Morning Dragon Stuck In The Shop On My Sick Computer!

I’m ready to climb the walls!!! My computer is back in the shop until the logic board arrives because they needed to recheck the serial number for the part (they’d ordered the wrong one and were told there over a MONTH wait or longer....) and I am NOT playing lug the computer back and forth any more!

Luckily, I found out about the mix up when I called Apple Canada to find out why the part would take so long... but my model is the one that uses the logic board that Apple DOES have in stock and by next Friday, all should be well... (dare I even cross my fingers?)

The new .pdf for the Morning Dragon chart is still stuck in the eMac at the shop, however, so tomorrow all these stitchers who read my newsletter are going to come wandering over to find a chart that isn’t there!! I can’t even put up a temporary page to let them know!

Sigh! As a graphic designer, having a working computer is as essential to me as breathing and eating chocolate.. a daily necessity! My stomach dropped to my toes when the computer tech said that it could be over a month to get the logic board (wrong model) he’d ordered. The only place in New Brunswick that rents Macs is over 2 hours away!!

Sometimes I miss living in a city like Montreal or Toronto where I can get around by bus or get my claws on some things in a pinch because there is a much bigger market, but I know that if we lived in a city that size, I would have gone back to being a full-time employee for someone else a long time ago! The lifestyle choices that we’ve made wouldn’t be possible in a bigger city where things are more expensive.

At least I got all my Christmas baking done!! When the going gets tough, the tough bake cookies!

At Least I Know What's Wrong Now...

A new week has begun and I am learning to cope with a tempermental computer. The new logic board is on order and will hopefully be here this week or early next. Funny how one thing can make such an impact throughout the computer, but that IS the part that controls so much of how things run. I was trying to explain it to Bethany... who can see that the computer is acting funny but doesn't understand its insides (I'm not sure that I understand it much better!). I told her that part of the computer's brain isn't working properly but that the place that keeps all the information will be OK. It turns out that the drive should be fine once the new logic board is in, but I am still trying to transfer as much info to my external hard drive just in case...

It is a bit frustrating to have the thing here and not be able to use it reliably... but at least I can get on now and then to try stuff. We have a meeting at church tonight and the poor machine has crashed twice when I try to print stuff out, so I am going to blog this and then turn it off again for a rest...

All I want for Christmas, Santa, is a working computer!!! (well... and maybe some chocolate or art supplies!)

Being Grown Up AND Being Childlike...

Well, the poor computer is still in the shop. It looks as if they will have to replace the whole hard drive, but at least it is still under warranty! In the meantime, I try not to mope too much when I sit in my office and stare at that empty space where the eMac should be...

Today was FREEZING, but by tomorrow, it is supposed to get warm enough to rain! Once the kids got on the bus, I ventured into the woods with my digital camera to record some of the Christmas Card scenery I saw all around me with each tree and branch coated in fluffy wet snow that froze to almost crystal perfection when the temperatures dropped last night. As snow crunched beneath my boots and I kept my camera tucked inside my coat between shots, I was reminded once again of just how much I love looking through the lens of a camera and capturing the world around me. I used to go for long walks like this in University where I majored in both photography and printmaking... looking for the right lighting and composition to make an interesting shot.

Keeping that childlike wonder about our lives, even in the face of minor (or major) challenges isn’t always easy, but it is important. Crunching through the snow slowed me down and really made me look at how beautiful our world can be when we aren’t rushing past the scenery to get somewhere.

Of course it is also important to know when you have to be grown up too. Getting things done, even tasks that you would rather avoid than tackle, is an important part about being a mature individual. Without a computer, I have no reason not to sort out the little piles and bags of receipts from shows or trip or other things that have piled up on my office floor. I think that I’d rather floss a cat than sort and tidy, but there is a slight satisfaction as some piles get smaller and pieces of paper are either sorted or tossed. Dare I hope to have a tidy office by Christmas??

Wanhhhhh! I want my computer back!!

Two Steps Forward... One Step Back!

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so happy on Thursday about getting the computer back, getting the website updated and finally being able to blog again! By Friday at noon the computer was worse than ever and wouldn’t even run the diagnostic disk I’d purchased... so as soon as Nick got home, in it went for another check up. The technician did admit that he’d done nothing more than defragg the drive and then check the programs with the most basic diagnostic tools he had. This time, I asked him to crawl through there and find out what is WRONG!! My poor computer!!!

