Warning: Rant.

Many years ago, before kids, I scrapbooked. My MO was like this: I would go down to the scrapbooking store and spend hours leafing through all the different papers and embellishments and stickers and I would spend a bunch of money and then go home and spend three or four hours making one two-page spread. How I got anything done at all is beyond me. I guess you have a lot of extra time when you don't have kids.

I used post-bound albums, which I hated. They were fiddly and the pages always buckled instead of lying flat. I considered D-ring albums, but two-page spreads looked awful in those albums because of the huge gap between them. I figured I was just stuck with post-bound.

Anyway then I moved here to Rough and Ready and learned that one of my neighbors was a Creative Memories consultant. And she hosted weekly crops! Which was awesome for me because it meant new friends and some me-time and that I would always have one morning carved out every week for scrapbooking.

At first, I didn't love Creative Memories. I liked the fancy papers and Creative Memories had no fancy papers. You just stuck your pictures right on the page, maybe after rounding the corners or something, and then you put a few stickers on and a fancy border. I thought the pages were kind of boring. But I really liked the strap-hinge albums. They always lay flat and there was no gap between the pages. And I really liked getting together with friends and neighbors to crop.

Then Creative Memories did come out with the fancy papers, and all the stickers and ribbon and paper flowers to go with it. And the best part about it: all the stuff matched. No more scouring the scrapbooking store in search of papers, or spending hours trying to decide how to make a page look nice. It was all right there in that one package.

Now I didn't just love the albums, I loved everything about Creative Memories. I became a consultant, though I rarely ever sold any of the Creative Memories products. I just bought the stuff for myself. After that I almost never went to one of those scrapbooking stores. I was happy on my little Creative Memories cloud.

Now if you are also a Creative Memories fan, you know where I'm going with this. A few weeks ago, my beloved Creative Memories stabbed me in the heart, with the same very long knife they used to stab all their fans in the heart. Creative Memories will no longer be making albums, pages, page protectors or really anything good. Instead they will be focusing on their digital line, which I have little or no interest in (on the rare occasions that I do make photo books I use Snapfish or Shutterfly and then only during one of their very discounted promotions). They will also still be making their "Fast to Fabulous" albums, which I also have no interest in. I don't want my book dictating how many photos I get to put in my album, or how many per page or what orientation they should be, and I also really don't want my books to look exactly like everyone else's books.

And then to add insult to injury, we'll only be able to buy pages and protectors until the end of this month. Why does this suck? Because every time Creative Memories came out with a coverset I liked, I would by it, but I wouldn't buy the pages and protectors to go along with it. Because the coversets were always "while supplies last," but the pages and protectors were forever.

Or so I thought.

I have 14 empty Creative Memories albums on my shelf. I like to put about 35 pages in each book, which is about two packs and 1/3. That's about 33 packs of pages and 33 packs of protectors. I'm going to have to max out a credit card to afford to complete all those albums. But if I don't, all those albums become useless. I could sell them on eBay, but I love the strap hinge format and selling those albums means that's one more post-bound album I have to buy instead. I really want to use all my CM albums because I love them.

What could Creative Memories have done differently? I don't know. Some people think they never should have started making the fancy papers, because that's what did them in. But though I would have still used their albums I doubt I would have become so devoted to them if they didn't have those papers. Maybe I'm unusual though.

And I don't know what the courts are making them do--because this is all bankruptcy related--but I think giving us three or four months to order those pages instead of less than a month would have been a kindness. Personally, I can't afford Creative Memories' bankruptcy. :(

Now I know that this is about the collapse of a company and not really about those of us who were once devoted to that company. But Creative Memories needs to give us a parting gesture of thanks from the deck of their sinking ship. Because we all loved them, supported them, told all our friends about them, and spent probably too much money on their products. The least they could do is sell their patent on those albums to some other company. Because I've been searching the web for a comparable, widely available (in many colors) strap-hinge album and I'm not finding much. And I really don't want to go back to post-bound.

Ah, I know. I am in danger of becoming one of those blogs where the entries get further and further apart, and each time the blogger pops in and makes excuses about how busy she's been, and swears she will post more, and then she eventually disappears altogether. I am still over on my other blog regularly (Travel by Stove) and if you're in the Grass Valley area I have another fun blog called GVFamilyFun. So I swear I'm not totally absent, I've just been neglecting this poor blog though I have actually been doing some crafting.

Here are my works in progress:

Henry's dinosaur quilt is almost finished. I just have to sew on the binding and patch a seam-ripper-inflicted hole.

I waited for several months for my husband to make me a quilt frame, and then I threw up my hands and made one myself. It's smaller than the one on the website, which is fine because my living room is barely big enough for it as it is, and I doubt I'll ever be trying to quilt a king-sized quilt on my little Brother sewing machine. I did baste one quilt on it, which I made from a pattern in this book:

But the jury is still out whether it's going to solve my tuck problems.

Speaking of that quilt, I'm trying to FMQ it and it looks hideous. :(

I am also crocheting something (imagine that!) I really need a nice sun hat and a few years ago I saw one at a little shop in Lake Tahoe that I still regret not buying. It was crocheted and it was really cute. I don't think this one is going to be even remotely as cute, but I had to try. Here's the pattern.

And I'm still working on a scarf from this book:

But that one is going to take months. Because, let's face it, it's 100 degrees outside. Plus I only ever work on it while I'm at Natalie's swim lesson. I guess I'm about halfway finished.

What are you working on? Send links!

