Handmade Soy Candles

We burn a lot of candles around here. Some of us like them because of the ambience and mood they set. Others burn them because they smell nice and cover up the scent of dog and dust. But candles, especially the fancy strongly scented ones, can be very expensive.

For my birthday last spring I received candles from 3 different people. That just goes to show how evident my candle love is I guess. When Emma and I went to the Ren Faire this summer we oohed and ahhed over the Beeswax candle seller’s booth and walked away with a bag full of scented wonderfulness. While I love a nice Yankee Candle or one of the many Target knock-offs, nothing is quite the same as a handmade candle. Plus I find that soy or beeswax candles burn longer than store bought candles and soy creates less soot for a cleaner burn. I’ve managed to burn through 3 out of the 4 candles I received back in March.  So in order to light up the long winter evenings and make the joint smell more pleasant than a dirty dog, Emma and I decided to make some candles this fall.

First of all we gathered all the old jar candles we had with just a bit of wax in the bottoms and cleaned them out. There are different ways to do this. If the wax is thicker than a half an inch or so I will pop them in the freezer overnight and often the wax will pull away from the sides of the jar and fall right out. Be careful with the frozen jar, it can break or shatter if exposed to temperature fluctuations or if you knock it hard. NEVER pour boiling water into a frozen jar! If the remaining wax is thinner I will pour boiling water into the jar and watch as the old wax rises to the top like a groovy lava lamp. Once it cools I can take the wax off the top of the water and toss it away. (I could save it and add it to new candles I suppose.) DON’T POUR THE WATER WITH MELTED WAX DOWN YOUR DRAIN! (I take mine outside and toss it in the fire pit.) Once all the big amount of wax and the old wick are removed I run them through the dishwasher to remove any remaining small bits of  wax and labels.

I ordered new wicks, wax and other miscellaneous supplies from PEAK candle supply. I really like the wicks with the metal holder attached that I hot glue to the bottom of the jar or tin. I have a bag of small tins with lids leftover from projects at the store that make perfect little travel candles.

One thing that is very important when making candles is to have a pot to melt the wax in and a double boiler set up. I ordered a new pouring pot from Peak because I can’t find the one I used to use. I’ve even used an empty coffee or juice can but they don’t have a nice handle and pour spout.

To make a double boiler I use a heavy saucepan half filled with water with 3 canning jar lids in the bottom to hold the melting pot up off the bottom of the pan. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO NEVER MELT WAX OVER DIRECT HEAT! Always use a double boiler. Wax is very flammable and dangerous. Never walk away from melting wax while it is on the heat source. It can go from “just melted” to ignition in a second. There is a reason they call it “Flash Point.”

I ordered 10# of soy container wax that is specially formulated for jar candles. Container wax is a little softer than pillar wax and I think holds scent better. I also like that this wax is in flake form. Super easy to weigh and measure. I also made sure that the wicks I ordered were the right sizes for the containers I was going to put them in.

First thing to do is to attach the wicks to the bottoms of the containers. I just used a dot of hot glue to the metal tab and carefully positioned them on the bottom of the jar/tin. One jar was giving me fits, the tab just wouldn’t stick! Then I realized that it was still a little wet from when I washed it out. Duh! If your jars are too deep to reach down into the bottom use a skewer or chopstick to press the tab in place.

The wicks I bought are pretty stiff and will probably stand up straight but I still like to hold them in place while I pour the hot wax. I found that a pair of skewers and some small orthodontic rubber bands hold them perfectly. If you don’t have a houseful of people currently or in the recent past wearing braces, use tape or other small rubber bands.

Now it is time to prepare your wax. I recommend getting all your jars with wicks in place before melting your wax. I like to weigh my wax so I know how much fragrance oil to add and if I like the results I can repeat them again in the future. I went with a ratio of .5 ounce fragrance oil to 1# of wax (pre-melted.) The wax I bought is in flake form so it is really easy to measure and weigh. Carefully and slowly melt your wax using the double boiler set up described earlier. Once it is all liquefied, remove it from the heat and add your fragrance oil. (Note about FO: Some have a lower flash point, the temperature at which all the scent will burn off. If yours has a low flash point, use a thermometer to gauge your wax and only add it after it has cooled to that point.) When stirring in your FO be careful not to stir in any air bubbles. This is also when you can add a colorant if you wish. Anything from crayons, bits of old candles or dye specifically made for candles can be used.

