration.  I haven’t stitched a bit of the sleeves, so no “unsewing” yet, just pinning.  A day or two from now, it will all become clear.  So I will wait until the project is ready to advance.  I suppose it’s good practice–learning when to step back, take a break, and wait.

I’m not good at stepping back or waiting.  I’m good at barreling through.  So for now, I will let the rain coat take the lead.  I will let it rest.  And when we’re both fresh, we’ll pick up where we left off, and the rest will be easy.

The Making of a Raincoat – Part 1

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I’m nervous.  I’m nervous because I have never made a raincoat before.  I’m nervous because I’ve never used a fabric quite like this before. And while I’ve made some t-shirts, skirts, vests, things like that, I don’t consider myself much of a garment sewer.

But there’s a time for everything I guess. And I plan to learn.

This particular pattern is in the current issue of “Stitch” magazine. The fun part about getting a pattern online is that you get to print it out one page at a time and piece it together. This pattern was 66 pages…nice round number. But a heck of a lot of sheets to get in perfect registration and piece together!
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It’s impossible to work from a pattern that’s taped so the next step is to trace the master and create solid pattern pieces — both lining and main fabric.

 

 

 

Next comes the task of sewing out a “muslin” or a test pattern.  My muslin is of the outer fabric only.  I just want to make sure it will fit properly.

I have a “body double” which I used to work on the assembly.  So far so good.

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Once I got the main pieces sewn together, it was obvious that it was too long.  The rest of it seems to fit OK for a jacket. I wanted it to be roomy.

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Muslin is complete, but I’ll have to lop off about 3 inches from the hem–I am slightly vertically challenged.  Stay tuned. Ready to start with real fabric!  It’s supposed to rain for the next two days.

Maybe that’s a sign.

One Month Away

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In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;
In cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free.
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

 

Today I visited the community garden plot–one month away from the day I can start digging.  It’s a perennial plot, which means it doesn’t get tilled over every year unless I do it. The local park district tills all the annual plots.

This picture shows the remnants of last year’s kale, and the promise of next year’s raspberries.  I  don’t know what it is about gardening, but I’ve noticed that many people who like to sew also like to garden.   I’m not sure that the inverse is true. I am not an elegant gardener. (I am not an elegant sewist either.)  But if determination counts for anything, then I’m in with the best.

It’s getting harder these days to till everything by hand with a pitchfork.  I bought a Mantis rototiller a couple of years ago and I get my strong young nephew to help haul it and plow.  Last year, halfway through the plot he stopped and turned to me.  “This is hard work!” said the high school football player.

I laughed.  Kid, that’s just the turn of the soil–way more work to come.

Of course food is work.  For centuries, as human beings, we did nothing else but work for our food.  We survived long enough to reproduce and then teach our kids how to work for food.  Now our kids are all playing Minecraft–because food is in the pantry or just a run to the grocery store or the drive-thru.

Ah, but in the summer.  In the summer, food comes from the ground.  We share it with the ground squirrels and the birds and the bugs.  But we share it just the same.  And this fallow time of year is quite a reminder that the promise of new life is just around the corner.   Guaranteed.

Whooshing Poems

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Have you ever been called to create something?  I’m not talking about receiving a phone call, or a commission request, or even an inspiration from a fabric or pattern.

I’m talking about a full-press, hard-core, wonder-full, mystical, unexplainable urge to create.  I’m talking about  brief clarity from the signal of cosmic consciousness, the Holy Spirit, the Great Mystery, a siren wave of energy from the universe.

Sounds melodramatic?  Maybe.  But I think we hear from it all the time–especially those of us who are creators. And I don’t think it’s always about huge endeavors.  My experience is that sometimes, something in the universe just wants or needs to be created, and it searches for a receptive mind/spirit to assist in manifestation.  The key word here is “receptive”.

You can call me crazy for this belief, but one day a couple of years ago, I watched a TED presentation that reminded me that I am not alone.  I’ll attach a link to the entire presentation by Elizabeth Gilbert. The part that stuck with me the most was the visual of an American poet who told Elizabeth that sometimes she would be out in the field with her family when she felt a poem coming…she could see, feel it heading toward her, and she had to drop everything, run into the house and write it down before it whooshed past her.  If she missed it, the poem would continue on, in search of another poet.

Wow.

I wish I were always so in tune with the universe.  Here’s a link to Elizabeth Gilbert’s entire presentation, and a quick view of the next thing I’m going to create. I don’t know why. I don’t ask why any more.

But I’m up for the task.