Kindness of Strangers

Did you ever have one of those days that starts out so good and all of a sudden does a complete 180? That was today. This is what I looked at for quite some time today. I was stuck at a Target and this is what I saw as I sat on a bench with my head resting on the seat back awaiting rescue. I had just made a very nice big purchase that made me all excited. The salesman had done a great job and patiently sat through every question and scenario I could throw at him. ( I am not tech savvy so I tend to ask a million questions.) He was gracious and patient and answered every question with a smile. When I returned to my car I found a completely flat tire. I was nowhere near a service station. So, I called my Mom for back-up. That is what I was doing sitting here looking up at that sign. I then drove to a service station where I was told they did not have anyone they could send out at the moment. They suggested I call a tow service. Then, a very nice gentleman in the garage asked if I had a car to get back to my car. I did. He offered me a portable compression tank to take back with me and try to inflate the tire myself. I was hesitant, but I had no other options. I took it back and was trying to figure out how the hell to re-inflate the thing. I asked 2 young hipster boys if they know how to do it. They say they can give it a try. They re-fill the tire but then discover there is a leak in the valve of the tire. They tell me I should not drive on it and suggest a tow. They apologize. I was just thankful they had helped me. So, back to return the tank. He asks if it worked and I inform him that there is a leak in the valve so I still cannot move the car. I ask how much for the tank and he tells me nothing. It was not a problem. I now find another place that actually can go and change the tire for me. They come to Target, change the tire and then say that they can fix the tire back at the shop for a small fee. I agree. On the way there my spare barely made it because it too needed to be filled. About 20 minutes later I had a newly inflated spare, a fixed tire replaced on the car and the owner then took some money off of the original price for the job. So, in the end, what could have been a completely crappy end of my day was actually saved by the kindness of strangers. Every single person that I came in contact with really went out of their way to help me for no reason. It has renewed my faith in humans. I am going to try and hold onto this feeling for as long as I can.

Fight Against Acting

I just found this via Hello Giggles and it is hilarious. I had to share it and make you laugh today.

This poor baby bird lost its way. I have no idea where it came from but it somehow attached itself to the screen of my kitchen window. It was sort of sitting there in a Batman and Robin fashion. It would not move its feet from the screen and every so often would flap its little wings. The Dad came by and sat on the ledge to holler at it. It maneuvered its way along the screen and finally landed here on the ledge. Well, if it does not fly away at least it will have an excellent seat for viewing the fireworks.

Grab your popcorn

I do not check the forums at Etsy as often as I should. When you are a seller you should really check in because there are often important messages from the administrators as well as useful information from other merchants. Usually, I am pretty lax. Lately, I have found that they can also serve as a great form of entertainment. Who needs reality TV when you can read the back and forth on some of the forum threads. Drama with a capital D. Sometimes I grab my popcorn and sit down to reading. Recently I have noticed that a lot of the drama comes from peeps here in Chicago. Imagine that. About a week ago there was this ranting seller who was accusing another seller of copying her "process". She believed that she had created a special third ingredient for an already long established process and that this other person had stolen it. Yes, she sounded as if she was a little cray-cray. It turned out that the process was nothing new and that there were hundreds of other artists selling the same type of stuff on Etsy. Oh yes, and she actually explained her process in the description of her items! She also had the nerve to change her item listings so that they included a jab at the work of the other shop owner declaring it sub-par. People started telling her she needed to back off. Girl, it got ugly. The accused showed up in the thread, but she was completely professional and courteous. Of course, the thread was closed by the admin when they finally caught on that the original post was a "calling out". I was hanging on to every comment until that time. Wait, it gets better. After the thread was closed, Cray-cray had the nerve to start another one with the same topic and this time including some copies of e-mails. To make it worse she accused "the accused" of lying about the recent death of her mother which made the accused respond again because she was feeling attacked. The poor woman had been receiving e-mails from Cray-cray for awhile and then was accused of lying about the death of her mother. See? Popcorn time. I just looked at Cray-cray's shop profile and this is what she has written there (I did not correct typos) :
Recently I've ben harrassed abused, called every name in the book by a very select few people. On fact, some of these people even felt the need to write nasty things about me on ratemyteachers.org

I am severely hurt, but I kove to create, so I will continue to do so despite it all. If you do hear anything negative about my shop, rest assured, I'm just a good person with a few internet bullies. Oh! And their IP addresses can and will be traced. Just in case you are thinking about doing such a thing yourself.

