Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you are all having a wonderful time getting ready for your Thanksgiving Feast. I am...this is probably my favorite holiday. Normally it is kinda chilly and the wonderful aroma of turkey and pies fill the house. I love that. It is muggy today here in the Outback, but maybe it will rain and break up the humidity. We will see.

I got up early to make Cherry turnovers. And was chatting with my husband and cutting out circles of crust when I broke the glass I was cutting out the shapes with. I sliced up my poor right hand (my favorite hand if you must know....it had lots of important things to do today to get ready for the feast). It didn't hurt that much, but it did bleed alot. I am curious if I may have nicked the nerve in my middle finger since it is a bit numb...but what really pissed me off was that I ruined the pie crust! It had tons of bits of tiny glass shards in it. You may wonder why my glass was so cheap it broke...well it is not a cheap glass actually, it is a fancy one from Crate and Barrel. But is is a blown glass and is really really thin. Slowly I am breaking them all and I sure as heck don't recommend them. Anyway back to my story...My husband took over the bandaging of my hand then cleaned up the mess of glass and pie crust. He even rolled out the second batch of dough. Then he kinda fizzled, but I was proud of him. Oh the hand pies (turnovers) were for his work anyway. As he was working away and keeping my coffee cup nice and full, I thought to myself how wonderful it is to be taken care of. A couple years ago and next year probably...he won't be around for the day to day things like he is now. What a precious time this is. He was even the tooth fairy for one of Emma's teeth last night. These little things he misses so much of. Man, am I thankful for my husband and these 2 years we have gotten to spend together in this strange desert sanctuary. I have described it before as being a bubble...a little desert bubble. Things are good here, I will miss them.

I am also thankful for you, by dear fellow Camp Followers.

I decided to to a blog about my bags and how they have changed over the years. As you might guess, I have a bunch of bags around the house. When I finish carrying them for whatever reason they get turned over to the kiddos and get to hold their toys and teddies.


Damn pictures are in the wrong order again. Oh well....this is my Second Generation Stu Tote. I put the unit patches on the back of the bag and the totes did not have very much "form". The straps were the last things I put on the bag, they were very simple straps. I did not put any sort of closure on this second generation of Stu Tote bag.

This is my Third Generation Stu tote bag. It does have a cuff closure, and there is more "form" to the bag. My quilting is getting a bit better by this time and I have the unit patches on the sides of the bag, where I think they belong. The straps are still on the outside of the bag and I kinda have a little splash of color on the underside of the straps. With this third generation of Stu tote I did decorative stitching up the sides of the straps, I also put the quote on the straps of this model. I have to admit this is the last Stu I made for myself. It looks pretty sad, huh? I am carrying a "Tia Tote" right now and I really love the shape of the new bag. I will make myself another Stu when I get a chance...but I just don't have the time right now.

This is the bag that started it all. This is one of the ones I took to my first OWC Christmas Bizarre back in 2005. I can't believe people bought them. As you can see it has lots of flaws and my quilting was so ugly. This bag has next to NO form. It is just batted with cotton batting and quilted. And I put some fancy ribbon on the straps. Yuck. But everyone has to start somewhere. So this is where I started. I can't believe all the bags I have made since this one. Thank you all for giving me a chance to find my voice as a "Bag Artist." I quite love doing it. I hope these crazy bags bring you some of the pleasure they gave me to make them.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tia