Catch Up

I haven't posted in awhile because I left the camera at Rich and Chris' at Thanksgiving and haven't gotten it back. I have been working on Bleuettes wardrobe and I hope the things I'm making fit. She is here and is in a box on Johns desk and it's so hard not to open it and check to see if the clothes fit! Melissa thinks I should be able to, but since she may be my only gift I want to keep her til Christmas Eve. Her little shoes came yesterday and I gave them to John to put with her. Melissa is knitting her some teeny socks. I have a pattern from 1915 that I really want to try, and some pretty green silk salvaged from a resale blouse that I think I'm going to make it out of. I don't work with silk very often, and even though I got the blouse cheap I'm kind of intimidated by it. I'm wondering if I shouldn't buy a 1/4 yd of silk dupioni because it has more body. I might and use the green silk for a dress that drapes more.

I am going to Mr. Skeens going away lunch today. I haven't posted about how Hancock pretty much forced him to quit because he didn't want to go to North Riverside. They've been putting the squeeze on him for the last couple of months so he's had to work 80 hour weeks because they cut payroll hours so drastically. They wanted him to go to North Riverside where they would cut hours and payroll more. They closed the Joliet store and the manager over there is coming to Lombard. Anyway, I think he's kind of happy he won't have to put up with the bullshit anymore. He's a pretty intelligent guy and I think he's finally taken off the blinders and read the writing on the wall. There's been no doubt in my mind for a long time that Hancock wouldn't survive this economic crisis and I believed that over a year ago before most people would even admit that the crisis was looming just over the horizon. It sucks that a lot of the people I know in the district are going to get screwed as Hancock flops around like a fish out of water taking it's last gasps of air before it dies. I wish I could do something, but I've been saying this is going to happen for a long time and it wasn't that hard to figure it out. On a more personal level, my big concern is thread, I need to get a lot of thread to augment all the thread I have already. I have plenty of other notions, and I can get fabric and trims from my thrift shop finds. But I'd like to stock up on thread, especially since this is going to hit Hobby Lobby and JoAnn too. I suspect it already is cutting into JoAnn big time; Hobby Lobby I don't know as much about. Anyway, without an American textile industry in the immediate future thread is going to get a lot more expensive so I want to get a bunch now. Cotton covered polyester or 100% polyester because it lasts the longest. I prefer cotton but it starts to get brittle faster.

Siobhan and I have been rewatching Stargates lately. We have all of the episodes up through season 5 I think, but for some reason Disc 1 Season 2 won't play. I haven't watched them in awhile so I don't remember which shows I'm missing and how much it has to do with the continuing mythology of the show.

On another subject, Lunasa is my current favorite Celtic band. Here they are live at the Cork Folk Festival on Aug 31 2007: