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Hotter than Dog’s Breath
It’s been hotter than Hades around here lately. I think it’s the humidity. The heat just sticks to your body and you feel like you’re breathing inside a plastic bag. Okay, it’s not that bad. I know it is that bad in a lot of places… it’s just that’s what it feels like to me. I’m a pansy.
So I decided to go visit my mom out in the Sticks where it’s 105 in the shade! Why? Because she has air conditioning and Bug and I were just plain bored of our hot house. The beach has been off limits lately because it is crowded crowded crowded. Ugh. The water is delightful but there are just too many people. Also, my beach buggy (aka the jogger stroller) has a flat. We’re out of commission for a while.
The thing about the sticks this last visit is, there was no internet. Gasp! No internet! The horror. Believe me, I felt like I was roughing it. But that’s what happens when money is tight. Sometimes the extras (even the ones you are addicted to) get turned off. So I went offline for two days. TWO WHOLE DAYS.
It was good for me. We played in my mom’s garden. Picked lots of “matoes,” as Baby Bug calls them. I didn’t paint a stroke, even though I hauled my entire massive collection of disposable plastic cups full of mixed paint out there. I meant to but I actually worked on some computer work that I needed to get done. It was really nice, actually. I love my mom’s swamp cooler. I miss it, in fact.
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Move over Gumball, now there’s something plumpier!
I threw caution to the wind, blew off work and painting to make a stuffed dog today! I don’t know what hit me. I was working on the eternal couch cover project (I’m always altering it, one of these days it will be perfect and then it will be so brittle from the sun constantly beating on it, it will fall to shreds and I’ll have to start all over again) and I just got this crazy hair-brained idea that I should make Baby Bug a stuffed dog. You know, since I’m on this seemingly endless dog kick these days.
Before you go complimenting my sewing, let me just say that I am not a very good seamstress. I am horrid, in fact. Part of it is my sewing machine and the other part of it is that I am just a hack job artist with no attention span to be a perfectionist. If you look close, you will find puckers and gathers and back-tacking where there shouldn’t be back-tacking, knots where there shouldn’t be knots… It’s a big mess. My Aunt Keren, the seamstress, will not be allowed to examine it closely. This, like most of my sewing projects, will put her many years of kind teaching to shame. I’m sorry Aunt Keren.
It’s not all my fault though. My sewing machine doesn’t like me very much. I know this because it makes rats nests with the bobbin thread on a regular basis. This might be because I keep my sewing machine in this canvas tote and every time I haul it in and out of the closet, I think I break it. The tension is whacky. I don’t know what the numbers mean so I don’t even know how to fix it.
The little spool thing that holds the thread is busted off. I have to stick a skewer in the hole, where it used to be, and let my spool of thread wobble around on the skewer unbalanced. It’s really amazing that I bother to sew at all.
All that said, I had a blast making this little stuffed puppy. I used to make these sorts of things all the time when I was a kid and I used to visit my Aunt’s sewing room. And then there’s the Lumpy Cat Ranch of course. I think imperfect sewing is my thing. I know Baby Bug is too young to really appreciate the fun of this but I think someday we are going to really have a ball. Or a puppy or a doll or a kitten… or a truck.
