Winner of the Stitch Giveaway!

Hello! Thank you to everyone who participated in my Stitch magazine giveaway, I really appreciate your kind comments and suggestions for sewing tutorial resources.

To arrive at 18 entrants I culled out my comment, my mom's comment (sorry mom!) and a duplicate comment leaving me with this list:

1. Sonja
2. PoetessWug
3. kcroteau
4. alamodestuff
5. Chrissy Ann Ceramics
6. melissa
7. andrea creates
8. Paputsi
9. Campbell
10. MB by Brigid
11. Jane
12. Marissa
13. Sharon
14. The Sexy Knitter
15. booksNyarn
16. Jean Ashley
17. Renee
18. AniDoll

I then entered the numbers 1-18 into the Random Number Generator on http://www.random.org/ And came up with this result:



Congratulations Marissa! I'll be in touch to get your snail mail address.

Meanwhile I will need some time to look through all the wonderful sewing website suggestions and choose the winner of the pincushion ring so stay tuned.

Thanks again!

Stitch Magazine Giveaway!

So excited and honored to have my pincushion ring chosen as a wish list item in the Special Fall 2010 issue of Stitch Magazine from Interweave Press!


I am very happy to announce that I have one copy of this fabulous issue of Stitch to give away.

After 20 years owning a sewing machine I am sadly still mostly a novice and I am itching to learn more about sewing, especially small projects like pillows and bags. So here's what you do to enter this magazine giveaway: leave a comment below with a link to your favorite sewing tutorial website/blog or your favorite online sewing project tutorial. That's it! The winner will be chosen randomly from all the entries received.

As a special, separate bonus, I will send a free pincushion ring to the person who points me toward the website or tutorial I find the most helpful and/or inspiring.


The giveaway deadline for entry is Thursday, September 23rd with the winner of the magazine giveaway announced on Friday the 24th.

The winner of the pincushion ring will be announced after I have had a chance to look at all the links.

Please remember to include a way for me to contact you if you are the winner and good luck!

Podcast Recommendation of the Week - Number 5

Here's a quickie podcast recommendation for a short week:

Planet Money!

I love Planet Money on NPR. This team of reporters investigates the economy, economics, and economists then reports back in an entertaining and easy to understand format. Recommended if you like Marketplace and want to know more about what economic terms like Collateralized Debt Obligation mean. They go deeper into what actually happened during the recent economic meltdown by talking with economists of all opinions.

I got so interested in economics after listening to this podcast that I tried listening to other economics podcasts but, um, no. The Planet Money team is doing something special. The segments are usually short, about 20 minutes, which makes for a nice little bite of a podcast.

Cheers!

You will find the previous entries in this series in a list on the right.

Mom Painting

I ran across this video I shot of my Mom painting which is from 2007. I found it among files transferred off the hard drive of my mom's old fried laptop. And here's what my Mom was working on! Beautiful Mom, just beautiful!

Podcast Recommendation of the Week - Number 4

Podcasts are great for listening to a show I missed during the day, or a show that's not available on the radio. But to keep up with current events I daily listen to radio live-streaming on the internet. That is quite possibly my favorite perk of this amazing technology age. All day long at my studio I tune in to different NPR stations through my computer, stations too far away to pick up through my humble radio antenna.

While I get ready in the morning I do listen to one of three local NPR stations I can tune in on the tape-to-tape AM/FM boom box I bought back in college. I am lucky to be within range of New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR), Boston College Public Radio (WBUR) and the Grandmama of them all, WGBH. (Which I know stands for Great Blue Hill because my dad always pointed out the actual hill as we drove past it when I was a kid).

At my studio the radio reception is terrible so I turn on my PC and boot up Windows Media Center where I have my favorite stations bookmarked.

In the mornings I love Morning Edition, news and culture for several hours.

From 10 AM to 12 noon I love listening to WAMU's The Diane Rehm Show. Diane talks with pundits about politics, experts about issues, and authors about books. It's also a call-in show so she takes questions from the audience. She is very smart and engaged. Don't let her voice throw you. She has a tremulous tone due to a paralyzed vocal chord, but she will certainly grow on you if you give her a chance. I especially recommend her lively Friday News Roundup.

If Diane isn't covering a topic I'm interested in, I'll turn to energetic and engaged Tom Ashbrook with WBUR's On Point, a similar format show. both Tom and Diane are great at coaxing callers to get to the point.

At noon I like Here and Now an hour long program also from WBUR. This show covers national stories a bit more in-depth with longer interviews and also goes a bit off the beaten path sometimes to find interesting musicians and such.

At 1 o'clock, I hate to miss Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Fresh Air is an hour long interview program that covers news and culture in a thoughtful entertaining way. The topics can be silly or serious. Always excellent. This is the kind of show that gets me interested in a person or topic even if I'm absolutely sure I don't care.

2 pm is Talk of the Nation. It's actually on from 2-4 but my local stations have dropped the second hour so I turned to the NPR Broadcast Schedule linked from the show page to locate WNJN in New Jersey which plays both hours. Isn't that cool?

At 4 it's time for the venerable evening news program All Things Considered. Just hearing the iconic theme song is enough to make me feel all is right with the world even if the news they are about to tell me proves my feelings wrong.

By the time Marketplace comes on at 6 or 6:30 I am usually back home cooking dinner. I love listening to the day's economics news in this half-hour, easy-to-comprehend format.

So now you know the extent of my NPR addiction. But I am not ashamed! NPR keeps me entertained, informed and sane. Invite me to your cocktail party, I know at least a little bit about everything going on in the world. :)

Summer Vacation

Podcast Recommendation of the Week - Number 3

I started a new series recommending the podcasts I enjoy listening to while crafting. You can find the growing links list on the right hand sidebar.

*Please note you don't need an iPod to listen to these programs, they are available on the websites I link to and can be listened to through any MP3 player or right on your computer.*

I grew up listening to Car Talk on NPR, it was part of my childhood weekend. Mom prepared lunch, dad tinkered in the basement, and I sat at the kitchen table drawing while we all listened to the goofy Magliozzi brothers laugh at their own terrible jokes and try to answer real questions about car repair.

I lived in Tennessee in my twenties. I was surprised to find a co-worker who thought Tom and Ray were stupid and childish who just laughed at their own stupid jokes. I thought, "Yeah, so what?" That's part of the charm of these intelligent Cambridge guys; their self deprecation, infectious laughter and recurring inside jokes you don't really need to get.

Plus they really do answer questions about cars and car repairs! And relationships strained by disagreement over car issues.

If you already listen, I'm preaching to the choir, but if you haven't tried it yet, I hope you enjoy getting to know this silly, relaxed show. (If, however, you agree with my TN coworker then please, let us never speak of this again.)