You can now start carefully pouring the melted and scented wax into your containers. The wax I used is a “Single Pour” wax. This means that it shouldn’t need a second pour after it has cooled. Some waxes will settle around the wick and need a second pour to fill up the void.

Something I didn’t do but may try in the future is to preheat my glass containers. On one of my finished candles I can see where the wax didn’t adhere to the sides of the glass all the way to the bottom. It was one of the last I poured and I think my wax had started to cool. I’ve read that if you blast the inside of your glass jars with a heat gun or even a hot hair dryer it will warm up the glass and not “shock” the wax so it adheres well to the sides. It makes sense to me and I will do this on any candles I plan to give as gifts or possibly sell.

Now all you have to do is wait for the wax to cool and solidify. I can tell you that these smelled SO good! We used a Lilac scent oil and the house smelled like a May morning.

 

Once everything is cool you can remove the “wick sticks”, that’s what I call them anyway. The last step is to trim the wicks before you burn them. I use a nail clipper to trim them to about a 1/4”.

I like to let them sit for at least 24 hours before burning them to be sure everything has cured. But I can tell you that I have one burning in the kitchen right now and it is heavenly.

Make It Soap

AKA: Earl Grey & Honey

I had the day off today and some time to do more soap making experimenting. I had this idea that I could use cold tea instead of water in my soap recipe. I had a bottle of bergamot essential oil for fragrance. I knew I made some mistakes in making my first batch and wanted to try again and try to do it right this time.

I often have some left over tea in my little pot in the morning that I forget about or don’t have time to drink. I started putting it in a jar in the fridge to save for soap. I drink Teavana Earl Grey loose tea and it has a nice strong bergamot flavor.

Last time I used coconut oil, lard and olive oil as my fats. This time I wanted to make my batch larger and use almond oil instead of olive oil. So I did a little math and put my ideas into the SoapCalc lye calculator to come up with this recipe:

• Coconut Oil (76degree) 11.2 ounces
• Lard                             9.6 ounces
• Almond Oil                   11.2 ounces
• Tea                              12.16 ounces
• Lye                               4.7 ounces (133.713 grams)
• Bergamot Essential Oil    1.7 ounces
• Honey                               1 ounce

Turn crockpot on high to preheat and measure out oils. I started with the solid oils (butters) to get them melting. Once I had all the oils in the pot and melting I measured out the tea and lye. It is VERY IMPORTANT that when you mix the liquid and lye you pour the LYE INTO THE WATER (tea). Otherwise you will have a caustic volcano on your hands!!!! And I can’t say it enough, WEAR GOGGLES AND GLOVES!

One thing I didn’t do Sunday that I was careful to do today was I took the temperature of my lye mixture and the oils before combining them. I’ve read that when doing hot process the temps of the two components isn’t as important but I wanted to do it “right” this time! LOL

Once my oil was completely melted and at about 110 degrees and the lye mixture was at about 120 degrees I carefully poured the lye mixture into the oil pot. And I also took the oil pot out of the crock pot to take it off the heat.

 

I stir it all together and use the stick blender for a bit to get everything emulsified. Another mistake I made Sunday was that I totally over-used the stick blender. To the point that I burned the motor out! Not only did I ruin a brand new stick blender but I over processed the soap to the point that it was “done” before I set it to cook.

Can you see the nice “latte” color of the mix? That is from the tea. The natural scent of the tea didn’t last through the mixture with the lye but that’s okay.

This is what I think is considered “light trace”. It is when the mixture is about the consistency of warm pudding or mayonnaise. Again most of the stuff I’ve been reading says that achieving “trace” isn’t as important in hot process soap making. Just get everything mixed together real well. If it is this nice creamy color, it is good to go.

 

 

Then I put the pot back in the heating element of the crock pot and set it on low with the lid on. After about 15-20 minutes I started to see some gelling around the edge.

