London: Day 1

Not quite sunrise - from seat 30A

Sometimes travel can be a nightmare.  I still think about a trip from London in the early 1990s; it took 23 hours, involved Heathrow (twice), an airport in Canada and a stopover in Boston (all from what was supposed to be a direct flight), with my family and roommate freaking out because British Airways told them I'd "disappeared from the manifest."

This was not that trip.

I'm not always the biggest fan of technology, but checking in online 24 hours before our flight somehow got us on the TSA's precheck list, so despite my usual running late (3 hours? never!), we were through security and happily sitting in the Delta lounge with 90 minutes to spare, good wifi and a charging station for the Kindle I'd forgotten to plug in the night before.

The plane was nearly empty.  This was a non-stop Philly to Heathrow flight, and we were at about 1/3 capacity, so after we ate, Mario moved up a row, we folded up the armrests, buckled ourselves into the middle seats, assembled various pillows and blankets, and slept all the way to London.

Our teeny, tiny flat

What an amazing feeling, arriving refreshed and rested, instead of cramped and cranky.  Especially since we got in at 6:30 a.m. London time, a full 15 minutes earlier than scheduled.  After passing through passport control, we headed for the Tube.  There is a more expensive express train that takes only 15 minutes to Paddington, but since our flat let service didn't open until 9:30 a.m., we didn't see a reason to rush.

Once we landed in Paddington, we found the street where the office was and settled into a pub for breakfast.  Eggs, bacon, sausage, toast and a pot of tea goes a long way toward ridding you of the last of your airline fog.

When the office opened, we checked in and left our bags.  The flat wouldn't be ready until later -- 2:00 p.m. -- but they texted me at a little after noon to say they had cleaned our fiat first and it was waiting.

While we waited, we walked around Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, then along the park, down a row of embassy houses (no photos allowed), and back along Bayswater Road.

Italian gardens / Kensington Gardens

The Airbnb flat was in Talbot Square, only a half block from the B&B where I stayed on my first trip to London in 1983 ($10 a day -- a bargain even for a 4th floor closet of a room with no private bath).

This place wasn't much larger, and it was just as high up, but it was clean, secure, with a comfortable mattress, and it was everything we needed.  Okay, the bath could have been bigger -- every time I used the toilet I hit my boobs on the edge of the sink, and the shower stall was literally so narrow I couldn't put my hands on my hips -- but it was quiet at night, probably the best sleep I've ever had on vacation.

After we'd unpacked and settled in, which I'm embarrassed to admit involved a brief nap (are we old?), we went out exploring.  Not having a definite destination, we walked back toward the station and then up into Little Venice, where the canals intersect.  We found a nice little waterside cafe and had tea and a snack, which gave us the strength to venture further.

Late lunch spot

Our evening wanderings took us to the Westminster Tube station, where we walked around outside the Abbey, along the Thames, saw Big Ben, Parliament and way too many people.  Then we wandered down to Trafalgar Square, and eventually into a nice pub where we ate meat pies and fish and chips until we were drowsy again.

We went back to our flat and slept like stones, knowing that Saturday would be a long day.

It felt much later than that . . .

It's always something

Because no vacation is apparently complete without a veterinary emergency upon return, I give you Bear.

The cat who hates me.  Who spent most of our vacation upstairs on the bed, according to our housemate who took care of them.  This isn't unusual -- Bear's not a social cat on her best days, and most of her days aren't her best days.

Friday morning, however, I got a look at her walking (okay, running away from me, as usual) and she was limping a bit and her foot didn't look right.  I called the vet, and he was out of the office for an emergency, and had several procedures booked for Saturday, so he wasn't able to see her.

I debated, but decided to take her down to the University of Penn's vet hospital, which is only a few blocks away.  It's expensive, but really good care -- or it usually is.  This Friday, they were very busy and when we got there at 2:00 p.m., I was told she probably wouldn't get seen until dinnertime.

Dinnertime turned into 10:00 p.m. before she was even sedated and examined.  We're not going to discuss my level of cat-mother anger; there's no point and I'm trying to get past it.

We picked her up after midnight.  They sedated her, shaved the foot so they could get a look at the thing on it, and while they were at it, clipped her nails and shaved all the mats out of her fur.  It's something, anyway.

The lump, which I thought might be an abscess because she had long nails (they clicked on the floor like a dog's) and I've had cats before whose nails have punctured their paw pads and gotten infected, is not.  It's a mass, solid tissue with a pocket of fluid in the center.  The doctor was pretty certain it was cancer, and started immediately talking about booking her for a surgical consult and doing more tests beyond the x-rays and fluid samples they had already taken.

Considering that the ten hours she'd spent there had already eaten every cent of the money I'd earned from my unexpected Etsy windfall (hey, it was nice while it lasted!) with nothing more than a manicure, haircut and vague diagnosios, I said no.  It's not that I don't want to help her, but Penn is the most expensive option in the area, and my regular vet did a great job with Annie's breast cancer surgery back in December.  I'll discuss it with him and see what we come up with.