The weekend was a flurry of sleep overs, swim lessons, planning for the Advent Gathering at church, baking a new recipe for Christmas cookies etc. Last night’s turnout wasn’t as good as we’d hoped for, but those who came certainly enjoyed themselves. The girls and I will finish colouring the window ourselves this week.

So, instead of working on one graphics project, this morning is all about getting to one particularly stubborn pile of clutter on my office floor and making sure that all the tiny pieces of paper, receipts, fabric bits etc. get filed or put back in their proper places. I just can’t procrastinate about it any more!!!

Sniff.... I want my computer back and working properly!!!

Plugged Back In...

It’s funny how cut off from the world I have felt this past week as my computer acted up, shut down and went in for repairs. I have it back, but for the first 3 days, it was still locking or freezing at the oddest times, especially whenever I would try to switch sites online.

Isn’t it amazing how fast we have come to take the Internet, e-mail and the speed of our computers for granted? When they are suddenly absent or not working properly, it throws us for a loop.

Of course there were still things that I could do, digests I could read and some e-mail I could access through my older machine, but I certainly felt as if I was stuck on a virtual desert island, trying to figure out how to stuff a message in a bottle!!!



I can’t believe that December is here already. Smudgy is growing fast and has been good company this week, but I’m still not certain where this fall has gone? I certainly didn’t get all of the artwork I wanted to get done for my next project, a book I wrote this summer while I was illustrating the one for Nanny Kay... but sometimes, you have to serve the gift and where it calls you.

I had an interesting chat a week ago with a friend about how the talents we are given can sometimes demand things of us that we didn’t expect. I was feeling frustrated about my computer being down and suddenly, along came 3 projects that needed my talents. They weren’t for pay, but serving your gift isn’t always about money... especially when the projects help others.

The first was creating a square snowman for the school float in the Santa Claus Parade. He was used to cleverly hide a pole that kept one part of the float from looking like a giant snow globe.



Bethany’s teacher asked me if I could make up some signs for around the classroom with vocabulary words on them, so I printed out the words on photo paper and then drew and coloured the illustrations with markers. I did up 34 words and the whole class was thrilled. Madame said she would laminate them to keep for a long time!



Finally, I drew out the rough for the 77” x 30 “ window that we are going to decorate at church. Tomorrow and Saturday, I will ink the final version on a piece of semi-opaque Mylar drafting film with a Sharpie marker (several probably) so that families in our church can help colour it on Sunday night at our Advent Celebration. Once it is coloured, the Mylar “window” can be taped into one of the 3 large glass windows near the office door of our church to shine out for the neighbourhood to see during this holiday season.



It is good to be plugged back in and have my website updates done... but I did find plenty to do while I was unplugged!

No Computer... sort of

Well, my poor computer seems to have a bad case of the hiccups, flu or something. I did manage to run a full virus check and found some suspicious files, deleting them, but the poor thing is still prone to freezing or locking and I lost work twice today. The NBed site was compromised this month and maybe when Nick goes to check his mail on my machine, something is able to get in... so he’s off limits for mail on my machine. After all, teachers in NB were able to get those new laptops, so he can use that!

I’ve just spent almost an hour on the phone waiting or speaking with people from Symantec and apparently, the version of SystemWorks 3.0 that I bought just over a year ago can still check for viruses, but now that I have system as my operating system, I can no longer boot from that CD in an emergency to fix problems with Norton Disk Doctor or de-fragment my drive with Speed Disk. I now have to go out and find a local retailer that is selling the SAME version of the program I have, but the 3.0.1 version that shipped just a few months after I bought this one.

Honestly... I could just about scream!!

A New Addition To The Family!

What a crazy weekend! They say that the best pets kind of find you... and the latest addition to our family was no exception. I’d been moping around the house with no hamster to talk to since Wuffles passed away while I was in Toronto. Though I didn’t miss cleaning the cage, it was strange not to hear little scurry noises outside my office and get up for a stretch break to see how “my fella” was doing. In those last few weeks of his life, Wuffles was actually in my office with me so that I could keep a close eye on him after his first stroke.