Patience is truly a virtue with soap making! I had to keep myself from lifting the lid and stirring this stuff! That was what I did Sunday and never got the look that I’d seen on all the blogs and tutorials I had read.

THIS is what I was waiting for! The gelled soap had pretty much engulfed the raw soap. I gave it a few more minutes on the heat and then all the light colored raw soap was gone and it all looked like oily Vaseline.

I took it off the heat and stirred in the essential oil and honey. It is now ready to pour into the mold.

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I made my soap mold out of the Amazon box that the soap making books I just ordered came in. It even came with a flat piece that fit perfectly into the bottom that I taped in to give a smooth bottom. I had to line it though so I kind of lost the smoothness. I’ll have to work on my lining skills.

This recipe didn’t quite fill this mold as deep as I had hoped. I’ll either need to use a different mold or make my recipe bigger. In hindsight, this would be a good recipe for a Pringle’s can, I’d just have to use the oil amounts from the earlier batch to make it a bit smaller. As it was, it was about a half an inch thick rather than the 1-1.5” thickness that I had hoped for. I think a recipe with 3-3.5# fat would be just about right. This recipe had 2# fat.

Hot process soap isn’t as smooth and creamy as cold process but especially for a “natural flavored” soap like this one I think the rough surface works really well.

At some point I will try cold process. I’m not sure why it is recommended to get comfortable with CP before trying HP. To me having all that raw soap with active lye around until it cures is “harder” than just cooking it down and molding it and being done. But maybe I’m just too impatient for CP. I have seem some really amazing CP soaps with cool color effects and really nice, smooth shapes so I will have to give it a go at some time.

I left it to harden for a few hours. You can see that it lightened up in color as it cooled. At this point it smelled so good! Just like a hot cup of Earl Grey Tea! I let it sit on the kitchen counter like this while I ran some errands and picked Emma up from school. We had some shopping to do too so it probably sat for 3 hours.

 

I cut it into thirds the long way and then into six pieces the other way for 18 finished bars of soap. They only weigh about 2.5 oz. each at this point which is quite a bit lighter than I’d like for a finished bar. I’m going to have to get a different mold or modify my recipe a bit to get the finished size I ultimately want.

Overall I’m really happy with this batch of soap. The scent is divine! It truly smells like a cup of Earl Grey, hot (with a touch of honey). I think Jean Luc would enjoy a nice bubble bath with it on the Holodeck!

Staying Balanced

This weekend was of course the Autumnal Equinox, Mabon, or the first day of fall. It also marked our 23rd wedding anniversary on Sunday. The old wives’ tale says that an egg can be balanced on its end on the equinoxes. Even though I guess I’m officially an old wife now I’ve never tried this particular trick. I can tell you from personal experience this weekend that staying balanced in yoga poses seems easier during the equinox than other times. But that may just be coincidence or the fact that I’ve been doing my daily practice almost daily for about a month and I’m just getting stronger and more grounded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is just a sneak peak of the projects and things we did around here this weekend. Can you tell that my creative energy has returned? I hope to write posts/tutorials for all of these activities in the near future. Well, except for the beautiful teenage daughter who likes to walk in the woods and create things with her parents. I’m not sure I can write a tutorial on how to make one of your own. We may have just gotten lucky! Also I personally know next to nothing about making wine but I’m trying to convince Steve to write a guest post on that for us soon. Emma also made a hand-bound journal on Sunday and I’m trying to get her to share that with my readers as well. Maybe I’ll just have her teach me and then I can share what I learned from her for a change.

What I do know how to do or am in the process of learning is making candles and hot process soap. I’ve made candles in the past and Emma wanted me to show her how it is done. These are really simple soy container candles. We’ve been saving the jars from old candles and cleaning the wax out of them to reuse for our own candles. I also had these small metal tins with lids from the store that we used for bath salts. They make perfect little travel candles. This batch of candles are Lilac scented. Kind of a weird choice for fall but we were just experimenting and I had just enough lilac fragrance oil to use up on this batch. The house smelled like a May morning! I did just receive a shipment of supplies including some new scents that we’ll be using for fall and winter scented candles soon.

