Pampered

Happy birthday to my birthday sister, Katy Dröege-Macdonald!

My birthday's just beginning, and I already feel incredibly spoiled.

Allison and Jodi threw a mini birthday celebration for me at our last Urban Tapestry practice. Allison gave me a beautiful blue shawl she made herself as well as some puzzlegrams (make-your-own puzzles -- can't wait to use these :-). You can see a full length view of the shawl in Allison's Flickr set.



Jodi gave me a pair of gorgeous earrings, some vanilla spice hand cream and a Hoops & Yoyo CD. My nieces introduced me to Hoops & Yoyo, some cute little Hallmark characters, and I fell in love with them.



On the way home from practice, Jeff and Walter picked me up at the subway station, and Walter gave me a wonderful birthday card made by his daughter as well as a t-shirt with a drawing of a CHOCOLATE molecule on the front. :-D

My friend Cathy sent me the soundtrack to Gosford Park as well as the movie DVD -- she remembered how much I enjoyed the music when I was visiting her in Calgary; I have the soundtrack playing as I write this, in fact.



Yesterday, both Jeff and I took the day off and wandered around the city. We dropped by Futureshop, where I bought some headphones I could use for recording (my current headphones leak noise too much), then to a framing shop to get my Blush cards framed. We went to Saved By Technology to get some recording gear for Urban Tapestry, including another microphone set, a third microphone stand, and some cords.

And we also visited the Sewing Centre (2144 Yonge St., Toronto 416-487-4438) where a very patient man helped me pick out a beginners' sewing machine and taught me how to use it.



Many thanks to Ginny for the birthday gift! I've wanted a sewing machine for years now. Not because I can sew (because I can't, at least not yet) but because there have been so many times when I've wished I could...even just to hem a pair of pants or make a simple fix.



My mom used to sew all the time, and she made many of my clothes as well as clothes for my brother and sister when we were little. She always hoped I'd pick up the sewing bug, but I never did back then -- I loathed Home Economics (those were days when girls weren't allowed to take shop).

She even put together a sewing box for me which I still have and value much more now than I did back then. My mom's not around anymore for sewing advice but I have family and friends who know much more about sewing than I do, so I'm hoping to get tips from them. :-)

Anyway, I'm hoping to eventually learn enough to sew some simple items of clothing for myself, like a summer top and a skirt. And maybe experiment with stitching art (see Bev White's Flickr set for an example of some astounding stitching art) and other crafty projects. If any of you know of good online sewing resources for a beginner, I'd appreciate you posting the URLs.

My friend Luisa took me out for dinner last night; we ate at Penelope's on King, one of my favourite restaurants. She showed me our most recent finished pottery project: a bowl with some of my Little Nightmare creatures on it. I'll take a picture and post it before FKO; I'm hoping to sell this on my art table in the dealer's room.

This morning, I woke up to find that Jeff had posted "Happy Birthday" signs all over the house, including post-it notes on the bathroom mirror!

:-D

It's going to be a good day, I can tell.

Hope you all have a great weekend. And don't forget to turn off your lights between 8 and 9 for Earth Hour!

B5 Virgin Update

SPOILER WARNING: The blog posts below focuses on my reports while watching Babylon Five for the first time. An LJ feed is also available. If you haven't seen B5 yet and don't want spoilers, please DO NOT click the links below.

Season 3, Episode 32: GROPOS



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