We headed out as a family to do groceries on Friday night before all the stores closed for Remembrance Day on the 11th. It was a ZOO!! We stopped into the pet store near Sobeys to have a peek and there was a batch of new grey dwarf hamsters that has just arrived from the breeder that day! I put my hand in to check gender (we’ve had better luck with boys) and they were all still hand tamed! I found one male, a cute little grey fellow with white paws, who seemed friendly enough, but Nick and I try not to make rash decisions. We decided to do groceries first, but that meant that the girls skipped along beside us, up and down each aisle, asking if we were going to get the little grey smudge of a hamster. It didn’t help when Nick said it was all up to me!! That meant their entire energy was focussed on convincing me that we needed to bring this hamster home! I decided that we’d go back for a second look while Nick was loading the groceries into the car... and sure enough, we came home with SMUDGY! The girls thought that when he gets older and chubbier, we can call him pudgy Smudgy! (Groan!)



We left plenty of food and water out when we headed to Prince Edward Island the next day for an overnight stay with friends of ours. It was great fun to see them again and very hard to drag the kids away from playing with their friends for a noon departure, but Erin still had a major project to finish up back at home and I didn’t want the newest family member to feel too abandoned! By mid-afternoon, I started feeling a little under the weather and have taken it easy today. There have been quite a few bugs and flu strains roaming around, so it didn’t hurt to take it a bit easy on the third day of the long weekend. Nick went into work for a few hours, I proofread the last part of Erin’s project and made sure that got done. My darling husband has taken them off to choir to give me a few moments of peace & quiet to get the blog done before another chaotic week begins. Thank goodness for that nap this afternoon and the companionship of a new tiny furry friend!

This Is Just Too Cool!!!

Ok... I’m a bit punchy from getting up every few hours on Wednesday night to check the basement, and I did run the pump most of yesterday, but I am pleased to report that no water got in the office this time. I’ve plugged everything back in and even managed to sort out one pile of junk!

This morning, I checked Amazon to see if the book was up yet and THERE IT WAS!! How cool was it to use my name for the search and have the book pop up on the screen!!! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! By the tenth book I illustrate, some of the novelty may wear off, but for now it is a wonderful way to celebrate the start of a long weekend here in Canada. The girls have no school on Monday and we are heading off for one quick overnight to visit some friends, but now that Nick is back from his meetings with all the principals in the province, we are looking forward to some major family time.

The first batch of books went off to Amazon yesterday, so that’s why it shows the longer shipping time. I am sure that once they get them in stock, it will hopefully show a much shorter shipping time. Having just waited almost 5 weeks for a birthday gift from my sister to arrive, I can understand the frustration of having to wait. Dragons do NOT like to wait for their treasures. Hopefully, this will let some of you, who have been e-mailing me about how to get the book in the USA or overseas, get your claws on a copy! The author is also in the process of revamping her website so that you can buy either book from the site.

I went back to check Amazon for the URL, but it is way to long to quote here and it remembered the book from my last visit, showing a tiny thumbnail in the margin. WAY COOL!!!

I Wish It Were Snow Instead!!!

Nick has been away since yesterday afternoon at a gathering of all the Principals in the Province of New Brunswick in St. Andrews. I’m so glad he’s having this chance to network and expand his horizons professionally, even if I miss him like crazy. The only nasty thing is that, just like the last time he went away this summer, we are under a heavy rainfall warning until tomorrow afternoon and I keep wishing it were snow instead of rain. Snow cannot seep into your basement office!!

This time I am prepared. I won’t even bother with the shopvac like the last time he was away... this time the pump will go right into the window well to suck the water that seems to seep into it from below when the backyard hits critical mass. At least the ground isn’t completely frozen, so perhaps it can absorb the rain between bands as they hit. Two of them have been through already tonight and so far, so good.

It’s been so busy while Nick is away that I haven’t really had time to miss him as much as I thought I would. Erin’s volleyball games and practices are certainly reworking our routines, but their team won again this afternoon by a narrow 2 point lead in the fifth game to get the “3 of 5” needed. This makes the second straight win for the team and Erin had a marvelous save in the 2nd game. What a proud mother I was knitting on the stage while Bethany played Go Fish with one of her friends behind me. Had the light been better, I might have stitched... but I knit by feel, so that lets me watch the game at the same time. After all, I have presents for the holidays to finish up just like every crafty person out there!!

So cross your fingers that our basement won’t look like my NOT FORGOTTEN design by morning!!!

