Bridge visit

Just a few pictures of the Second Annual Bridge Visit, May 8, 2009.
There were four of us: Larry, his sister, her husband and I and, yes, there actually is a picture that includes me. I’m much more comfortable behind the camera.
I apologize for the randomness of these pictures, but blogger is very wonky today. I do not see pictures, just the HTML code, so I cannot arrange them in any order or write text to go with them. I'll try to edit later.

Celestial bag

This should be interesting - because as I am typing this, I only get the HTML stuff and not a picture but I've checked and there is a picture.
So, anyway: I made this bag today using the instructions (but not the measurements) on this site for basic bag construction:
www.morsbags.com
and the tutorial for decorating a plain bag on this site:
http://dutch-blue.blogspot.com/2007/08/calico-bag-makeover.html
I added a bottom to the bag - I have this thing about bags with bottoms - and there are still small problems to be worked out but I might just make another one these.

A new petition

A member of the Bridge Rail Foundation has started a new petition, this one will be submitted to legislators. It's all explained in the description and so much better than I could do it. Basically, it's about eventually getting funding for suicide barriers on bridges, not just the Golden Gate Bridge, but any bridge that acts as a suicide magnet.

Here's the link:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/suicide-barrier-funding-eligiblity

Please consider signing very soon and, if you feel comfortable, passing the link on to sympathetic friends. The more signatures, the better.

Thank you!

gone going gone everything gone give a damn

Title courtesy of Jack Johnson. He does words a lot better than I do.

Dear Henry,

It’s been two years today since you died. We still miss you more than you can imagine – more than I ever thought I’d miss anybody. And we still wonder, still ask ourselves many, many questions. We still talk about what happened, not daily anymore, but very often because we still can’t figure it all out. We did get some answers from a couple of the kids you hung with. No, they didn’t come forward on their own, I contacted them. Didn’t much like the answers, but they make sense and, in a strange way, and after being very angry for a few weeks, I am more at peace now.

You are still in my thoughts every day, though, not as the first thought that goes through my mind every morning.

We’ll be on the bridge again today, well-behaved this time. We were well-behaved the last two times, too, we just …………… oh, well, nevermind.

Last mass for you this morning. I know you wouldn’t have appreciated those, but I needed them. Not so much anymore.

But, no matter what, you’ll be forever in our hearts.

♥Mom♥

Time on my hands

Obviously, too much time on my hands if I can take pictures of my feet. Actually, I wanted to show off my new Birkies (yes, Birkies, not Birkenstocks; two slightly different but related companies). I just fell in love with the polka dots and would have bought them in red if they had been available in my size. Today is the first day to wear sandals like that, yesterday was cool and drizzly.
Yesterday also was very busy. We, as part of a small group, met with an aide to a Bay Area legislator - all part of the effort to try and get that suicide barrier built. Yes, I found a way to get back to that yet again. And we had a business dinner that night.
Tomorrow is the second anniversary of Henry's death. We'll be on that bridge again, just like last year. Lamppost 47, 11:38 am. This year, it'll most likely only be Larry and I and possibly his sister and her husband. There'll be a mass said for him early in the morning and we'll be there, too. But I think this'll be the last one (unless, of course, I change my mind).

Adventures in sewing

I've been sewing - again. Bags - again. The reddish sling bag is my own pattern. I'd seen a bag I liked on the web but couldn't find an exact pattern. So, I started with a Vogue pattern and changed it so much that it doesn't resemble it any longer at all. I like that bag, it's the right size for me, it hangs nicely from the shoulder, it only has one strap, so nothing can slip off. What I will change for the next one is the interfacing; I think this one needs to be pretty stiff, even stiffer than stiff interfacing. So, it's time I dug out the pellon for the next one. The other thing it sort of needs is a magnetic snap. Even though it sits right under the arm and stays closed that way, a snap would be nice. But, until this morning, I'd never done a magnetic snap. They scared me. I had visions of multiple holes in the fabric, crooked closures.
So, this morning I worked on the Amy Butler bag on the right. Her pattern, her fabric, no originality at all. But it specified a magnetic snap as a closure, so I surfed the web yesterday, read instructions and quite successfully inserted a snap.

In my search for help with the snap yesterday, I came across this tutorial: You SEW Girl: How to insert the best magnetic snaps ever. It worked and I have the pictures to prove it :-) I used interfacing before I inserted the prongs and another double layer of interfacing over the prongs so they won't damage the fabric by rubbing through. No more fear of magnetic snaps!
Now I need to get out into the garden and plant a few new things I bought yesterday in between bouts of rain.

Sweat soldering

Last Sunday, I took my third soldering class and things finally clicked. The first class was basics - soldering closed jump rings and I wasn't sure it was for me. The second class was about rings, I liked that was and I actually wear the rings I made.

This class was about soldered pendants and I'm very pleased with the results. I finished the pendant with the houses in class - completely. All soldering, polishing, patina-ing and polishing was done. The second pendant - mountains and cloud (which I drew and cut out and shaped all by myself) was mostly finished in class.
The third pendant, though, gave me trouble. Nothing would stick together and then I lost the dot and there wasn't enough time in class to start over. So, I dug out all my equipment this morning and it came together beautifully. The dot stuck, the jump ring behaved, I aged everything in liver of sulphur and polished.
The picture isn't doing the pendants justice - you can't see the patina very well. But I'm no pro when it comes to photography even though I did this with my new, rather nice camera. Okay, so I've had the camera for over a year and never used it (I'm very resistant to new things), but now that I've tried it, I'll use it again. And I'll be soldering again, too, even though my set up is very inconvenient.