Bottom left is a photo of my first batch of finished soap. This is something that I’ve wanted to try forever and finally gathered the supplies, knowledge and courage to give it a go. There are so many resources and online tutorials out there now to help take the fear out of making soap. This is a really simple Coconut oil, lard and olive oil soap with lavender & sage fragrance and a bit of blue colorant swirled in. I used a Pringle’s can as my mold to make round soap. I know I made some mistakes but I learned a lot and am excited to try some new ideas already to make more. It really isn’t as scary as I had feared. My next batch is going to be Earl Grey (bergamot) and honey soap made with actual Earl Grey tea.

Mabon is the “Witches Thanksgiving” and while I’m not a practicing Wiccan, I do follow some of their traditions and incorporate them into my eclectic spiritual practice. Obviously the tradition of being thankful for the earth’s bounty in the fall isn’t exclusive to pagans. Regardless, this is the time of year to be grateful for our many blessings. I’m so full of gratitude for so much right now that I can’t even begin to list it all.

The biggest thing I’m thankful for right now is the feeling of home and family that we are experiencing right now. Emma and I are spending a lot of time together walking, talking, creating and learning to drive. It is comfortable and just nice. I don’t know how else to describe it. Even though Sarah doesn’t live at home right now, we’re still very connected. We talk, text or message regularly. As I’ve said before, I’m so grateful that she is finding her niche in the world. Steve and I are also getting back into a good place. He’s traveling more again for his job but we’re making a real effort to stay connected while he’s on the road and to be welcoming and engaging with each other when he gets home. It is also nice. We’re also doing stuff together and nurturing each other’s creative spirits. When you consider that we met 26 years ago, there is very little to discover that is new, so it is important to foster a spirit of growth both as individuals and as a couple. I am thankful that I have a partner that is willing to grow along with me.

Blessed be.

Everything is Sound

Yesterday I took my iPod with me on my morning walk. Usually I just walk in silence and listen to the wind and birds. I had recently downloaded some new music. I bought Libana’s “A Circle is Cast” over a decade ago from a suggestion in the Chinaberry catalog. I would listen to it while I did housework, sewed or meditated. I lost that original CD and decided I needed it back in my life now. I also downloaded their Fire Within album while I was at it along with some yoga music. I put it all in a playlist along with a few of my favorite Jason Mraz songs and set out on foot.

As I turned the corner to go down another street I was startled by a young doe stepping from the woods in front of me. I stopped and stood quietly watching her. Soon she was joined by two fawns, one looked to be a yearling and the other had just lost its spots. We stood quietly watching each other and then she slowly turned and went back into the woods, her offspring following. As I resumed my walk the following song came through my earphones.

“Now I walk in beauty. Beauty is before me. Beauty is behind me. Above and Below.”

It was a perfect convergence of time and place. I walked on in peace and love.

As I walked I made a concious effort to look up and around. So often when we walk we tend to focus on the patch of ground right in front of our feet. This isn’t a bad idea, especially on uneven or unfamiliar ground. But it also makes us miss the world all around us and over our heads. As I passed a yard with two gorgeous willow trees gently blowing in the morning wind I see a huge hawk floating overhead sweeping and rising on the same wind that blew the trees. At that moment this song came on:

Be like a Bird

The day was just getting more and more magical with every step I took. Everyday I end my morning meditation with the following two Libana songs. They are becoming my mantra. They remind me to be gentle and content with myself.

My Daily Mantra Song

“I will be gentle with myself, I will love myself. I am a child of the Universe, being born each moment.”

 

As I turned the last corner I was walking directly into the morning sun. The day was quite cool but the sun was bright and filled my vision with warmth and light. I quickly changed my iPod to this newer Jason Mraz song.

93 million miles

 

My daughter and I just saw him in concert last Saturday night. We had 5th row center seats and it was also a magical night.

As that song ended his song “Everything is Sound” came on. I dare you to listen to the chorus of this song and not want to skip and sing along like the old Dr. Pepper commercials!

