Arrr, Ye Crafty Wenches and Mates

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, don’t ye know. The first thing you need to do is wave your cutlass about and demand your pirate name.

I am Dread Pirate Rackham: Like the famous Dread Pirate Roberts, I have a keen head for how to make a profit. I have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Ye Pirate Treasure Chest

Google is ye old virtual pirate crafting treasure chest. Drink your grog and swagger on over to a few swashbuckling sites for some crafty piratical fun:

• The Pirate Queen's Booty Bag free knitting pattern
• Pirates Ahoy embroidery pattern at Sublime Stitching
• Pirate Pouch sewing tutorial at Lola Nova blog
• Papercrafting a Pirate Party Set at Plaid Kids’ Crafts
• Rhonda White’s Knitted Skull and Crossbones Wash/Dish Cloth free pattern

Blessings Friday: Abundance

This morning I decided to get all my housework and laundry done before logging on to my computer. Friday is my favorite day of the week as it heralds a generally care-free weekend ahead.

Today feels like a good day to consider the abundance of blessings I have in my life. There’s always room for improvement however, so I’ve set aside time to listen to the Create an Abundant Life CD I’ve loaded on my iPOD. Although I don’t see autumn here in Tucson, I do feel it inside. Autumn is a time for reflection and the need to do so is urging me on today.

May your weekend be blessed with much abundance.

September Craft:Along: Strawberry Rhubarb Buckle

One of the optional challenges for Finny and Kelli's September Craft:Along is making Strawberry Rhubarb Buckle. Last night I gave it a try.

© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

The recipe was created by Katie Goodman of goodLife {eats} blog and featured on Craft:.

Please note there’s a small error in the recipe. Batter ingredients call for 1 teaspoon baking soda; however, it should read 1 teaspoon baking powder—at least I hope so. The directions use the word powder and that seemed reasonable to me, so that’s what I used.

© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

The buckle is baked in individual ramekins, mine are heart-shaped. I’m not convinced I did the topping correctly—it looks like chunks of ground beef. Ah well, the taste is divine and that’s good enough for me.

© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

Although not part of the Craft:Along challenge, I tried Williams-Sonoma’s Croque Madame recipe last week. My husband liked the bit about a fried egg on top of the sandwich, but I left it off my portion as I think it’s yucky.

Mermaid Thoughts

Every now and then I just absolutely have to make something with a mermaid theme. It might be the end of summer where you live, but it’s still going strong here. Summer is always in my heart anyway and mermaids do not hibernate.

Over the span of a few years, I watched as Kim Antieau wrote her book Church Of The Old Mermaids and was thrilled when it became available this year in both print and Kindle versions. While reading one of her blogs (Old Mermaids Journal), I learned about the delightful 13 Suggestions from the Old Mermaids contributed by friends she calls Sister Mermaids.


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

Since I’m pretty much a tactile kind of person and need to have something to actually touch, I made a set of the suggestions in sea shell form but am calling them Mermaid Thoughts.


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

My husband drilled holes in the ends of two Lion’s Paw shells so I could tie them together.


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

A picture of the shell was used to create my pages in Microsoft Word which I printed on cardstock. One side depicts a saying and the back is a shell image (you can see one of the backs on the top left in the picture below). Binding the pages together doesn’t appeal to me as I like the idea of them being free and wild (like mermaids). Open the shell case and out spill Mermaid Thoughts—just as they should.


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

I added a thought of my own, making it an aggregate of 14 cards, feeling I shouldn’t just swim along mindlessly behind the other mermaids but put a bit of me into it, too. It’s presumptuous, but I crowned myself an unofficial Sister Mermaid.

Charitable Donations

Fall cleaning is underway at my house. Purging is part and parcel of my seasonal cleaning efforts. But what to do with all this stuff I decide must go?

Garage sales make me absolutely bonkers. I mark things down so much each item really ought to be gift-wrapped. But still I’ll get a request to lower my prices. For example, a brand-new-in-the-box $50 electric ice cream maker (we got two for gifts one time) was marked as $3 and someone insisted I sell it for $1. My response: “Well, how about $4?” See, that’s what I do, add in their offer to my original price—it flabbergasts people and they aren’t sure what to think. Obviously, I don’t deal at all well with garage sales.

Anyway, forget the garage sale. I can do something worthy with our stuff by making charitable donations. I made arrangements and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America came by on Friday, so that pile is now gone. A different charitable organization is selected each time the purging mood descends upon me.


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

Now I’m purging my fabric and yarn stash. Yes, sacrilege, I know, but my enthusiasm for crafting has exceeded the bounds of realism. Thus the stuff has to go. There are charities that can use such things.

The joys of seasonal cleaning are all encompassing, aren’t they?

Resources

Here are but a few charities that welcome fabrics and yarns:

• Care Wear
• Charity Craft Volunteer Network
• CUREchief
• Project Linus
• Tips and Tricks for Donating Your Fabric article

Lingerie Bag in Black

I’ve finished the second of my two lingerie bags. The first one (found here) was stitched using white floss. Today’s finish is stitched in black.


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

You know what I just realized in looking at the picture I took of my finished bag? If you look at it just right, it looks like a jack o’lantern face in a really strange kind of way. Just goes to show it doesn’t take much to make me smile and that my imagination is, shall we say, a bit different.

Resources

Although I listed them in my August post about working on this project, I’ll repeat the French sources of my materials and cross-stitch chart used for making the lingerie bags:

• Picque & Picque home page
• Picque & Picque lingerie bag
• Picque & Picque cross-stitch chart leaflet

Remembering and Learning

As everyone knows, today is the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We honor the memory of that day and the resulting huge loss of life.

At the time of the attacks, I was traveling for work and had just handed my ticket to the airline agent to board my plane home from Pensacola, Florida. As I started down the ramp, airport officials suddenly called for an immediate evacuation and the agent hustled me away from the plane.

Passengers streamed out of the airport doors, some boarding buses and private vehicles to leave as we were all directed to get away from the airport immediately. I had no transportation and had to take my luggage and sit in the median of the nearby highway.

I was panicked as to what to do and how to reach my husband and children. I couldn’t reach anyone at first via cell phone, but finally managed to connect with my mother who explained to me about the transpiring terrorist events.

Calling rental car agencies to try to drive home to Arizona didn't work, no cars were available. Buses and even Amtrak were packed and there was no room for me. Finally I called my mother-in-law and arranged to be picked up and taken to her house where I stayed two weeks until I could get a flight home.


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved. This is a flag project my sister Connie was making in glass.

We remember the heartache of the losses and the terror over the events of 9/11—an infamous day in history and our lives were irrevocably changed. Most Americans have no idea what to do in the event of disaster—I certainly didn’t. We are not prepared, but we should be.

I’ve since learned about emergency planning and the preparation of a disaster kit. I cannot control the behavior of others, but I can somewhat mitigate my helplessness by being as responsibly prepared as possible.

Resources

The following is a brief list of emergency resources from a national level. Your state and local governmental plans drill down from the national point.

• Emergency Alert System at Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau
• Federal Emergency Management Agency
• National Terror Alert Emergency Preparedness