OK, Cray-cray.

So, let me get to the real reason for this post. I was trolling the forums again and came across a post about Urban Outfitters stealing designs from artists on Etsy as well as other venues. The comments were up to about 17 pages (I think) before it was closed. The story began with this Tumblr post here . It was then on the Huffington post here . It then got crazy and went viral which you can see with the power of the tweet here. So, I pop me up some new corn and I have a seat to read all of the comments on Etsy. I will condense a lot of it by telling you that most of the comments were foul language and hatred aimed at Urban Outfitters and full support of Tru.che. Until...someone raised an interesting point. There were many artists who had created and sold very similar designs before her and yet, she was getting all of the publicity and support. What about those before her that were not featured in the article, but had the same item before she sold hers? What do you think? Should it have been researched a little better by those that wrote the articles or it is just her bonanza for being the squeaky wheel? I saved the best for last. As of two days after the article ran, she had received over $50,000.00 in orders. I have no idea how much that has gone up since I last looked. Urban Outfitters had pulled the item from their website and according to the rumor mill over at the Etsy forum, staff had been notified to also pull the item from the shelves.

Is it just me?

Is it just me? If it is, you can tell me. The only reason I picked up this Polish board game from the alley was the illustration. Really? This is not an old game. It is pretty current. What is with the racist portrayal of Chinese?

Happy Friday Fortune

This was my fortune from lunch. My mind went straight to the gutter when I read this. Unfortunately, that is just the way that my mind works. I guess the "small" would not exactly be "lucky" if you read it the way I did. OK, going to get in line for the shuttle bus to hell. Happy Friday!

Out of the loop in the Loop

This is very random, but I am so out of it that I had to post this. Has anyone seen the Dyson air blade hand dryer in a public bathroom? I was in the Loop yesterday and came across one. They are awesome. You insert your wet hands into the opening and the winds start to blow. You slowly withdraw your hands as the air completely dries your hands as you draw them out. At first, I was sort of reminded of the old Boca della Verita so I hesitated before inserting my hands. I know I am easily amused, but these are pretty cool.

Random Observation

This has to be the most random of observations and posts. I was washing my hands in the bathroom of a public library the other day and I had to stop and admire the tiling. Usually, I am in the biggest hurry to get out of a public bathroom, but this just caught my eye. Thankfully, I was alone in there so I could take out my camera to shoot these photos. I just wish I had a cool enough bathroom to do this in.

There was a big cow at the grocery store...

and it wasn't me.

Clearance Flowers

Have you ever wondered about the flowers stuck in a bucket next to the bargain produce at the grocery store? You know, the ones lumped in with the overripe mangoes and tomatoes? Me, too. There was a big bucket of these "bouquets" at the store the other day. Each bunch was made up of three types of flowers. They were originally $9.99 and they were now $2.99. Worth an experiment, right? I looked them over and tried to pick out the bunch that looked the least dead.
I brought them home, cut them, put them in some treated water and waited to see what would happen. This is what they looked like the next day.

These opened up pretty well.

These seem to be getting a little happier.

These have been the slowest to "revive". I will see if they improve. Either way, it was not too bad for 3 bucks.

Hair Plugs

While shuttling around town looking for my cupcakes I passed this store window display and had to stop. Sigh. Since it was my birthday I began to think that perhaps I was going through some mid-life crisis. Do you see this scooter? I have the exact same model in yellow. The problem is that I have nowhere to store it at my home so it sits in my Mom's garage. Seeing this in the window only reawakened my yearnings to ride it again. Warm weather is right around the corner and I found out last week that a friend of mine knows how to fix them so I could have it up and running. Maybe the timing is finally right.

Grand Funk

I don't know why, but I have entered into a major funk. Spring is around the corner which means I should be happy, right? I think I would rather pull the covers over my head.

So as not to spread my depression to others I thought I would share these with you. They are my favorite flowers and I never seem to be able to find them anywhere. Until now. Ranunculus. Oh, how I love them. They can now be had at Trader Joe's for a mere $4.99 a bunch. I guess everything in the world doesn't suck after all.