Henry's quilt top is HUGE. I don't know why I thought I was making a twin sized quilt, it's really more like a full.

Of course that's not huge by most people's standards, but it's huge by the standards of a Brother CS6000i sewing machine, which has a ridiculously short neck. I had trouble doing twin quilts on this machine; I don't know how I'm going to get a full through it.

This is what made me decide that I need some alternate method of basting. I've tried taping quilts to my kitchen floor and pin basting, but the tape never sticks and I just end up frustrated. I've tried spray basting them, but the spray basting never sticks either, and I just end up frustrated. So this time I tried Googling "fool-proof quilt basting" and I found instructions for making a basting frame.

The parts cost me around $45, which is really very cheap when you consider what something like this would cost ready-made. Of course I only got 8 foot boards for mine, because the 10 foot boards were $1 a foot while the 8 foot ones were only $1.30 total. Huge difference, and I figured I wasn't ever going to be using this thing for a king anyway, since I'm having trouble imagining even quilting a full on my little Brother.

So the original plan was to ask my husband to make this thing for me, but let's face it--I can't even get the guy to replace a smoke detector in a timely fashion. So unless I want my boards sitting in the garage gathering dust it looks like it's going to be my project. And I'm about as handy as a two year old, so it should be interesting.

My kids go to an expeditionary learning school, which (without going into too much detail) basically means that they go on a lot of field trips. Because I'm always looking after Henry I hardly ever get to chaperone on these trips, but when I do I am always annoyed to discover that I have to carry around this folder full of papers/instructions/emergency contact information etc. regardless of where we are or how long we're there. So last time I went on one of these trips I thought to myself, hmm, wouldn't it be nice to have a bag I could use to carry all that stuff around in?


Voilà! Here's one I put together in a couple of hours. I could have done it a lot faster if I was better at sewing. I still think it's pretty cute though. The strap was way too long so I just folded it over and stitched it so there's a little shoulder pad on the strap instead of all that extra length. Here's the picture:

The pattern came from a book called "The New Handmade: Simple Sewing for Contemporary Style " by Cassie Barden. Of course, this is the second bag I've made out of this book, so it doesn't really fit the whole "crafting my library" thing since the idea is to make just one project from each book. But I really needed an expedition bag, so once again ...

The pattern is called "Reading List Tote" and it's on page 16. I did change the pattern so the bag is crossbody instead of a tote, since I need to be able to comfortably carry it for several hours at a time.

Anyway just so you know I haven't gotten lazy, I have actually been making stuff, just not posting about it. I finished Henry's quilt top today, too, which turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. I have no idea how I'm going to quilt it on my tiny little machine.

More later ...

Yes, it's birthday party season, as you can tell because about three quarters of my posts are party invite related.

Just like I did with Dylan's invite, I kept Natalie's simple. She wanted a unicorn party so I threw this picture together in Photoshop, then I got some RSVP cards and just cut and pasted (in a literal sense). They came out pretty cute, but I think I prefer doing these invites with characters (like Harry Potter, Speed Racer, Captain Jack) because for some reason it makes me laugh to see my kids' faces pasted on famous people. :)

But you know, you give the birthday girl what she wants!

Still slogging away on that dinosaur quilt and hope to have some pictures to post in a couple of weeks.

I made Henry a quilt back when he was in a crib, but now that he's in a big-boy bed I owe him a new one. We had a talk about it and he decided he wants dinosaurs.

So in keeping with my theme, I chose a book from my library (one I've never made anything out of). Here it is:

This book is called Easy Quilt Projects: Favorites from the Editors of American Patchwork & Quilting. The pattern I chose is called "In the Meadow." It appears on page 11.

This pattern does indeed look easy, just as promised by the book's title (it's just squares and rectangles, without any borders). And I really need easy right now, after that nightmare-of-triangles chicken quilt.

I had a little bit of a tough time choosing fabric for this one, because I initially went to a fabric store that didn't actually have any dinosaur fabric. But you know, I can't walk out of a fabric store without any fabric, so I bought a bunch of greens thinking I'd find some dino fabric in green, for sure.

And I did, but the line also came in a blue, so then I went back and bought some blues. And then the ladies on the QuiltingBoard suggested adding some oranges and yellows so it wasn't just a lot of cool colors, so I bought more fabric and got rid of some of the other ones I was planning on using. So I bought way too much fabric. But hey, that's what my stash is for right?

Anyway here's my final palette:

 I'm going to cut and sew at least part of it on Friday, state of mind permitting. :)

Dylan is on a Harry Potter kick, so for his eighth birthday party we're doing a Harry Potter theme. Which means of course that I had to come up with a Harry Potter party invitation. Hello, Photoshop.

I love doing these, they always make me laugh.

For this invite I chose a poster from the Deathly Hallows, featuring the devastatingly handsome Neville Longbottom:

In case you aren't with me on the whole "devastatingly handsome" thing, you have seen him recently, right?

Yes, that's right. I thought so.

Anyway I got Dylan to pose for me, looking as Neville-Longbottomish as he could, and then I Photoshopped him into the poster:

And then I laughed for about 20 minutes.

Sans-blood, of course (this is second grade after all).

After I was done laughing, I changed the date from 7.15 to the date of the party, and on the inside I put "(Being a 7-year-old, I mean)" You know, as in "It all ends: being a 7-year-old." Which I thought was marginally funny though I'm not sure anyone else will get it.

Cute, though. Can't wait to send them out!