Penn is supposed to send Bear's records over on Monday.  I'll talk to the vet and see what he says after reviewing them, whether he thinks it's something that can be removed while still giving her any quality of life, or not.  She's 11, and not generally a cat who tolerates a lot of handling.  My decisions in cases like this depend often on the cat's personality -- I'm not sure how she would cope with something as drastic as an amputation at that age, and with the level of care and handling that would go along with it.

On the other hand, either the anesthesia or her confinement in a small room (the bathroom attached to Mario's office) has completely changed her personality.  As you can see from the top photo, she was hanging out happily near my leg, and any touching of Bear in the last decade has been purely accidental, or because I've surprised her when she's asleep.  So there's that.

I'll know more on Monday or Tuesday, whether or not this is something that can be dealt with or if it's simply going to be a matter of keeping her comfortable until she no longer is.  At least if I have to let her go, she'll have had a period of time where she's allowed herself to be loved and petted and made much of.  She's enjoying the attention, and I'm enjoying giving it to her.

Home, and some news

The bear that started it all

Well, we're back from our break in London.  More about that in subsequent posts -- despite my vow to not take a ton of photos, I took a ton of photos and I look forward to sharing them.

While we were away, a few things happened.  The day before we left, I was contacted by a writer at Babble, inquiring about the receiving blanket bears I sold on Etsy.  I answered a few questions by email, packed my bags and promptly forgot the conversation.

Then, shortly after we got to London, when we checked into our Airbnb flat (which had wifi), my phone made this loud "CHA-CHING!" We both jumped.  It's not a noise I hear that frequently -- when something sells on Etsy, I always miss the cash register sound.  This time, since the phone was turned all the way up, it sounded like a Vegas slot machine, right in my pocket.

I looked, and sure enough, it was one of those bears.  Soon after, I got an email from Etsy, telling me I had an unusual amount of traffic on one listing, and that I should check to see if I'd been featured on a blog or something.  I looked at my traffic, and it was all coming from Babble.  Before I could even look for an article, I got another sale!

Finally, I had a moment to check the website (remember, I'm on vacation here, and really not thinking about the shop) and found the article, which is linked here.  They used photos from my listing, some of my words and a lot of the email I'd sent to the writer.  I'm pleased with the article, and apparently it was attractive enough, because for the entire rest of the trip, each night when we got back to the flat, as soon as we were climbing the stairs and the phone picked up the router, I would hear "CHA-CHING!"from deep in my jacket pocket.

It got to be a running joke, how many times it was going to happen before we reached the room, and whether or not it would wake us up at night.  I offered to turn down the volume, but Mario was as into it as I was and said to leave it on, he wanted to hear me making money while I was on vacation.

A few days later, I was contacted by a writer at Scary Mommy, who said she'd read the Babble article and wanted to do something similar on their site.  She asked more questions, asked if she could use my photos, and said she'd let me know when the article went up.  Soon after that, the whole cycle started over again.

We got home Thursday afternoon, and there were already 2 packages with receiving blankets waiting for me.  Two more arrived yesterday.

This is going to be fun.

Never say never

Sewing machine only

I was always happy with just a straight sewing machine.  I didn't need a serger or any of these other fancy, non-essential doodads.  Nope, not me, never.  Not gonna happen.

The first crack was my sudden, burning need for a coverstitch.  Still didn't see the need for a serger, but I was really tired of trying to do a neat twin needle hem on knits.  So I got a coverstitch, and I liked it.

Long, long stretch where I used my regular machine and coverstitch, and then mostly just the machine because in the last two years I've probably only made two garments for myself.  So for craft show and Etsy sewing, I haven't needed the coverstitch but I've used the hell out of the sewing machine.

Then I got a call from a friend that her neighbor had died and his family was liquidating all his sewing supplies, including a Baby Lock serger with jet air threading.  It was free.  It was also mine, very quickly, and we got acquainted fast.

Why did no one ever tell me my life wouldn't be complete without a serger?

Machine embroidered doll faces

Recently I started selling cloth dolls at shows and online.  I was hand embroidering the faces, which was fine when I was only selling a few of them.  I like embroidery.  I find it relaxing -- or I did until I sold ten dolls at a one show and had another show the following weekend, with no stock left.  Then I had to embroider ten faces and construct the dolls too, in a week when I was scheduled to be temping at least three days.

I started thinking idly about embroidery machines.  I knew I'd use it -- for the dolls if nothing else -- but I wasn't sure how expensive they were, or what the learning curve was like.  I did some online research and quite a few people said that the Brother SE400 was a good basic machine if you weren't planning on doing large, elaborate designs.  That sounded good.

Amazon had it for $300.  Which also sounded good, but I wasn't convinced.  I waffled a little bit more, and then got an amazing email from my credit card company.  It reminded me that I had a lot of unused rewards points, which could be turned into an Amazon gift card.

Which could be turned into an embroidery machine.

