SOOOOO Neat.

You’ll never guess what I made. That’s right, a muumuu!! Ok, no. A purse. Imagine that. Annette is doing jewelry shoes and agreed to try to sell my purses at her shows. She is going to have a table set up at Ceylon days this weekend. The last three purses I showed photos of (including the ones in this post) will be for sale at the show. I don’t know if anyone will be interested enough to pay for them, but it will be neat to see. My friend Catherine was asking about how big the purses were so I put a dollar bill in the picture for a size reference. This purse is a little different since it has the pockets on the front, but the inside is the same as the others I've made. I think it's one of my favorite color combination, but you have to be a careful person if you want to keep the white/cream clean.

I was in Fairmont for Annette’s 50^th birthday party last weekend. 50 is the new 30 in case you haven’t heard. It was a fun time. I ate several cookies and cheeseburgers. It was an all day grill out, and we hung out in the garage playing a bean bag toss game. I called it “toss across” and then got made fun of, but no one else came up with a neat name, so screw them. I decided to make Annette a bag for her b-day. She doesn’t know yet, so I hope she doesn’t read this first and ruin the surprise. It’s the same as the brown reusable bag I showed a few posts ago. For hers I put a piece of plastic stuff in the bottom to make it more sturdy. If my purses sell at all I might make more of the reusable bag things to try to sell too since they’d be something I could sell for a lot cheaper.

This weekend is the quilt show. I have never been to one, so I’m excited. I signed up to sit at the registration table for awhile to help out and then I’ll browse the show. I decided to skip on submitting anything for the show since it would be hard to make the drop off time and I kept forgetting to submit the form I was supposed to fill out and now it's basically too late. I guess I’m also nervous for people to see my stuff next to stuff made by people who knew what they were doing….

Someone finally guessed what the last name that tune was. Jack got it right with "Imagine" by John Lennon. This video is the last song I have recorded. If anyone says they want more, I'll keep doing it (if I can find more bits to learn), but otherwise I'm calling it quits. I think this one is easy so I"m not going to give any hints except for that it's another classic rock song. Good luck.

So Neat. Part three?

I finished my purse a little while ago, so I decided to post a couple pictures. I pulled out all the bells and whistles for this one. I have an inside zippered pocket, two small pockets on the sides on the inside, and a pocket on the front of the outside under the flap....Maybe the photo can make that one make sense. I don't know if the true color comes out in the photo, but the outside is a deep, olive green color. The inside color I think shows pretty well. I also added some velcro to this purse. Sometimes the wind would blow the flap up on my old purse and it was annoying. I'm hoping the velcro will eliminate this problem. The purse wasn't quite finished when I took the pictures, so ignore the end I needed to sew shut and the velcro that wasn't sewn on.

Joann Fabric is having a sale this weekend so I'm thinking about going out and getting a few sets of fabric, making some purses, and seeing if I can sell them on Ebay. Anyone want to buy a purse for 15 bucks plus material? You can pick the fabric.

Daniel got the last name that tune correct. It was Don't Let it Bring You Down by Neil Young. This new song was a solo effort from a guy who used to belong in a popular band from the sixties...? It should be another easy one. I biff a lot, so pretend not to notice. I think I only have two more videos left after this, so I'm either going to have to learn more song bits or abandon this game.

Songs

Someone....*coughs while saying emily* complained that the last name that tune was too hard, so I'm posting a new one and adding hints to the previous.

The previous name that tune is by the Beautiful Girls. It is up to you to sift through their stuff to find the name. I suggest using youtube.

This new song was originally done ....awhile ago..... 70's maybe, and then redone by someone else. I guess I don't know much about this song besides that I have one version of it. So GOOD LUCK!

Mmm... Turkey

For Thanksgiving Andy and I went to visit his family in the cities. We spent Thanksgiving day with his mom, sister, and grandma. We had a nice turkey dinner with all the goodies that go with it and spent time playing cards, celebrating his mom's birthday (nov. 24) and his sisters birthday (dec 1st). On Friday we did NOT partake in any of the black friday shopping sales. We had a lasagna dinner with his dad and sister. Then on Saturday we went to a fancy pants restaurant in downtown Minneapolis to celebrate his aunt's 60th birthday. It was a lot of fun to meet some of Andy's family that I hadn't met, have fancy (free) drinks and appetizers, and mingle with some silly old people who were there. The four day vacation from work was wonderful. I'm not at all excited to go back.

For this post's name that tune, the song is by another well known band. It came out in 1975, has been covered by at least one band that I know of, and has appeared in a few movies that come to mind. I think it is pretty easy if you know music.

Name that Tune

I know that I suck at this blog. In an effort to be better about posting, I've decided to create a "name that tune" game. I have a few videos of short song clips I play on the guitar. Instead of telling you what it is, I'll leave it up to you to figure it out. You can post a guess as a comment, or just guess in your head. I'll tell you the answers eventually, but maybe not in the next post to give people who don't check this very often (because i never post) a chance to see it before reading the answer.

