One of Us! One of Us!

Karen Nyberg, the American astronaut who went up to the International Space Station at the end of last month, brought craft supplies with her: fabric, needle, thread. She sews and quilts! She's planning on making something over the next six months, though she's not sure what. "But that's part of creativity is that it comes with the feeling of the day so I have the supplies in my hands to create if I get the opportunity and the creative notion to do so." 

Check out her twitter feed (@AstroKarenN) or pinterest (http://pinterest.com/knyberg/) to see fat quarters floating in space! Our people truly are everywhere!

Bag It

I have been reading rather than stitching, so I don't have anything to show. I will share my new carrying case. When I went to camp, they gave me this Vera Bradley lunch tote:



The pattern is "purple punch," though it seems kind of brown to me. Anyway, I haven't been packing lunches and I'm not really a huge fan of VB, so I was thinking WTF am I going to do with this? So there it was, sitting on the table amongst my stuff.



And, though I am spatially retarded, I thought, does that Ott light fit in there?



Turns out it does! Perfect for camp; I am not sure the Ott light leaves home any other time. But if it needed to, it could. And dressed to the nines at that.

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Apparently when President Obama wanted to change the conversation about race in America, people in Philadelphia thought he meant they should talk to me. The other day, my across-the-street neighbor was outside and started chatting to me about my next door neighbors who have recently moved out. (Open house this Sunday! I love nosing around other people's houses.) "You know," she says, "they were black but they were nice." Now I lived next door to them for 3.5 years. Did she have to tell me they were African American? No. It's the correlation. Then she says, "he (the father) didn't let them (the two boys) run wild in the street." It might surprise you to learn that both boys were born while we were living here. We moved in December 17, 2005. Wow what a good father! And hey, two African American boys not in gangs! Where do people get this? Honestly, I'm flummoxed. And torn. She said I made her day talking to her, and I stood there for about five minutes. She's obviously very lonely. She doesn't drive and her sons visit maybe once a month. Her next door neighbors are good to her, but I suppose there is some moral obligation for the dude and I to visit or reach out in some way. See? See why I hate living in a society?

Oh, and just by-the-by when society no longer does something it "loses" the custom not "looses" it. L-O-S-E spells the word that means to come to be without, to suffer the deprivation of, to fail to have, to fail to win. L-O-O-S-E, which does not rhyme with C-H-O-O-S-E, means unfettered, lax, sexually promiscuous or immoral. Are we good on that? Because this one is really starting to drive me nuts.