"French Country" Graphic 45 Mini Album

Been working on this for some time and it's still not done, but it's turning out to be one of my favorites. This pattern was done by a talented lady from Norway called Anne.  Her blog is annespapercreations.com and she has tons of tutorials via Youtube.

This one threw me for a loop because it's reversible.  It took me a week to figure it out.  I didn't have the long envelopes that she had and had to make my own from paper.  She used black so it was really hard to see which side she was using to put the envelopes together.

She also cuts very intricately and detailed so it takes time to do all of this.  This is not for the faint of heart.  I didn't have all the extra cut-outs from this set that she had so mine isn't nearly as detailed.

Love this page with the country blues:

It too me forever to cut out the scroll work in the picture above.  This is the other front page.  I couldn't get the girl to cut out right and ripped part of it.  I'll have to order more of the paper.

Love these two pages as well.  The barn doors open up and the barn itself is a tag.  Once I get some more paper I can finish it up.

Getting Stains Off Of White Fabric?

The last few days have been miserable.  My SI joints are really sore making my muscles stiff.  I just want to get out and do stuff and not hurt.  Feeling sorry for myself I figured I'd pull out my embroidery machine and do something.  I can't find the package of needles I bought last month.  I've looked everywhere.  I can't just to the store and get them either where I live.  So I figured I'd work on "Red December".

I pull that out and realize that there are stains on the white fabric!  I've been so careful with this quilt because of the white fabric.  I feel sick and cried my heart out last night.  The last thing I want to do is have the red fabric ruined by trying to get the stain out of the white.  I've had such a love/hate relationship with this quilt.  It's a stunning pattern and I love it.  The fabric is fairly thick and and a pain to fold over even with a template and iron.  That turkey red color is nearly impossible to find so I've just tried not to worry about all the excess fabric that keeps coming out of the corners despite my attempts to keep it folded under.  The quilt will never make it in a competition because of those issues.  Is there a way to get this stain out?    

  

Rose Pedals...

Hubby said I could have roses or pedals for Valentine's Day after showing him the Specialized pedals I wanted at the LBS.  I looked at him and said rose pedals would be great!  He rolled his eyes and said, "Roses OR Pedals".  Oh.  After thinking about it,  I figured roses would be the best choice.  I can get pedals any time.  Maybe he will sneak the pedals in since he knows what I want.  If you want your hubby to get you stuff, show it to him or he'll never get it right.

I've spent the past week looking at bike saddles.  Really they are just modern torture devices for your rear end.  The idea is to get your sit bones measured and somehow that number magically gives you the best saddle size.  So I called up my LBS and had my sit bones measured.  You sit on a squishy seat with lines and find the right lines that match up to the sit bone indentations.  The magic number for me is 155 and then you pick out your saddle against the wall.  If only it was that simple.

Saddles also come in hard, flat, soft, long, short, rounded, curved, racing, recreational, fat, bulky, fake leather, real leather, white, black, ugly, weird looking and finally even down to the truly bizarre looking ones.  Think back to when you first started quilting, walked into a fabric store with a great pattern and then spent hours trying to find the perfect fabric combination for it completely overwhelmed by choice.  Yeah.  I have a few of "those" quilts made as well.

With the 155 magic number I stood against the wall of torture and picked out the Lithia model.  The guy put it on and said to give it a test run.  I went around the parking lot, thought it was great and told him I'd purchase it.  A few days later I'm in agony after doing a couple of 5 mile rides.  It's like cutting out strips of fabric only to realize you've messed up the widths a short time in, but thankfully still salvageable as he said I could exchange out the saddle.

I took the saddle back and asked if I could try something else.  We talked some more and I came home with a Ruby to test out.  Maybe this the one that magically works.  If I can get a working saddle, I can get more mileage in and work up to my century plans.  Yup.  I'm going to do a century this year in August however; if I can't get in more than 5-10 miles w/o saddle pain, I'll never get that far.