Stitch This!

Just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. I've been trying to use my PC Stitch program and I've encountered one problem after another. Since I'm having so much trouble, I decided the best thing to do would be to start from the beginning.

I opened the program as if I had never seen it before (I've had it for about seven years!). I pretended that I was a newbie and was going to start with the tutorials. OK. Click on the icon to get it all started. Now comes the first obstacle. A little window opened up and said it was starting the install wizard. Hmmmm. It's been installed for seven years. Ok, never mind. The little green dots go across the little screen, everything seems to be going along splendidly. Oops. A little message comes up that I need to install Photo Explosion SE. I check my programs list and see that I have Photo Explosion already.

After clicking on the "close" button about a gazillion times, the stupid little box goes away and the program starts. What?!? Why is it starting? What about the Photo Explosion SE it demanded from me a few minutes ago?!?

Never mind. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Just relax and enjoy this nice little program. Sit up straight, relax my shoulders and let's get on with it. Ok. The program opens and I click on the tutorials box. I've decided that I'm a newbie, right? I click on the first tutorial. Click this, click that, yawn, boring. But I've decided to go from the very beginning. Ok. That's done. Let's click on the second tutorial.

This one is about importing pictures. It doesn't want me to import my own pictures, yet. It wants me to open its own first, to get the hang of it. I'll all for that. I click on the "import" button, I see the box it wants me to open. I open that box. Now the instructions tell me to open a file that the installation program put on my hard drive. I see two files but they aren't the one I need. It's a picture of two little kids. Nope. Nowhere. Gritting my teeth, now. Wiping sweat from my brow. I search my program list. Nothing.

I've been at this for about 90 minutes. Jimmy wants to use the computer. Hah! Fat chance. I'm going to get this thing worked out or the computer goes out the window.

My next question is - can I uninstall this program and reinstall it? Will that work? I've got an email out to the PC Stitch company. I wonder if this will take as long as the Cricut fiasco did? That was about two weeks.

The Clipboards

The image is not as clear as I would have liked, but...these are the clipboards I made for Maggie's and Emma's teachers as "end-of-the-year" gifts.

I really like black, white and red together. I found these black and white papers at Michael's in a pad called "color basics" by Me and My Big Ideas. They also have a pad of red and white. I cut the butterflies with my Indie Art cartridge, layering the colored paper over red.. The letters spelling out the names are from Base Camp. I found a cute quote from Phyllis Diller to add to the top of the clipboard - "We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve years telling them to sit down and be quiet". I thought that would be appropriate to give to a teacher, since she must spend a lot of her day telling the kids to sit down and be quiet.

I glued a 1/2 inch strip of red paper where the two black and whites meet, simply because I love to add red to black and white. I cut 6 lengths of black, red and white ribbon and tied them to the clip, just for pretty.

When I saw this clipboard being demonstrated on tv, the lady made it look so simple. She said to get a clipboard with a removable clip. That's hard to find. I finally found them at Michael's. The clip has two little screws with washers at the back. They were very easy to remove. They were NOT easy to get back on! It's almost a two-person ordeal.

What she didn't say was that the clip has a very tight spring to keep it closed. Yes, to keep it closed. You can't put it back on when it's closed! Yikes! And the screws are very short! They barely poke out the back where the washers are supposed to screw on. I had to keep a good grip on the clip, keeping it open so it would lie flat enough for the short screws to go in far enough that the washers could go on.

How many times do you think the little screw when flying off into who-knows-where, or the little washer would slip from my sweaty hands and land somewhere under the table? How many times do you think that clip would snap shut, almost severing my fingers? I tried jamming something under the clip to keep it open, only to have it slip out, time and time again. How many times do you think I almost gave up?

AG Dolls, Move Over

Maggie's and Emma's birthdays are next week. They'll be 8 and 7. How fast the years have flown! I didn't know what to get them for their birthdays - money is tight. I started thinking about their AG dolls and decided that I would sew up some doll clothes. Going through my fabric stash, I realized that I didn't have much to choose from. Most of the fabrics I have left over aren't suitable for dolls.

When I was at band practice last night, I saw my friend, Roberta! She's a seamstress and has a basement full of fabrics. She gave me lots of satins and silks when I wanted to make my son's ring pillow. I asked her if she had any fabric scraps big enough for 18" doll clothes and she looked at me as if I were crazy. "Do I have any fabric scraps?!? I have a huge bag just waiting for anyone to come and take it!" Wow! I made arrangements to come to her house the next day.

She gave me several "pieces" that are large enough to make Maggie and Emma each a sundress. There are all sorts of pieces for the dolls. Solids, coordinating prints, kittens, "suede", corduroy, flannel, fleece, sateen, velvets, black lace (ooh-la-la!). I'll be making doll clothes for a long time.

I went to Michael's and bought two of the 18" dolls, $10.07 each (with my 40% off coupons). That's a significant price difference when you consider that American Girl Dolls are almost $100. Maggie and Emma always drift to the doll aisle at Michael's and they've each chosen the doll they want. I wasn't going to get the dolls for them, because they already have AG dolls that they got for Christmas, but the last time they were there, they told me that they wanted them "very, very much, Nana".

I wish I had time to get Jimmy to make four beds, or two bunk beds. I've been imagining myself crocheting bedspreads or making "quilts" for the doll beds. I could make pillows, mattresses, blankets....