CRAFTY CREW CHAT Fall 2023

woww- that's lots of cards joblackford


Thanks for the well wishes for DH - he sees his eye doctor again next week and we're hoping it'll be more encouraging.

I need to add up points today

I got my October points tallied up - now to keep UP with the November ones so it's not such a chore.

Amyone scrapping/crafting this weekend? I joined the Pokey Peas chat last night and got 5 layouts (7 pages) done to complete June 2009 in the family album. Hoping to fill in the July gaps this weekend.

I hate the time change weekends at both ends - messes me up for a week or two each. FLorida voted to stay on summer time pre-pandemic but has to wait on 'permission' from the US Congress so...we're still changing twice a year.

It's especially hard on DD17 - it'll be dark when she leaves in the morning AND when she gets home after school - she likes to shoot hoops to decompress after a long day but its hard in the dark.

My husband spent years commuting in the dark. It's brutal, especially if you work in a place with no windows.

I think we're also supposed to stay on summer time year round if it gets approved, but as nylene said, I'm not holding my breath. In Japan they don't change the clocks so the sun comes up around 4am in the summer. By 8am my apartment would be baking hot, but people lit fireworks on summer nights so they liked it to get dark earlier.

Having the sun come up at 9am in winter isn't going to be popular though, if we do get our new time zone approved - we are further north than most people realize. People hate the change, but they're also going to hate not changing IMO. 

In the NYT email this morning they mentioned that one of the earliest sundial systems just divided the daylight up evenly into 12 blocks, so in summer the "hours" were longer and in winter they were shorter. I don't know exactly where that was or the details but I could totally get behind spending 42 minutes doing something in winter and calling it an hour!

I have all my living room lamps on timers so today I have to go and adjust them all so they come on about 3pmPST instead of 6pmPDT. It's been really dark in the house the last couple of weeks!

Does the behavior of the dies vary by brand, joblackford?

My retreat started slow; many of the attendees were night owls, while I am not. I arrived rather late for me to dig into crafting (2 or 2;30 PM) but most folks were still rolling in and chattering about rearranging furniture, where and how to set up, etc. I was already pretty beat by the time they settled down to craft, but I completed a couple of cards.

Yesterday, I completed that set of 4 (gramma's double fold challenge), a stack/slice/shuffle set of 4, 2 pairs of my first CARDtober 2-for-1 fun fold challenge, and set of 11 A2s in my variation on Crafty Al's slimline.

Today, I completed this month's SLoC and cut and stamped papers for 14 cards using a CS for-sale card formula and their current Christmas card stock collection (but not their stamps or cutaparts because...gnomes).

Very productive time!

I was the only early bird in a flock of night owls...when I was alone in the conference room where the event occurred, was I crafting alone because I was alone in the room or crafting with others because I was at an in-person crafting event for a group of people that included me?!

Shakti - I would 100% count that as crafting with others

Anyone have crafty weekend plans? I'm planning to scrap - I'm doing a free Scrapbook Generations crop on FB this weekend as well as planning on jumping on the online crop here tonight. Working on Aug 2009 photos now that I've finished up my Thanksgiving cards. I do have some housework to do as well - as always. DD17 has the day off but DH (a veteran) has to work - they are feeding him and the other veterans breakfast and lunch at work today though.

Usually this time of year I’m in a flap getting ready for a week with the Honolulu family, realizing that if stuff doesn’t get done before then it may not get done before Christmas. This year they’re coming here so I haven’t had that sense of a deadline…

but I just realized I have all kinds of things I need to get done early anyway. I don’t need to worry about the photo books I make until after we get back from Christmas holidays, but I make photo calendars for gifts, and I need to sort out Christmas cards. So I will be doing some digital scrapping this weekend, and I have to get my ass into gear and mail a donation box to Bring Smiles to Seniors. Need to order more envelopes too!

Somebody STOP me!

I have now made, not counting the Altenew and Pinkfresh events, something like SEVENTY-EIGHT holiday/winter cards! 11 are earmarked for colleagues and 54 or so for Peas Exchange. That still leaves me with more than 10 extra. Some will probably be sent to friends & family -- the event cards won't quite cover all of them. But I haven't made any with TE products and I need 4 for that group.

Partially this is due to me hating my job, being in process of moving on, and thus being completely unmotivated to do actually work on W@H days. Partially, no doubt, this is due to the stress of the whole situation and crafting being good therapy.

But, really, I'm kinda outta control....

After dinner, when it's too late to craft, there may also be some wine involved....

Thanks, Linda. Actually, we have 10 for dinner Thursday, more of a Friendsgiving than a formal Thanksgiving, but I learned over the weekend that my DH hasn't felt up to organizing the "who's bringing what" thing, so I'm having some additional anxiety over that....

BUT, I have a round of interviews for a new job (that I have some doubts about) and hope to hear this week about another I'm more enthusiastic about.

AND it turns out I only had about four extra cards once we had poached a few of the batch-made ones to send to friends and family we didn't think would really appreciate a OoaK card. I had four of the Z-folds I'd made for colleagues in the exchange pile, so I moved them to the office pile. I have enough now to give them to my entire department, even the people I can't stand, and all the people outside my department I really appreciate! I can even bring two today to give to the people visiting from the Paris office. I have 54 Pea Exchange cards with return address labels on them in an Altenew box along with the address labels and stamps waiting to go on the envelopes, 15 cards ready to go to the office and 16 cards already address-labeled for friends and family. DH's card is made for 12/2 and I think if I go into my birthday organizer I have cards already picked out for all the other Sagittarians in my life (they are legion)!

I still need to do the insides of 8 OoaK kinds in the F&F stack and make 4 cards using that TE holly embossing folder I used in the vellum card base challenge. And decide whether to make more vellum bases or do something a little less ambitious this time.

I’ve done the double ordering once, unfortunately a stencil which I really didn’t need two of, but return shipping ate the whole refund. Sigh. Scrapbook dot com’s wishlist function was at fault - I had moved some things from my cart to wishlist but I think they were already there so I ended up with a wish quantity of two. Pretty sure when I hit add to cart it out two in the cart  

Sorry to hear you were sick. The lethargy is the worst. I’m impressed you got anything done! Hope you’re feeling much better now.
USPS charges an extra ounce surcharge for square cards, Canada Post too I think. The machines can’t figure out which direction the card should go if there’s no long edge so it has to be handled by a human. So yeah, generally best to put them in a rectangular envelope of the correct height. 

Last year I already had all my cards ready to go and internationals were in the mail Thanksgiving week. This year not so much. But I’ve given up on doing photo cards for some and crafty cards for others. Everyone is getting a crafty card. They’re variations on one design but I’m going to try really hard not to overthink who gets which variation (argh! So much overthink). Half are ready. I need to get the labels printed out this week and start getting the overseas ones out the door.

Hope the US Peas who celebrate have a Happy Thanksgiving