A Teaser, Retreat Project, Great Friends and Stupid Weather

This hasn't been picked up yet...stay tuned for next week.

Here's one of my drag-around projects that I was working on at retreat.  I am hopeful that I can finish piecing the top when I head up to Margaret's in May.

It's made from 100 of these.  It starts with 100 strip sets, then you add corners to two opposite sides and square 'em up.  Those corners are a pale muted yellow.

I have two go-to aprons and THEY WERE BOTH IN THE WASH.  How was I to cook???  The pink one was made by my friend Jean, and the aqua was made by my friend Karen.  I think of those girls every time I wear these, and that's a lot.  I met Jean somewhere's around 30 years ago, when we were both working in Toronto at RBC answering the Operations Help lines.  Until I started answering those phones, I thought I already knew everything about branch banking.  Whoa baby - I had a major come-uppance.  We connected again doing the same thing in Burlington several years later.  She's currently recovering from a broken femur after a fall on the ice.  **If you are taking a bone-builder make sure you get checked regularly - one of the side effects (oddly enough) is fractures in the femur.  Karen (of the aqua apron) is one of my Beach Girls. In the quiet part of my head I always think I'm the only person with any dressmaking skills but Karen slaps me down over that on a regular basis.  It's good to have friends who keep you grounded. 😘

And BLOODY HELL.  WTF, Mother Nature????  It was so warm on Friday I ditched the winter coat.  It poured rain on Saturday.  Sunday morning I wake up to this???

It's not going to last.  Tomorrow should be +10c.  But I'm still whining about it!

A Recipe For Disaster (and zucchini report)

RECIPE FOR DISASTER:
1)  Start with one of these.  It doesn't have to be a zucchini, it could be any fresh vegetable.

2)  Get a cutting board to chop up the vegetable.

3)  Take the cutting board and the chopped vegetable over to the stove.

4)  Ensure you have the cutting board UNsecurely held, and then drop it on one of these.

5)  Voila.  Chipped bone.

In case you are unaware, you cannot prop yourself up on crutches AND push a quilting machine around.  So now you must call your customer and explain that her QUILT will take a bit longer than originally discussed.

When DH drove me to the emergency department, again, I was quite surprised that there was no 'reserved' spot for me.  sigh.  I have an appointment at the fracture clinic on Monday (which is how "LUCKY" DH gets to spend our 30th wedding anniversary) and I am being optimistic that the ortho doc will tell me to stop with the cast and crutches as soon as it stops hurting.  The blessing this time is that the cast is removable.  Oh, sorry.  The $169.00 air cast.  Yeah.  Not all of our health care is exactly free.  But I'm still not complaining.

So, with my current  incapacitation I have finished the hand binding on the 'gift quilt'.  I finished a book by Wiley Cash (he has 2 books out - both VERY GOOD).  The other book I just finished is called Flash Boys by Michael Lewis.  LINK  That one is NOT fiction and also VERY GOOD - about a trader from Royal Bank who opens a new stock exchange in an attempt to combat the unscrupulous bastards running the other exchanges.  Because I have limited knowledge of the stock market I had to keep reading the book or I'd forget some of the terminology and have to go back to re-read parts.  If you google Brad Katsuyama you'll get an idea of what the book is about.  Frightening, really.

While I'm on 'light duties' I plan to work on the bookkeeping which I have not touched all year (bad Helen, bad!!) and get our new mailbox painted.  Hopefully I can quilt a bit from my drafting chair - one hour with my foot down, then take a break with an ice pack and spend a half hour with my foot elevated while I do ... something.  Poor DH is doing everything right now, as you can see in the above pic of the cooktop.  OMG.  So dirty.  He doesn't mind cooking, but cleaning is NOT his forte.  Hopefully we don't have to push each other to the emergency department with food poisoning in the coming weeks.  :-)

ZUCCHINI REPORT
Picked this week:  4
Picked YTD:        17

TEXTURE MAGIC Flowers, Poverty, Zucchini Report

These flowers are very interesting.  They were made using Texture Magic.  Here's a link.  The taupe fabric on the right side is silk.  What a gorgeous look when it's quilted.

Pretty much every morning I spend my breakfast time checking out Facebook and a couple of forums and blogs.  This was a link on Facebook this morning.

Sipping my coffee and reading the story got me thinking.  Slow, morning-fuzzy thinking.  When was the last time I raised MY rates?  Two coffees and a bowl of oatmeal later, I blew off the dust from my 2010 shoebox of bookkeeping.  Yup.  January 2010 was the last time I gave myself a raise.  Just out of curiosity, I thought I'd check on some of my annual expenses over those years.

• Property taxes increased $350
• hydro costs increased $240.  And now I have to wash my underwear at night.  In the dark.  Using cold water.
• house insurance increased $420.  Never had a claim.
• car insurance decreased $35 (huh? clearly a mistake by the insurance company)
• business insurance increased $100.  Never had a claim, but DID increase my coverage.  It's costing you gals a whole lot more to buy fabric, which increases my exposure.

Every time I get on the subject of money, my brain goes STRAIGHT to Executive Compensation.  I am a former Royal Bank employee, so I like to pick on them.  Even though my years with them were pretty much okey-dokey.  They decided to get all fancy a few years ago and morph into RBC ROYAL BANK.  Poor Mr. Nixon.  Having to get by on a measly $12,700,000 last year.  Let me spell that out for you.  Twelve million, seven hundred thousand.  Dollars.  Per year.

That moved by brain along to "I wonder how much the normal people at THE BANK earn these days?  You will see from the chart below that the customer service reps who actually look after you at the counter earn between $12 and $15 per hour.  On those wages these people are expected to dress professionally?  Um. 
Mr. Nixon!  Shame on you!  A LIVING WAGE is $14 per hour.  Anyone paid less than that is living below the poverty line.

All this financial pondering brings me to the weekly zucchini report.  Feeling as impoverished as I do right now, I regret going out for a cheap (but yummy) dinner at Bangkok Temptation last night.  Today I will eat my free zucchinis.

ZUCCHINI REPORT
Picked this week:  7
Picked YTD:       13