disappointment, a surprise present and WIP

I could be working on the two purses that I'm in the middle of, but I have been terrible about blogging lately, so I've decided to let the purses wait till tomorrow.

I don't like starting my entry with something negative and I wasn't even sure I was going to write anything about what's been bothering me since I got back from being out of town, but I thought maybe getting things off my chest would help make me feel better.  And I thought maybe I'd be able to prevent the same problem from happening to someone else if I shared it.  I guess I'm going about this backwards and not making any sense.  I'll start at the beginning.  You might remember that I mentioned how excited I was about my business cards.  Well, they arrived while I was away (a few days early!).  Of course, I was so excited to have a package to open.  To have that package to open.  And then I opened it.  And they looked terrible.  My design has a simple line as a border and when the cards were trimmed the border was not aligned.  It was supposed to look like this:

 

Instead the line is not centered at all.  I wrote the company to complain and they blamed the problem on my not having read their design guide thoroughly enough which really made me mad.  They did offer to give me 50% off a reorder of my cards, but I do not want to deal with them anymore (since their response I've written and deleted a couple nasty responses.  I think I'm going to have to wait till I cool down a bit before I respond) and I can't really afford to spend more money on business cards.  I did look at their website again, but had to hunt around to find their recommendation against using borders.  My fault?  I guess so.  But it still makes me so mad and upset and disappointed.  So, if you're having business cards printed (or maybe anything at all printed) you should read EVERYTHING that the company provides as cautionary information and printing requirements.  Just to be on the safe side.  I'm going to try trimming off the edges of my cards so that I can still use them.  We'll see how that works.

Wow.  Thinking about it and writing that made me all worked up again.  So I'll move on (quickly) to happier things.

While I was away for Thanksgiving I was chatting with my sister-in-law and somehow we started talking about typewriters.  I mentioned that I really wanted to get an old one and my father-in-law (who was busy across the room with his iPad) jumped up and said, "You want an old typewriter?  I have one.  Let me go get it."  We went down to a storage room and on the bottom shelf, wrapped in a plastic bag, was a typewriter.  An old Underwood.

 

 

The typewriter came from the newspaper he worked at in Danbury, Connecticut.  It needs to be cleaned and oiled and it might need some other work, too, before it can be used, but it is awesome.  I'd been looking in antique shops and on ebay for years, but I hadn't found one that was just right (and that I could afford).  It was a wonderful surprise that this one found its way to me.  Matthias told me that he and his brothers used to play with it when they were kids.  Made me think of the typewriter my brother and I used to play with.  I wrote letters with it to my parents in the names of my aunt and grandfather and teacher.  I thought a typed letter from another adult would convince my parents to let me get my ears pierced and to get a dog and to be able to wear shorts to school.  In case you were wondering, it didn't work.

I worked on my two purses today, but neither are finished yet.  I should be able to finish them tomorrow.  I think I'm too tired tonight.  It was so dark today that my pictures did not turn out very well at all, but I did snap a few dark shots of the purple crocheted purse.  I decided on which lining I wanted to use and sewed that up and made a covered button as a decorative closure. 

For this purse I'm adding a zipper, so it doesn't really need the covered button, but I liked it.

 I'm getting much better at figuring out the designs for my linings, measuring and cutting them and sewing them together. 

The fabric is a pretty, light brown with birds and vines in a yellowy-wheaty color.  The photos did not capture it very well (thank you dark, dreary, cold day).  There are little purple flowers, too, which don't exactly match the purple of the purse, but I decided that a perfect match wasn't important.  I think it's going to look nice when it's finally finished.  I am sad, though, that I won't be able to use the name I'd reserved for this one ages ago when I started crocheting it.  I wanted to call it Grape Soda because the bobbles were like bubbles in purple soda.  Silly, I know.  (Even sillier because I hate grape soda). 

I didn't take any photos of the other bag, but it doesn't really look very different, except for its covered button. 

I made some more little grannies (while watching the new Sherlock Holmes on PBS... really good, btw).  I haven't put them together in a bracelet yet, but working on them gave me all sorts of ideas, including making them in lots of sizes. 

Stay tuned.