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Showing posts from November, 2012

Positive lesson from a horrible experience

Last month my Visa debit card was hacked. It was a week of ... oh I so want to type the word but I don't swear, at least not usually.  But you can insert the word that you think is coming out of my mouth. I won't go into details, but all is now resolved and I have my money back.  But that is not the horrible part of the whole situation. The horrible part was the lack of communication with my banking institution.  There was only one person everyone said I had to speak to, the person who pretty much never returned any of the messages I left (many of which were how to fill out their forms!).  I would have to call and complain to customer service to get a return call.  After 2 days of leaving messages I finally reached this person on day 3 - to find out that my fraud report hadn't even been looked at.  I was stressed, and freaking out.  This began at 8am on Monday and by Friday I had reached my breaking point.  I was so frustrated I thought I wo...

Random acts of kindness

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All this month I've been seeing friends posting what they are thankful for this month.  This morning as my children's CCD program began the kids were sharing what they were thankful for this month.  I realized I'm thankful for random acts of kindness. I didn't realize how true that thought would be until a few hours later. I bet you're wondering why there is a picture of a set of keys with a CPR barrier on the dashboard of my van.  What do my studio keys have to do with this post?  They tie in with why I'm thankful for random acts of kindness. This afternoon I arrived early for my CPR for New & Expecting Parents class.  I managed to snag a really close and prime parking spot in downtown Dover.  It was a good afternoon, until I reached in my bag for my studio keys.  And they weren't there.  [you can mentally insert ominous music and images of me beginning to panic...] Over the next hour I managed to: Dump my purse and search it. Se...

The no-pattern fleece hat

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A few weekends ago I had the opportunity to teach something different. I taught 2 sewing classes at the Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains Older Girl conference. I had a quite a few requests for the patterns for what we made. The second project was an online pattern for an over-sized tote bag . The first project was a fleece hat. We made 2 - one to keep and one to donate. There isn't a pattern for this hat, so here are the directions. I'll try to add pictures of each step at a later time, but for now here's a pic of the same pattern but with added ears I did for my son's Halloween costume. 1. Measure your head, or the head of the person you are making the hat for. 2. Cut a rectangle out of fleece. It should be 18" high and the width should be the head measurement plus 1". For little kid hats cut only 16" high. The height is measured up the selvage, the width is across, so the measurement of your head is the stretchy part of the...