PS. this is being added after the original post. The song I play will always be an attempt to sound like the original, recorded version and may or may not be anything you've ever heard of. This first song is by a well known band and came out in 1984.

As far as my life.....I missed quilt club two months in a row. Once because I was moving and the second time because i forgot how to count. (thought the third thursday was only the second). I went back this last time and got registered again. (the new year starts in sept. there.) A really nice lady brought me some scrap fabric because she heard me saying how pathetic my stash is. It's nice because i've been working on a scrap project for a long time and was running out of usable scrap colors.

I had a crochet night with some ladies and work and we're thinking about trying to make it a somewhat more regular event. We will meet again in a couple weeks for another night of crocheting and visiting.

My computer is falling apart.

I have tried a couple of times to upload a video onto my blog. It failed both times. Some times my computer pretends to be working when it actually is doing nothing at all. I did finally manage to get it to load. Recently the B button stopped working and the space bar had been on the fritz. I picked off the cover hoping to snap it back on to get it to work. Instead, it refuses to snap back on and now my computer keyboard is missing a piece and looks really silly. I've been thinking about getting a new computer for awhile. It's very frustrating. My computer also decided to lose all of my information and now I can't do anything with my stuff or save any new stuff unless I save it to my external hard drive. I don't like the idea of spending money, so it's been difficult to find a computer I would actually want to buy.

I haven't tried much on for costumes at work, but a week ago I had to try on several. They were all very silly and this time I even snapped a pick of me in one. I tried on the Sexy Scarecrow, the Sexy Tin Man, the Sexy Cowardly Lion, the Forrest Fairy, the Sexy Dark Angel, the Fook Mi, the Sexy Garfield costume which I can't find a link to, the Gangster Moll, and the Sexy Wild West Sheriff which is what I'm wearing in the picture. I wanted to kill myself for how I looked in the garfield, fook mi, and tin man costumes. They are so gross looking. I thought the gangster moll one would have been good for when I was working at the mortuary.

Other than that, nothing too exciting has been happening. I've been attempting to make my own shirts, but so far I'm about 2 for 6 on actually having them turn out. Sometime I will take some picture of them and explain a little obsession I have in regards to shirts.

So after finally getting the video to upload...this is a video of me playing along to jezebel by iron and wine. I am playing along because there are two guitar parts and the one i play is very repetitive. Without the vocals and second guitar part, it's pretty boring. I played part of this in the iron and wine medley video from a different post.

I hate titles

I've been very tired lately. It probably doesn't help that I work all the time, but that's not going to change any time soon. For the next couple of weeks I'm supposed to work about five hours extra, and I've been working ten hours every weekend for Jackson Hewitt. Gotta love the 55 hour weeks.

Sometime it's so discouraging to know that some things don't change no matter where you work (this is not in regards to the number of hours worked, but rather how frustrating office politics can be). I'm still much happier overall than I was at the mortuary despite how frustrating things can be at the current place. Still though, it's terrible that people can be so disappointing by always fitting the stereotypes that are set for them.

This week I tried on the "rustic female pirate" costume and there was a lot of joking around about me trying on the "Sequin Flapper" costume. The latter, however, never happened.

I've posted a video. I'm playing "clothes of sand" by Nick Drake. I haven't been playing the guitar much at all lately so I'm getting out of practice. But for your listening pleasure...




I was supposed to have a lot of play dates this week with people who were going to come in from out of town. All of them failed miserably because of the stupid weather. I'm pretty sure it can stop being crappy out any time soon. I'm not the biggest fan of driving on ice rinks...

Iron and Wine?

new guitar stuff with a face even....for part of it.... I explain in the video a little, but for more detail: the first song is "upward over the mountain"; at 1:15 it switches to "faded from the winter"; 1:52 is a sloppy transition into "each coming night"; 2:14 becomes "jezebel" on which i continually made mistakes by muting the high e string :( ; 2:42 starts "cinder and smoke"; and lastly and most sloppily played is "sodom south georgia" at 3:18. The last song was a spur of the moment deal and probably should have been left out since I botched it so much and didn't get to play the good part. I had to cut off the video because I can only upload files under 100 mb. four of the six songs are actually played with a capo, but it had to be left off for the sake of ease and transition.




i've been bored a lot lately so i've been making a lot of stuff to fill my time (as you might have noticed in the last few posts which had pictures of table runners i've made. Well surprise, i made another. This one I made for Trista. I'm not super thrilled with it. I've been having trouble getting things to lay flat, but I don't think Trista minded. In the picture, some blocks look more blue/indigo, but they're actually purple, and the binding is a light blue rather than white like it looks in the picture.

Tunes and Runners

I haven't posted a video in a really long time. This is mostly because I haven't recorded anything in a really long time. I haven't been playing a whole lot lately, nor have I learned anything new. This is a piece that I wrote two years ago. I never wrote down tabs and hadn't played it in a long time, so I'm a little rusty and unsure. I only remembered how to play one part of it twenty minutes before I recorded. I mess up a fair amount, but at least one of the times that I mess up, it's because the camera made weird noises so i though it wasn't recording. (It's the point at about 1:45 when I lean forward and stop for a second). Anywho, I think I titled it "the unseen." Don't expect to be blown out of the water....



I made another table runner for my brother's girlfriend for xmas. I think it turned out really neat and I kind of want to keep it for myself. shh...don't tell. I did the top quilting on my machine. It's only the second time I've done it. I like how it turned out pretty well, but I still need a fair amount of practice. This was officially the last gift I had on my list for xmas, so I guess I'm done unless I decided to do something for someone else.

I want to make another table runner for myself. the one I have in the kitchen was really poorly made and I don't have one for my coffee table. I guess that's on my to do list now.

Guitars, Quilts, and Notes

I have posted two videos of guitar. In both I was playing pretty simple stuff. I decided to record a little solo piece. I'm playing a clip of "Heartbeats" by Jose Gonzalez. For a full video you can check out this link . My version is not nearly as smooth. I don't think I'll ever be able to play as well as this guy, but I strive to. He has a lot of awesome guitar stuff in his songs. I would recommend checking out other stuff if this song appeals to you.

I finally finished the quilt for my bed. It's been mostly done for three weeks. It just needed the binding (edging for non quilters), but I hadn't gotten around to making it. My motivation was needing a blanket to replace my comforter. Andy was over this past weekend and got really sick. I needed to wash my sheets/comforter to avoid catching his horrible illness. I didn't get around to washing them so I just swapped sheets and finished the quilt to throw on top. I don't know how I feel about it anymore. I think it's doing the opposite of growing on me. But anywho, here is a picture. My bed looks sad with only one pillow, but the others have germ-infested cases, so they are in the laundry basket.






My apartment came with a complimentary refrigerator whiteboard deal. I use it to write myself notes and shopping lists, but as more people have come to visit, it's collected more and more notes from others. I don't want to erase them, so I let them accumulate. The result is that I have less and less space to write my lists and notes, but more and more amusing and/or pleasant notes/drawings to see. If you want to leave a note, you'd better come over soon. Space is dwindling quickly.

Oh Hi

I am not new to blogging, but I'm coming back from a long vacation. I decided to start from scratch. My old blog is from an old life. Too much has changed since I used to post for me to want to jump back on to that one. So here is the result. The new and improved blog of Nicole. I make no guarantees about the regularity with which I will post. I'm not confident in my ability to do this consistently, so enjoy it while it lasts.
In honor of Halloween (and since I got one free from my grandma) Andy and I decided to carve a pumpkin. It looks like a twelve-year-old made it, but it was fun and should probably become one of our traditions.










I started quilting last winter. I joined the Deep Valley Quilters a few months ago, and have gotten a lot of crap for it. But I enjoy my silly hobbies, so you can all screw yourselves if you think I'm odd. I've made a few quilts so far. I just finished two that I did all on my own (including the actual quilting part thanks to my aunt Tracy's help). I'm quite pleased with both of them. I haven't finished the binding on one yet, so I haven't taken any pictures. The one in the picture is about 65'' x 55''. Perfect for cuddling up on the couch.


This weekend I bought a bookshelf on mega-sale. Andy helped me put it together. I'm quite pleased with it. It's kind of a cheap piece of crap, but for 15 ducks (yes, ducks not bucks) it was an ok deal. I'm weird, so I also took a picture of that, but I didn't rotate it....so turn your noggins.

If you know me at all, you know I play the guitar a bit. I will never say that I play well. But I can play some. I'm going to attempt to add a video. The actual picture on it is just the couch, but it's Daniel and me playing. He plays the intro rhythm and I play the little solo. Then I play the chords for the main verses while he plays a melody. Then he plays the intro rhythm again while I play the middle solo. Then back to me playing chords while he plays the melody for the second part. There are plenty of mistakes on my part, but for a quick first attempt at recording it, I'm ok with how it turned out.

Tomorrow I'm going with Andy to Redwood Falls to buy a motorcycle. It's for ME! I'm pretty excited about it, but it kind of sucks because I won't be able to really ride much until next spring. My skills leave much to be desired, but you've got to start somewhere right? I'll try to post a picture of it once I get it. It will live in Andy's Dad's garage for the winter so it stays nice and warm. I plan on giving it a name once I meet and get to know it.

I think if I write anymore tonight, everyone will get bored and won't read. So I'll stop here. Hopefully I can continue to think of potentially interesting things to write about in the upcoming days, weeks, and months. Oh, and p.s. it takes a million years for videos to upload on here, but I might still post some in the future if I take any that are worth sharing. OK bye.