Well, good morning all 3 readers of my blog.  So sorry for the silence last week.  I was busy, cranky and without any words.  This week, things are looking up!  Let’s start with FOOT:

For my online shoe class, we had to make a sole design for our pattern.  This one is the 51st one I submitted and Marcell thinks it might work.  I am taking that to the bank and saying IT WILL work.  You can see the assignment on this post, it should have been easy but it only took 8 days to get an approval!

Next up, I have been working with the leather again.  Nothing new with that, but I will have a few new items in the shop sometime this week!  Here is a sneak peek:

Ostrich embossed leather tote

Brown Leather Clutch with Tundra Sheep

Black Leather Clutch with Red Leather Flower

Leather Credit Card Case

Navy Leather Credit Card Case

Let’s take a small commercial break at this point!  Here are Randy and Patrick enjoying Dad’s Day at OU last week:

Brought to you by Shiner Bock! NOT

Love these guys…

Okay, back to the regularly scheduled blog post:

Ostrich Embossed Leather Clutch

EAST WEST Leather Clutch with Tundra Sheep

Well that is the end of the LEATHER preview.  English teachers out there (you know who you are) please stand down.  I know the title should have been Foot, Clutches and Wallets.  I really liked it without punctuation and it is my blog.

I will do a Thanksgiving post later this week.  We will be visiting with Randy’s family and our three children.  I am beyond excited.  Of course, that means I am really excited by not having to cook for 6 days, but I am also thrilled to see everyone also.

I think I will leave you with a couple of couple’s pictures.  The 4 of them will be spending Thanksgiving day with us!

Newlyweds

Murder Mystery Party – Check out the time on the clock.

Okay, the is the end for now.  Happy Thanksgiving Week.

Thank you veterans for your service.

My father during his service in WWII

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Well, once again, I have managed to spend the weekend playing with leather.  It is one of my favorite things to do.  The first item I worked on was sent to the trash pile.  I tried to do a polka dot pattern, similar to below, but had a major fail.

J.Crew Polka dot bag

So, I moved on!  Randy had drawn up some patterns for me, from my sketches, so I went to work cutting and sewing.  Here are the ones that I managed to create.

Small Oxblood Clutch

Petite Clutch with Flower

Larger Black Bag with Red Flower

The flowers were so fun to make.  I dreamed up alternate flower shapes all night.  See, insomnia can be a good thing!

For reasons I cannot come up with, I also signed up for an online shoemaking class.  It has been a while since I have done any shoe work and have always wanted to take a class from Marcell Mrsan.  He taught a class last summer in Savannah that I so was tempted to take.  However, with a thumb injury on my right hand, it did not seem prudent.  Mr. Mrsan is an instructor at the Savannah College of Art and Design.  He is a bespoke shoemaker from Budapest, Hungary, with quite a following.  Mr. Mrsan and Lisa Sorrell are my two favorite footwear creators.  I am secretly hoping that after my job moves south, I will be able to take a boot making class in a nearby town.  If I ever can own a pair of Ms. Sorrell’s boots, I would go with something similar to these:

From Lisa Sorrels Portfolio

I just cannot imagine anything more beautiful.  I dream on.  No, I do not have ADD, why do you ask?  Just blessed with an active imagination.

Well, I kept hoping that Friday’s post would appear by magic, but no luck there.  Today’s post is a quick look into how my mind works.  Be scared, be very scared.  As mentioned in this post, I am a scientist in my real life.  My “pretend” life is a different story.  This is going to be a meandering tale so stay with me please.

A year or so ago, the company where I work was sold.  We were told that within two years our jobs would be going south to Texas.  Well that spurred me on to think about the future.  I decided I needed a hobby to carry forward into retirement.  Making leather bags was what I chose.

I know, golf or bridge would have been easier.  So off I go, merrily making bags.  Of course, I never thought past MAKING the bags, like what to do with them afterwards.  A 100 bags later, everyone I knew (and some ladies I did not know) started saying “STOP CATHY, we do not need anymore %^$*@ bags”.  And the same nice ladies said I needed to sell my bags.  Well duh, that had not occurred to me and I had to think about that.  By thinking about that, I mean I jumped right in.

So, I opened an ETSY shop (here) and off I went.  That lead to a need to learn photography, marketing and coming up with a store name.  Sheesh, all I wanted was a hobby.  So, as any scientist would do, I researched the heck out of this ETSY stuff.  I bought books and more books, scoured the internet and drank heavily!  Well, those dang books said I needed a BLOG!  Of course that entailed buying more books and even more books, more googling and a trip to buy more whiskey.

And I haven’t even started on the photography angle that is needed for blogging and for selling bags…of course, that is obvious!!  I also do not own a camera!

After all my research, I decided to enroll in the THE BLOG CLASS.  That turned out to be a fabulous decision, a great class and very patient teachers!  Thank you Emily and Ryan.