 

 

 

Be Love.

And “sew” it goes.

Emma made her first “real” sewing project this summer. She’d been asking me to help her make a dress for a while and we finally made the time. I also bought her her own Bernette sewing machine this summer. It came in to the store used and I got it for a song. So now she can sew whenever she feels like it without having to ask me to use my machine.

We chose a number of different patterns because she liked details from all of them and we discussed how to combine them to make exactly what she wanted. In the end she chose this pattern from the Simplicity Project Runway collection: 1803. We made a few modifications like taking off the cap sleeves and pleating rather than gathering the skirt.

She chose an embroidered cotton eyelet for her main fabric so we interlined it with a lightweight cotton batiste. If we were to use this fabric again we might choose a light colored lining fabric to give it some depth and subtle color.

She did all the work herself with very little help from me. She even inserted the zipper herself! I helped her with some of the fitting issues and deciphering some of the harder to understand pattern instructions.

Overall she is very happy with the results. Part way into the process she was getting discouraged because it was taking so long. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t make a dress in a day like I do! I reminded her that I’ve been doing this since I was her age and eventually if she kept at it she’d be able to whip things together quickly too. But for now, the joy is in the journey.

She’s worn it out into the world a couple times. One being today to school. The first time she wore it, when we took these photos, she stopped into the store where I work to show it off. Her self esteem got a nice boost when my co-workers were very complimentary about it and the quality of her work.

This was a great experience for me too. Emma is my little artist and has a deep, creative, free-spirited soul. I tease her that I think she may be a Changeling, that the faeries took my baby and left her in its place. (She does have pointed elf ears!) Over the years there have  been times that we just didn’t “get each other”. One would think that now that she is a teenager that would be even more the case. But we’re actually growing closer and finding more commonalities than differences. I’m sure it helps that her sister is away at college now and we have more one-on-one time together. But I also think we are just growing into each other. If the faeries ever come back and want to take her back they’ll be in for a fight!

 

 

String Quilt: Sneak Peak

Operation Use It or Lose It continues. This project is all about using up all the little bits and pieces of quilting cotton I’ve collected over the past few years. Most of this came from bolt ends and remnants left of fabric from the store. Some are scraps left from previous projects.

There are lots of string quilts on Flickr and Pinterest to look to for inspiration. I made a similar smaller quilt at work out of Amy Butler fabrics in blues and teals. It is a simple process that can produce some pretty impressive results.

I started by pulling out all my fabric and cut it into strips that varied from 1.5” to 3.5” wide. Some are the full width of the fabric and others are shorter depending on what I started with of course. I also cut several 1.5” wide strips of the dark brown print for the center strip on each of the squares. I chose the dark brown because my bed is a dark wood and I thought it would set off the other mixed colors nicely. Also, I had a lot of the brown! I also cut 80 13” squares from a light colored cotton that has very small dots in light blue and green. Normally I would use a good quality muslin for my foundation squares but I didn’t have any and this project is all about using up what I have so I chose the lightest fabric I had and went with that. I could have also used paper for my foundation pieces but I wanted finished 12.5” units and didn’t have any paper that large. Plus I really didn’t want to have to pull off all that backing paper when this was all done! This is going to be used on my bed and the extra durability that the foundation fabric gives the finished quilt will come in handy with dogs sleeping on the bed too. I wash my bed quilt at least once a month, sometimes more depending on the dogs so it has to stand up to a lot of wear and tear.

All of the strips went into a big hamper and got mixed up like a fabric casserole! This just sits next to my chair and I reach in and grab a random strip for each step.

 

 

 

Because this quilt is going to be king size when it is finished I wanted to start with big foundation squares. String quilts made with smaller units are very striking but I’m all about getting this project done in as little time and effort as possible. Each unit starts as a 13” square and gets trimmed down to 12.5” after all the strips are sewn on.

Place the center strip diagonally across the foundation square.

Place next strip face down on center strip, aligning edges. Stitch, using a 1/4” seam allowance along edge of strips, attaching it to the foundation piece.

 

Flip strip open and press. Continue adding strips on both sides of center strip until the entire foundation square is covered.