SNOWFLAKES, LAUNDRY & LESSONS LEARNED AT RETREAT

The very first snowfall of the year is falling softly outside my window. I don’t have iTunes blasting yet, so the only sound is the hum of the washing machine and dryer as I try to get the laundry done from being away at a cross stitch retreat this weekend and the click of my fingernails on the keyboard.

Retreat was just AWESOME!! Like the CreativFestival in Toronto, it went a long way towards recharging something deep inside and bringing back a joy that had begun to fade.
So here are the lessons I learned at Retreat:

- Food always tastes a million times better when you don’t have to cook it yourself.

- Pack your digital camera FIRST! I forgot it and missed a lot of great shots!

- Listen to your body more and take naps when you really need them.

- A brisk walk not only makes you feel much better, it might just go a teeny tiny way towards offsetting at least one bite of a gooey treat!

- Listening to other’s life stories is important. It teaches you empathy, how to really listen, how healing a hug can be, how cleansing tears are and how much laughter can ease the aches deep inside our souls. It also reminds you to count the blessings in your own life.

- Watch out for flying, howling monkeys! (If I can get the picture that they took of me as the toy monkey came flying at me, I will post it hear. Dragons CAN be startled!!)

- A real fire is comforting on a crisp day.

- Women can be strong and generous. We raised over $500 for Breast Cancer and 5 of our survivors drew the names for the baskets of pink things we put together to raffle off.

- Stitching Over One is hard on my hands and a bit hard to see late at night when your eyes get tired, but the results were spectacular. I wish I’d had my camera to capture my ornament for the exchange... because I doubt I’ll stitch that design again over 1!

- I rediscovered how much FUN it was to stitch something that’s NOT MINE!! When I stitch something that isn’t my own design, I rediscover all the fun of NOT KNOWING how it will turn out, what neat colours another designer will put together and how much better it looks that the photo!! I have decided that I need to stitch at least 15 minutes a day on something that isn’t mine, just to remember how much fun this hobby is!!

- Retreat never lasts long enough... and then you can’t wait for the next one!

I’m Off To Retreat...Wheeeeee!!!!

Where did the week go? So many changes, so much activity, so much chaos... I am SO ready to jump in the car and head to the cross stitch retreat as soon as Nick gets home and my ride gets here!!!

Let’s see.... a job for a client that needed to be wrapped up wiped out most of the time I’d hoped to spend on my new illustration project, but now I get to invoice them and hopefully see a cheque before Christmas.

Bethany got her ears pierced last night and is just thrilled, but she’s also fighting a bug of some kind because she’s had a headache and gone really pale twice today. Maybe she knows I’m going away!

Erin made the volleyball team for school and is the only Grade 6 on the team, but she’s also the tallest one on the team already! Heh! Heh! Just wait until she’s in Grade 8 and is almost 6 feet!!!

I got orders off too this week, but didn’t get to the website. Guess what? I am feeling so burned out right now that I am just going to run away to retreat where I am not teaching, I am not a designer but one of the girls and I am going to spend the weekend stitching stuff that ISN’T my own design! Wheeeeeeeee!

Back to Reality With A Bang!!

Well, I’ve been back from Toronto for a whole week and it doesn’t even feel like 48 hours! I’m not sure where last week went. I arrived home to 6 meetings, volleyball tryouts for Erin, 2 projects, a Brownie Hallowe’en party, 1 temperamental computer and a very messy office once I got the luggage back out to the shed with the promise of sorting it all out when I had time!! Free Time... what is that??

Thursday and Friday were PD days for the school district. Thursday was Parent/Teacher interviews for both girls, a book sale and a supper meeting. Friday morning, I took care of 2 other girls along with my own for a friend who had morning classes at University and didn’t want to pay a second full day of daycare. We planned a “princess day” watching Over the Hedge (thanks Erica!!) and painting nails, but I had forgotten how exponentially giggly and wild a bunch of girls can be when you put them together!! Yeeeeeesh!

Today the car went in for its last service appointment before the warrantee wears out. New snow tires, new front brakes, 50 point inspection etc.... and OUCH!! It can be scary how fast car things add up, but you just can’t play around with safety, especially since we only have the one vehicle.