I want to live here

I went to see "A Single Man" yesterday. It was such a touching movie. I suggest that everyone run out and see it. Tom Ford did a wonderful job. It was beautifully shot on old stock 35 mm film. It is a treat for the eyes. I do not think I have to mention the clothing. The house in the film is spectacular. One of the occupants of the house in the film is supposed to be an architect. I want it. I did some research to find out who designed it. It was designed by John Lautner. Guess what? It is for sale! Only 1.5 million dollars. You can see it here. It just so happens that I have 1.5 million hidden away in my sock drawer for a rainy day.

Before I forget. For all of you who loved "About a Boy" with Hugh Grant, you are in for a big surprise. Nicholas Hoult who played Marcus is in this film and, boy, has he grown up.

OK, gotta run. I have to get to my sock drawer.

Cabin Fever

We had cabin fever this weekend. Lots of hot soup, sewing, napping and watching football. I did manage to cut out and sew most of the appliques for the quilt. I am so glad the temperatures will be moving up this week as we hope our productivity will as well.

Buried Treasure pt.2

This vibrant vintage fabric is made by Knoll. I do not know what I will do with it. I might stretch frame it.

I also found this nice graphic fabric made in Finland. Sometimes you find nice surprises in your hidden stash.

Buried Treasure

After the purging of my storage space following the yard sale I decided i needed to periodically go down there and really see what is left down there. A week or so ago I went down there to dig through my fabric stash. It was a matter of inventory as well as a matter of preservation. I had noticed evidence that we have had some small uninvited visitors partying in our storage spaces so I thought better to remove anything I did not want to get in harms way. I decided that I needed to get any of my good fabric out of there mad moved into my workspace. I have documented some of it here. I know that I also have some other patterns already in my workspace. Please excuse the wrinkles. If you have no interest in fabric you can stop reading now. All of this is Marimekko. I had no idea that I had collected so much over the years. I have the tiniest scraps to large bolts of some. It was a nice surprise to find these.

Busy weekend

I am glad the weekend is over. It was crazy busy. I participated in a yard sale. The picture above is what was left over. (That is my exhausted mother sitting in the backseat of the car) Believe me when I say that it may look like a lot but it is nothing compared with what I started with. I think it took me 2 hours to bring everything out. I am talking major pieces of furniture. First I had to bring some of of it down three flights of stairs earlier in the week, but I then eventually had to haul it all out and around the building to the lawn. I cannot tell you how tiring it was. The weather was supposed to be decent, but it was much better than predicted. It was bright, sunny and in the 80's. OK, I wasn't planning for that. As you can see, I had no shade in my spot. I fried like a bug on the sidewalk. You will have to overlook my ugly feet below, but I wanted to share the unfortunate tan line from my Adidas which resulted in the shade change around my ankles. That is from only one day. On the bright side, I went to three rummage sales on Friday. There was a lot less good stuff this year, but I did score some prizes. I will share later on in the week. I am just too tired right now.

Just a thought

This is just a random post. I was just at the grocery store and I saw this on the shelf. I think that foreign companies should hire people with a good understanding of American culture to help them decide what the name of their product will be changed to in the United States. Would you really want to drink this?

Happy Friday!

This is where I was first introduced to Sarah Jessica Parker. Way back in my youth. Eons before "Footloose", "L.A. Story", and "Sex and the City". This is how I shall always remember her. Today there is an all day marathon of "Square Pegs" here in Chicago. I don't think I need to say anything more.

Recycling...the horror of it all

I am going to start off easy with this story because I do not want to jump right into the horror of it all. I found this very cute bird lamp several weeks ago and have not been able to list it for sale because I cannot find the right sized box to fit the lamp as well as the shade. The other morning I was walking the beast and I noticed a box that would be the perfect size. It was in a recycling pile in an alley across the street. I grabbed the box and brought it home. I only quickly glanced inside to see one of those domed display stands. NO problem. I would just dispose of it when I got home, or perhaps use it in another project.

It is once I brought it home and opened the box to display the contents that the horror began.

Are you feeling a bit queasy yet?

This is what the completely bubbled item looked like.

Are you ready?

Yes, it was a very detailed bridal Barbie wedding cake topper. That is hardened frosting you are looking at above.

If that were not horrific enough, she is also topless...and SMILING!!!

Please excuse me while I go and self-medicate.