 

 

Align 12.5” square ruler up on top of completed unit with the diagonal centered over middle strip. Trim all the way around.

Completed, trimmed unit.

Four units make up a full block. In my case a block will be 24” square. My plan is to make 80 units or 20 large blocks and configure them in a 5X4 pattern to make an extra large king size quilt. I’m pretty sure that for the first time I will be sending this one out to be quilted on a long arm. However with my new machine on its way, I could conceivably quilt this on it. But I have a feeling there will be so many other projects that I will want to do on it that it will be better to let someone else finish this quilt for me.

Not only am I using this project to use up all my miscellaneous fabric scraps, I’m taking this opportunity to empty all my bobbins and use up odd colored threads. With the way this is pieced and the variety of colors and patterns in the fabrics, the thread color really doesn’t matter. I have so many random bobbins with weird colors wound on them that I just set this holder next to my machine and when one runs out I just grab the next one in line and use it until it is gone. There are a few on here with rayon or decorative threads. I won’t use those, I’ll just have to remember to pull the old thread off those someday.

This is my set up when I work on this project. I have a stack of foundation squares next to my machine. On the other side is my ironing board. Usually I lower the board to be level with the table and all I do is swivel my chair from machine to iron between each strip, press, cut and add next strip. I keep the basket of strips next to me and just reach in and grab whatever I need. The pile of brown center strips is on the end of the ironing board. I can quickly move through the sewing of one unit without getting up from my machine with this set up. When I finish a unit I get up and take it to the cutting table and trim it. My goal is to make at least 4 units, or one big square every time I’m up in my sewing room. It would be great to have this quilt on my bed by the holidays.

In related news, I am working with a friend to get a Modern Quilt Guild started in our area. If you are interested in joining us please like our Facebook Page and join us for our first meeting on September 27 at 6pm at Sew Generously, St. Charles, IL.

World Suicide Prevention Day

I had another post planned for today and hopefully I will have the time and the words to type it out tomorrow. It’s one that had been percolating in my mind for over a week. But I just realized that it was National Suicide Prevention Week and today, September 10th is Word Suicide Prevention Day. This is a topic that touches the deepest parts of my soul. I had to share my story. It is time.

I’ve been very open and honest about my depression over the years. It is something that I feel needs to be brought out into the light of day and talked about. Like cancer, diabetes, asthma, etc. it is a disease that kills people. There is nothing to be ashamed of about it. The stigma needs to be removed so the healing can begin. Although I have been open and honest, I’ve never told my whole story. Some friends and family have heard it or parts of it. I’m telling it here now so that if someone else out there is in that same dark place they may hopefully see that there is a light and that things can and do get better.

Looking back I can identify middle school as the point at which I now know I had depression. I hated myself and as an extension anyone who had anything good that I didn’t have. I would cry at the drop of a hat. High school things got better in some areas and not so much in others. I had friends and a social life. Even a boyfriend or two. In college things got a lot worse. But I’d learned to hide my pain really well. I got cynical and snarky. Being angsty and “punk rock” was cool. I was miserable. Happy people pissed me off.

My family had gone through some very hard financial times while I was in high school due to the farm crisis of the mid-80s. I felt a lot of pressure to succeed and work hard. I didn’t want to be a burden on my parents. I put aside a lot of my big dreams like going to an out of state college or moving to the big city to pursue acting because I was afraid. I compromised and went to an in-state university where I got lots of financial aid because of my need and my good grades. I also started working and by sophomore year was working 40+ hours a week. I had very little on campus social life. I never went to a football or basketball game while I went to school. I didn’t have time, I was always working. I was also partying and making bad choices. I was trying to bury my internal pain in superficial “happiness”.

By mid-winter my freshman year I was a mess. I was living in a dorm with a roommate that was all cotton candy pink rainbows and sunshine. She had been a beauty queen. She was from a well-to-do suburban home. She had attended a private all girls Catholic High School. In short, she was everything I wasn’t and she was happy. I was miserable. I hated myself. I hated my life. I hated my classes and my school. But I was too stubborn to quit. My parents had made sacrifices so I could go to a Big 10 school. I had been a very good student in high school but now I was almost failing some of my classes. I didn’t want to be a statistic.