I had a great chat with my sister today and that helped more than she will ever know. It is funny that even though there is an ocean between us physically, I felt as close after the call as if she’d been right here at my dining room table! Once the girls got home, the rest of my day was a blur of making Orange Rice Krispie treats for school, checking costumes for tomorrow at school and tomorrow night, planning my Weight Watcher meetings, cutting out hand-drawn ghost stickers, batching part of a Hoffman order, updating files on the computer, saving e-mail, watching Heroes as a break and then getting my blog entry done at last.

Tomorrow promises to be total chaos, but I do want to write about the wonderful show in Toronto on Wednesday...

Tired... But Totally Recharged!

I’m back home and not really unpacked or caught up on laundry yet, but I have a huge grin on my face from the many wonderful memories about this year’s CreativFestival in Toronto! I got to spend time with a fabulous bunch of stitchers, wander through lots of temptation on the show floor, eat some great ethnic food, spend time with one of my best friends and hopefully excite people about the crafts they love while still being very, very real about the challenges that designers face.

I know that I certainly came away feeling more hopeful about the industry than I have in a long time. Not because the markets indicate things are turning around and certainly not because there is any quick solution to the problems that designers in any craft face from piracy. The issue of Macleans magazine that I picked up in Toronto has a huge article about the Internet and how it has actually become a home for pirates, thieves, porn and mediocrity where the purchase of music basically relies on the honour system. That is true for much of the craft industry now as well. I must find the quote that I like and post it here tomorrow. I’d never dream of copying out the whole article!

For all the stitchers who offered feedback, hugs, food, good company and giggles this weekend, especially when the dragon went off on a tangent (DING!) I thank you. You have helped recharge something deep inside me that was feeling empty and you won’t believe some of the crazy ideas I have for NEXT fall.

To Teresa, who reminded me how precious it can be to have a friend who truly understands the insanity we’ve chosen as part of our careers, the search for what else we need to fill our plates and how important it is to be able to laugh at ourselves when we mess up kit counting at 1 am... thank you for being such a great roomie during the show. I hope this can become a more regular tradition!

I need to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight... so that I am coherent when I lead my Weight Watcher meetings tomorrow! Goodnight!

Hellos & Goodbyes

What fun to be here at the CreativFestival! I got into Toronto yesterday morning at 7:20 am after a 4am wake-up and arrived downtown at the hotel only to find that my room wouldn't be ready for a few hours! Luckily a stitcher is never without something to work on, especially a designer with some things to finish off on a class model! I got into the room by about 11:45 and started to unpack then snip floss for kits. By 2 pm, when I still hadn't heard anything from Teresa, I began to worry that she was stranded somewhere and headed downstairs to see if they had any record of her. As I checked with the concierge to see if my package from Zweigart had arrived... the cell phone rang. It was Teresa wondering where I was since she'd been in her room for over an hour with no sign of me! The hotel had checked her into the wrong part of the suite (Lily Chin's part)and I'd been sitting one wall away from her wondering where she was!

Last night we went to see the musical WICKED after a wonderful sushi dinner and it was FABULOUS!! I used myt birthday money from my grandfather this year towards the tickets and am SO glad I did!!

Today, I finally got the emergency delivery of the missing stitchband from Zweigart for my class that day, much to my immense relief. The class was a lot of fun and I had just turned the room over to Teresa for her class when she needed something from our hotel room. Off I went through the human habitrail of tunnels to get the missing plastic bags. When I got to the hotel room, the message light was blinking so I checked it and there was a message from Nick asking me to call home as soon as I could.

All kinds of terrible things go though your head at that point. When I called, both girls were still in tears. Our beloved dwarf hamster, Wuffles, had had a second stroke and they had just returned from the vet. The vet had explained to them how much Wuffles was suffering and so they made the decision to put him to sleep. My faithful "old scraggy fella" won't be there when I get home, but he lived a very full and friendly life. It is hard to love something that rarely lives to be 2 years old, but I would not have traded a moment without him, despite the hurt I feel tonight. I comforted the girls the best that I could long distance and thanked Nick for being brave enough to make that decision while I wasn't there.

Life is full of both Hellos and Goodbyes. Each should be treasured.

A Silent Dragon Is Usually A Busy Dragon...

A few e-mails this afternoon asking if I was OK prompted this quick entry. Whenever this blog gets quiet, it usually means that the dragon is tangled up with something. In this case, it has been having a houseful of company for a week while Nick's Dad and his wife came for a visit over the Thanksgiving weekend. It was great fun having them here, but the week before I go to a show is chaos at best. Toss in a project with a crazy deadline and a bunch of illegal pattern sharers getting all riled up about albums being closed on Multiply... and you get more chaos in my day than this dragon can handle!