So, now I have my hobbies, my job is going south and I am moving to the next phase of life.  So let’s get to the reason I am writing this post.  I have sold two bags on ETSY.  Since I think exponentially, that becomes 20 bags, then 200 bags, then 2000 and so on until….I get to 2 million bags pretty quickly.  Of course, I have to make those bags,

keep up this “bleeping” blog, learn photography, design said bags

and generally buy a lot more whiskey.  But next thing you know, my bags will be splashed all over PINTEREST and just like that, I have become the NEXT KATE SPADE!  It could happen, she is from Kansas City and so is my husband.  Kate Spade went to Notre Dame de Sion all -girl Catholic prep school and so did my sister-in-law.  She is young and cute and I am …Okay, let’s just say this one doesn’t fit, shall we?

So, there you have it.  Cathy’s brain works in mysterious and strange ways, BUT I keep going forward and buying more whiskey!

This will be short and sweet, I mean short and spooky.  When I say the pictures below are spooky and scary , I am NOT talking about the costumes.

My older siblings getting ready for a night of candy

This is another one of 3 siblings and moi!

The lady in red is also in the first picture

Halloween has certainly changed since these pictures were taken.  Costumes were not as flashy as they are today.  Also, one Halloween, I got a hotdog in a bun because the lady had run out of candy!

Everyone enjoy the day and I will post again on Friday.

Well, let’s just say that this morning has been interesting.  I could use other adjectives but interesting seemed safe.  While I was working on my Friday post, I ran into technical issues.  Some might call them operator (me) errors but whatever.  I decided to step away from the computer and focus my attention elsewhere.  Randy and I have both had a parent die in the last year.  When that happens, you end of with “stuff” lying around.  In our case, a lot of stuff.  So I went to my desk, sewing room, dining room table and took a good look around.  At that point I realized I needed another cup of coffee before proceeding!

Two pots of coffee and three trips to the liquor cabinet and I am ready to try this again.  One of the first things I found was my second grade report card.  How bad could it be?  Well let’s just take a look, shall we?  Oh, I might add that this would be the year BEFORE I got kicked out of the school.

Okay, feeling pretty good about the first page!  Sister Cyrene spelled my name correctly, so let’s proceed.

This second page gets just a bit more interesting.  Obviously the Christian Doctrine “A” shows that I definitely knew the difference between a venial sin and a mortal one.  Also, I seem to be excelling in Reading, Language, Spelling and Number Work.  We might call that Reading, Writing and Arithmetic now, also known as the three “R’s” (?) of education.  If we look a little closer we can see that, quite frankly, Handwriting, Music and Art were not my strong points.  I remember music in Catholic school and I remember handwriting (also some hand wringing) but for the life of me, I don’t think we had art.  So, I did poorly in a subject I didn’t even study!  What is interesting is that I still struggle (though not often) with all three subjects that gave me grief in second grade.  Once again, I think going into the science field (see post) was predestined.

Okay, moving on to page 3 of  report card:

Again, what you are in second grade is a great indicator of life long traits.  Just take a look at my Conduct and my Personal Qualities grades.  Yep, that pretty much sums me up.  I needed improvement (says the √ mark) and for the life of those nuns, it really wasn’t forthcoming!  I can barely use obedience in a sentence, much less actually practice it.  Here, let me try:

“Catherine Jane, obediently, pays the IRS all taxes owed.”  Yeah, I did it!  I also still have problems with following rules, mainly the stupid ones.

The good news is that I still exceed in EFFORT and WORK-STUDY HABITS.  Hence the reason I have been able to pay those taxes.

Now let’s take a look at that attendance record, shall we?  It certainly looks suspicious to me.  However, because of the aforementioned CONDUCT and PERSONAL QUALITIES, I spent lots and lots and lots of time in the COAT CLOSET doing detention.  When one is in detention, one does a lot of thinking.  Of course, someone in detention is supposed to think of the bad conduct they had practiced and how to improve said conduct.  Not so much for me.  No, I spent the time figuring out how I could commit a mortal sin by murdering those nuns.  Okay, that might be a bit melodramatic.  It is not noted in my report card, but I also had an active imagination and still do!  So, when I would run away from school during lunch time, I am sure my mother figured it was better to keep me home than to let me go to hell.

Let’s move on, again, shall we?  Page 4 is kind of weak, but I have something to say about it as well.  Take a look:

Dear, dear (read evil) Sister Cyrene says I am VERY ready for third grade.  Truth be known, she would have sent me on no matter if I was failing second grade.

I was THAT child.

THE END (for now)

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My weekend did not go as planned.  The University of Arkansas got beat in a nail biter, University of Oklahoma lost to Notre Dame and the OKC Thunder traded James Harden away.  Where is the mercy?   Here are some photos that sum up how I am feeling today.  I do believe even Jane Austen would have taken to her bed!

 “a broken-hearted Victorian woman”, drawn by Luke Fildes and published in 1880. Alamy

Must I say more?