But one night I broke. I couldn’t take it anymore. I now joke that I almost killed myself because of Whitney Houston. As stupid as that is it isn’t far from the truth. My roommate loved Whitney’s album and played it over and over and over again (along with a lot of other treacly pop music). The night in question I was in a particularly crappy mood. I probably had to work late, got no dinner because I was broke and got back to the dorm after the caf was closed, didn’t have time to do my homework and couldn’t just go to bed and pout because Little Miss Sunshine was blasting “How Will I Know” until midnight.

I had had my wisdom teeth out earlier that term and had a half a bottle of Vidodin or Tylenol 3 left over. I don’t know why now but for whatever reason at the time it made sense to me to take it and then go try to sleep in the elevator lobby of my dorm. I think my thinking was that it wasn’t enough to kill me, just enough to make a point. I was desperate. I felt invisible. I felt like nobody knew my pain. That if “they” just knew how miserable I was “they’d” be moved to help me and have sympathy for me.

I took my comforter and pillow and found a quiet corner to lie down. Nobody noticed. Nobody stopped to ask what I was doing, why I wasn’t in my room with Little Miss Sunshine (LMS). Looking back now I can understand; Little Miss Doom and Gloom is lying in the corner, let’s just steer clear of that mess! LMS never came looking for me. She was probably glad that my funky ass wasn’t in the room anymore. Or she thought I’d left to go spend the night with some random guy. Either way, I was alone and in emotional pain and it appeared that nobody cared.

Eventually I started feeling very weird. I was dizzy and a little nauseous. I started seeing double and hearing a buzzing in my ears. I think I passed out for a little bit. At some point I made it back to my room. LMS was asleep. Whitney had been silenced for the night. I crawled up into my loft bed. How I managed that ladder I don’t know.

I woke a few hours later and my heart was pounding out of my chest and weird lights were flashing behind my eyelids. I was scared. I realized what I had done and I was so afraid that I would die and my parents would get that phone call. I couldn’t do that to them. I loved them and knew that they would never be the same again. I thought of my sisters and my brother and his very young children. My grandparents had already lost one grand-daughter tragically years before and I couldn’t do that to my family again. I crawled to the bathroom and made myself vomit. Repeatedly. I puked until I almost passed out on the bathroom floor. Then I crawled back to bed.

The next morning I was very wobbly. For whatever reason I forced myself to go to class. I remember sitting in class looking at all my classmates and thinking to myself that they had no idea what I’d just been through. I felt so alone and lonely. I walked home from class and stopped a couple times to vomit into the bushes again. Passers-by probably thought I was just another stupid freshman that couldn’t handle my liquor and was paying the price with a mid-week hangover.

I don’t remember how I got past that night. But I did. I had some friends that really helped. But above all it was by shear will and stubbornness that I hung on. I can’t say that that was the one and only time that things got dark but I never let it go that far again. The next year I met the boy who became my husband and the father of my children. I spent many nights in his arms crying and unloading my pain. He listened and understood. And most importantly, he didn’t walk away.

My message for any young person out there that is going through that dark night of despair is to just hold on. Even if you think that there isn’t anyone in your life RIGHT NOW who understands and is there for you, hold on. If I hadn’t held on, I wouldn’t have met Steve. I wouldn’t have my beautiful daughters. More importantly, the world wouldn’t have my daughters, who I know are right now on the brink of embarking on remarkable lives that will touch other lives and change the world. I also know that I have touched lives and in my own small way made the world a better place. I would not have been able to see my nieces and nephews be born and grow up into amazing people. If you are in that place right now, know that there is a world of people out there that are just waiting for you. Waiting for you to walk into their lives. Waiting for you to teach them something. Waiting for you to love them.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline 1-800-273-TALK(8255)   

Trevor Project – Suicide Prevention for LGBT teens

To Write Love on Her Arms – Please Stay Alive                                                                          

No more plain pillowcases!