If you want to check out the adventures of Rick Mercer's jeans and see how they turned out or read my latest rant about the boldface lies that sharers tell each other about designers, just click on the appropriate links.

I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to heading to Toronto for the show. I can't wait to spend my time with honest, creative stitchers and one of my best friends, Teresa. I need this time to get inspired all over again after dealing with the nastiness of some people who keep trying to justify that they are doing nothing wrong by sharing.

New Projects and a New Blog...

In exactly 2 weeks, I will be in Toronto for the CreativFestival. That means that it is crunch time around the house as supplies for kits come in the mail or need to be tracked. I have things to assemble, things to proofread, things to file and in the midst of all this chaos, what do I do?? I agree to take on another project!!! This one was just too fun to resist, but rather than clog up this blog with all the photos that it will take, I created a NEW BLOG!!!

Just click on the link that says These Jeans Took 22 Hours in my sidebar and you will be whisked away to as crazy an adventure as when I became She-Hulk!!!

I wonder if I should let Rick Mercer know what I am doing in the blog so that he can check out what is happening to his jeans!

The importance of Date Night...

What a hectic week! The book launch was fabulous and being on TV last night was TOO COOL... but I really meant to write about it all this morning, except that a job for a client and some mundane life things totally got in the way.

Friday nights are special in our house. The kids don’t ask to stay up because they know that it is “Date Night”. Even if Nick and I don’ t go anywhere, we put work, stitching and all other distractions away and just spend TIME with each other.

He’d on the phone right now with his dad, who comes for a visit from the Yukon for Thanksgiving, so I have the chance to dash off this entry. Sorry everyone, but reconnecting with my husband after the whirlwind month of September is more important than anything else tonight!

Hot Off The Press!

I meant to try to get these photos and blog entry up Friday, but my camera was acting a bit feisty and I didn’t have time to play with it until this morning...

The book is printed!!! YAY! Hurrah!!!


I went in on Wednesday to check final proofs and see things as they came of the press. When you go out back, you have to slip on these little steel toe shoe cozies in case anything big and heavy tries to fall on your toes. The dragon is all for protecting her tootsies, but these are just plain UGLY! They also make a funny click, click sound and dragons are very fond of being able to sneak up on things!


The proof area at the end of the large press has this HUGE full spectrum light. I kept wondering how much it would cost to put one in my studio or stitching corner, but definitely out of reach of this dragon. My pile of gold that doesn’t go for mundane things like groceries, gas and bills just isn’t big enough!


The way they match the colours to the Epson proofs and check ink saturation was really neat, but neater still was holding one of the sheets right after it came off the press. I didn’t even get messy paws from handling the ink!


Friday morning, Kay and I went to pick up the final books, all trimmed, stapled, and packed up in cases. We asked the sales rep to take our picture holding up a copy of the book. Isn’t it strange how everyone ends up looking so short when they stand next to me?? One of the things I love about my family is that we are all in the same scale. One of the girls said to Nick once... “You give Daddy hugs in OUR size!”

I took all of the extra cases down to my self store so that they could make friends with my cross stitch leaflets because the author lives in a fairly small apartment and was wondering where on earth she was going to store the overflow. Having been through the “my business is taking over the family home” dilemma already, I had the perfect place to store the extra books. It was a great workout lugging all those boxes from the printer’s to the van and from the van to the self-store, but the extra burst of adrenaline when a huge spider scuttled out from the back of some boxes to check me out gave me a super burst to finish the job.

I can’t wait for the official Book Launch on Wednesday night. It is just TOO COOL to hold the book in my hands at last!!!

Being Picky Vs. Quality Control

Almost 3 am and one of the perks/challenges of a home-based business is that the office is only 2 floors away. A hot flash woke me up about half an hour ago, but my husband’s snoring made it impossible to fall back asleep. That is a dangerous place to lurk... in that half sleep world where you begin to make a list of things you need to do. Nothing like scaring yourself with a burst of panic when you realize that the show in Toronto is less than a month away!!

I’ve been SO critical with Santa’s Dragon, ripping out sections and reworking them, that I am beginning to wonder if it will get done in time. I hate being such a slow stitcher!!! This got me thinking about the difference between being PICKY and acting as your own QUALITY CONTROL.