Hand embroidered face

I love this machine.  I can turn out a half dozen doll faces in an afternoon, while I'm sitting next to it sewing something else.  Since it's a basic machine, I have to change thread colors (there are machines where you can pre-load up to ten colors, which makes me hyperventilate a little) but I can live with this.  Easily.

So if there's some new kind of machine out there and I make the blanket statement, "I don't need it," just remind me that things change.

P.S.  It's getting crowded in my workroom now with all these machines.  I need to reorganize soon.

Mickey, Minnie, Bear

One very large pair of mice

I know I've said this before, but this was probably the most difficult memory bear I've had to make.

Some fabrics are harder to deal with than others.  Old, nearly sheer t-shirt fabric would be one of those.  Also, prints/patterns/graphics can be weird.  Ditto, extra-large Mickey and Minnie.

But it had to be done.

My client contacted me and said that her best friend's mother was dying, and that the mother was very, very close to her friend's little boy.  They had gone to Disney together and this was a souvenir shirt that she had worn nearly to pieces.  She thought that turning it into a bear would be a comfort for him when his grandma passed.

Pre-cut denim bear being used as pattern
because pattern pieces have vanished

I could certainly see where it would, but when I received the shirt and saw those enormous mice, I wasn't sure what to do with them.  There wasn't a whole lot of time to wait for inspiration to strike - I knew from speaking to my client that grandma was unlikely to last the week, so there was already a serious likelihood that the bear wouldn't arrive on time for her to give it to her grandson.

The faces were just so large that there was no way to turn them into the bear's face, so after some puzzling (until my puzzler was sore, as Dr. Seuss would say), I laid out my pattern pieces very carefully to take advantage of the features of each.  You can see from the photo that everything fit on the front, but only just.  I did end up using denim for the insides of the arms and legs, and for the accents on the ears, just to break up the white t-shirt fabric.

I also interfaced the -shirt before cutting it apart, just so I wouldn't lose any of the image to stretch.

I haven't totally decided if the combined Mickey-Minnie smile is creepy or fun.  I think it's a little of each.  I was just pleased that I was able to get the faces onto the bear's face in some form, and it seemed more logical to try to do that than to have a half smile appearing under its ear.

The deadline wasn't met, though - I got the bear turned around and shipped back out in 2 days, but my client emailed me the same day that I shipped to tell me that her friend's mother had passed away.

She also emailed me a few days later to tell me that the little boy loved his bear.  If nothing else, it's very suited for all the tears it will have to absorb.

But that's what a bear's for, after all.

Three Time Customer

Add caption

While my temp job has ended (I think), I'm still getting around to writing about the last piece I sold to one of my co-workers.  She bought a personalized doll for her granddaughter, then a few weeks later placed an order for an "African" looking doll because her Liberian neighbor often babysat for her, and then just a few weeks before the job ended, she asked for another one, this time to look like her neighbor from Laos/Cambodia.  She even provided a photo of the outfit she wanted the doll to wear.

That was the part that took a while, because I certainly didn't want to do that level of embroidery for a doll, but I also didn't want to just use a solid or print fabric.

Then the thrift store had a half price day, and I found this gorgeous green shirt with an embroidered hem and cuffs, and it called to me across the store.  I think it worked out well.

This woman's ideas are always a challenge, but her dolls turn out so cute in the end that I always make more of them for shows, and they always sell at shows.  One of the African ones even sold on Etsy last night, and it's hard to get found in such a saturated marketplace.

As far as "thinking" that my temp job has ended, they did ask me to come back for a week at the end of September.  I told them my reappearance was contingent upon how much product I could knock out between now and then.  At this point, I'm going to call the admin on Friday afternoon and let her know one way or the other.  Since I actually managed to get 24 owls cut, pieced and trimmed up yesterday, with only the eyes and the stuffing left, I'm feeling optimistic that I can manage to get 3 more days of office pay before the end of the month (not that I want to go back, but we're going on vacation in October, and every dollar is going to count in London).

The whole family

I'm not afraid to use it.

What my head should feel like

My summer temp job is nearly over, and not before time.  School (and therefore sewing classes) start up next week, and my busy season is fast approaching.

But more than that, it's time to go.  I've been there since early June, plus a few weeks in March to cover a disability leave, and even though last year's stint was longer, I'm really feeling it this time around.

I've been reminded -- more than once -- why I don't do this full time anymore, and the people, while nice for the most part, are now officially in my head more frequently than casual work acquaintances should be.  I guess after 4 summers they've become "real" enough to do that, but honestly, one of the things I enjoy most about working from home is not being surrounded all the time.  I like quiet, I like being drama-free, I like just not having all these extra stories circling around me.  If I want stories, I'll make up my own.

If that makes me sound bitchy, that's not how I mean it.  The inside of my brain feels like Times Square on New Year's Eve, and I need to get back to a place of quiet where I can hear myself think -- and get more work done.

When I said yesterday afternoon that I only had four more days left, one of the other secretaries said, "Don't jinx yourself.  Maybe someone else will quit and they'll ask  you to stay."

"There's one problem with that," I answered.  "There's this little, two-letter word.  No."

And I'm not afraid to use it.