*I’m apologizing up front for the quality of any of the photos I’ll be posting this week. My camera (and my husband!) are in Istanbul, Turkey this week. He had the once in a lifetime opportunity to attend a conference there this week. In the mean time I am reduced to using my camera phone until he returns. I got out 4 old/broken cameras over the weekend trying to see if I could get something to work but alas they were all a no go.

Back to the pillowcases.

In the continuing effort to clean out my sewing room I decided to finally do something with all the random bits of quilting fabric I have collected over the past 4 years or more. Most of the pieces in my stash are bolt ends from store fabrics. Some are true scraps from earlier projects.

Everything that was smaller than a half yard was cut up into strips ranging from 1 1/2” to 3 1/2” wide to be used in the string quilt I’ve started. (That is a future post!) The larger pieces were piled up and sorted. Once I got all the strips cut I started pairing up the fabrics in the “Pillowcase Pile”. I spent most of the day Monday putting together pretty, colorful, happy pillowcases.

For most of them I used the traditional “burrito roll” method of attaching a contrasting band at the hem. For those I used a 4-thread overlock on my serger and had them sewn together in no time flat. I did have some longer cuts of fabrics that I was able to make the pocket pillowcase that has the flap on the open end to hold the pillow so it doesn’t fall out. These are also the type that look really cute with a crocheted edge. I was able to make 4 like this (2 matching sets). Yesterday when I was in town I picked up some DK weight cotton yarn so that I can do some fun crocheted edgings.

These are the pocket style ones. They are one fabric on the front and another on the back. Today it is raining so I think I will set aside some time to sit on the screen porch and start the crocheted edges on these.

These four fabrics will become two more sets. The fabrics on the left will be traditional banded cases and the floral and dots on the right will be pocket cases with crocheted edges.

When I’m finished I will have a Baker’s Dozen of new pretty pillowcases and will be motivated to go through my old linens and purge anything that is shabby or stained. If I so chose, my family and I would never have to sleep on a plain old pillowcase again! And I now have two drawers in one of my fabric storage bins that are now empty.

It feels good to move this stuff through the process. I met with a friend yesterday who is also an artist. She works with glass (Glassquerade. Friend her. Buy her stuff!) We were talking about working the work and just moving through the process instead of waiting for the inspiration. Sometimes you just have to do the work and the inspiration will follow. She was saying how she had been in a creative slump (no pun intended to you glass artists out there!) but then some custom orders came in and she just had to go out to her studio and work through these orders. In the process of doing the mundane work, her mind was free to play in the background and she was able to see new patterns and designs and ideas that grew out of the scraps and pieces she was working on. So then she would do a “real job” and then go play with another idea for a minute and alternate back and forth. She left her studio feeling inspired and out of her slump.

Energy needs to move. Boxes and bags of fabric, yarn, paper, etc can be inspiring to look at and lovely to have and to hold. But after a time they can be stagnating and hold us back. We must take the old and make it into something new and put that energy out into the universe so that new energy can have a place to flow into our lives.

On a somewhat unrelated note and to prove once again just how scattered and eclectic my brain can be, can we talk for a minute about the title of this post? Of course it brings to mind, Joan Crawford and Mommy Dearest, “No more wire hangers!!!!” I usually come up with the ideas for my blog posts on my morning walk and yesterday was no exception. I was walking through the Ferson Creek Fen while thinking about writing this post. I came to the idea that I now have enough pillowcases that I will never have to sleep on a plain white case again which took me to Joan Crawford screaming at her terrified child. And then I thought how awful it was that for generations now the most famous thing she will ever be remembered for is that moment in her life. As a mother and actress it was quite a sobering thought. I had one of those, “but for the grace of God go I” moments. I’ve had my share of crazy, lost my shit moments when I’ve screamed and thrown a fit and directed it toward people I loved. What if when I die that was all I was remembered for? What if no amount of hard work on the stage, or love and devotion I’ve shown my family and friends mattered anymore because all anyone ever remembered me for was one crazy moment of anger? Anger is heavy. Love is light. On the scales of life it takes a lot more love to outweigh anger. I’ve still got a lot more balancing to do before I die.