Last Wednesday, after I looked over the proofs with the author, I realized that I needed to make changes to 5 images in the files. They needed to have the brightness/contrast tweaked a bit so that they would better match what I had drawn. I went in Thursday morning with my homework already done (after seeing that my monitor and theirs weren’t that far apart after all) and spent about 1/2 hour tweaking the files with one of the computer techs. When we saw the proofs the following day, I knew that the time had been well spent!!!

It seems as if that desire to make the best product you can is sometimes a rare commodity. I had a fascinating discussion during the Labour Day weekend with someone who talked about products being purposely created NOT to last and was “quite freaked” at the whole concept. I find it hard to know that some companies create products with cheaper components or lower grade materials so that the price point is low enough that replacement is a better option than getting something repaired!! Computer printers have almost gotten to that point now and I sometimes imagine a scary pile of dead printers in our landfills because it is cheaper to buy a whole new printer than fix a drum or replace cartridges!!

As a crafter, I understand making things that are and are not intended to last. Some quick crafts are just created for the fun, for the event, for the moment or as a gift that is not intended to last... and other things become heirlooms, precious treasures to be handed down to another generation. The quilt that hangs in Erin’s room is a tangible reminder that beauty can last!!

I’m not sure where to draw the line. Perhaps that is something to wrestle with on each occasion. To find that line between being obsessive and striving for quality. I just wish it didn’t keep moving on me!

Celebrations, Copies and Colour Proofs!!!

Today is Nick’s mother’s birthday, just 3 days after mine. When the girls were lamenting the fact that they didn’t know what to buy for Grammy or have a lot of money to spend on a present a week ago, I suggested that instead of taking her out for dinner tonight, we turn our home into a restaurant just for her. Talk about jumping on the bandwagon! The girls made me call her to find out what her favourite foods were and promised to help me cook the whole meal! We got out the fancy tablecloth, the good cutlery and even candles. Bethany drew the cover of the menu for the Birthday Bistro and Erin printed out the menu for the inside. When Grammy and Papa arrived, the girls were decked out in their nicest dresses with little tea towels over their arms to greet them. It was a fun and hilarious evening that ended with impromptu dancing and a magic show!

I also had a batch of orders to take up to Staples for Hoffman, the trunk show in Saint John this Saturday and two other shop orders that need to be mailed out this week. It reminded me of this time last year. I was up at Staples paying for a huge Hoffman order when I noticed a woman standing at the self-serve copy machine with a gigantic pile of cross stitch charts. I walked over to see how many she was systematically copying and there were easily 120 leaflets in the pile! I introduced myself politely and explained that what she was doing was breaking copyright law. I told her that as a cross stitch designer myself, I knew many of the designers whose work she was copying illegally. When she insisted in broken English that her friend had told her it was OK to copy anything she liked from her collection because patterns were SO expensive, I switched into French and fluently explained the issue in my other language. This did NOT go over well with the lady, but I remained polite and decided to leave instead of throwing a hissy fit in the store. A few days later, the local cross stitch shop told me about a customer stopping by who had been in the store with this lady. Apparently, she decided to buy her own copier so that she could copy patterns at home with out being hassled. After all.... the patterns were so VERY expensive. I wonder how many patterns she could have bought legally for the cost of a copier??

After Staples, I got a few more errands done when the phone rang. The colour proofs of the book were ready for approval!!!! I picked Bethany up from the bus stop and we drove across town to the printers to see the proofs. When she brought them out, the hair on my arms literally stood on end. It was SO COOL to see the colour slicks and the Dylux paper proof of the book flow. Of course I was a bit freaked out when I noticed that one whole galley was missing from the Dylux proof!! Apparently, they’d forgotten to output that center page (both sides) so the story didn’t match up at all... but that was quickly fixed and they stapled up the new sample for Kay and I to approve. Watching her look at the proofs was fun as well. It made all of those late nights seem worth it. In many ways, this is exactly how I felt after the girls were born. At first, you think “I am NEVER going to do this again!!!” but then suddenly, you find yourself thinking about the next one, forgetting about all the sleepless nights, pain etc.

Any creative process is taking the risk to bring something into the world. No wonder so many artists, writers, musicians etc. talk about their creations as being their babies!!!