The Honest Scrap! Award

Hahah! How terrifically unexpected! Katie has granted me the Honest Scrap award(http://katiekadiddlehopper.blogspot.com/2009/11/honest-scrap.html). Katie, my dear blogosphere sewing friend, you are a very kind soul. I thank thee.

Here are the rules for the lucky seven recipients from this page:

1. Thank the person who gave the award and list their blog and link it.
2. Share "10 Honest Things" about yourself.
3. Present this award to 7 others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you.
4. Tell those 7 people they've been awarded Honest Scrap and inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.

So, in turn, I nominate the following seven lovely ladies, in no particular order:

1. Maricou (La Machine A Coudre)
2. Kristy (Lower Your Presser Foot)
3. Mardel (Sewdistracted)
4. Kay (The Sewing Lawyer)
5. Ann (Ann's Fashion Studio)
6. Dei (Sew Hot Mommi)
7. Christina (Assorted Notions)

Now. Honestly, let's be fair, ten honest things to write about oneself takes a little time. So how's this? I'm going to give myself a little breathing room, and post one or so a day, with edits of this single message to update (maybe even revise!) the list.

1. I can describe my life story in numbers: zero (0) pets; 1 sibling; 2 spouses (consecutively!!!!); 3 degrees; 4 stepkids; 5 languages (two badly); and not less than 347 hostas. Numbers (and hostas) and I are bosom buddies.



Click on this picture to get a better view of a tiny subset of my green collection from last July. The neighbourhood bunnies that come to snack on them all summer long also love my hostas.

2. My lovely Mom is an artist and, in her professional life, was a fashion designer. As far as I know, she always sewed, and still does. When I was a toddler she made coats for me & my sib out of a big green plaid blanket; I remember the edges were trimmed with brown grosgrain ribbon. Those not-quite-baby coats live big in the family pics and lore; so much so that last year I made a blanket coat for MOI, out of a former bedspread outgrown by one of my kids. There's a symmetry in that. Truthfully, the bedspread was coating - I got it at Fabricland in Halifax ever so long ago, 'cause it was perfect for the child's colour scheme....and it served its purpose admirably for years. My "closest to my heart 'cause it was my babe's blankie" coat, below, is Burda 7856.



I made an oversize, rive-gauche beret to go with it. It's become my go-to walking coat in the dead of winter.

3. I love to travel. I've resided in 4 different countries, and have worked on six continents (which continent is New Zealand?!) - all except Antarctica.

4. I'm an amateur woodwinds musician: flutes and the like. My favourite period is the Baroque, and my fave composers to play are Telemann, Bach, Locatelli, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, etc. But when I listen, it's pop and jazz.

5. I'm an atheist. Yes, really. Completely. Yet, as a card-carrying archaeologist, I more than appreciate the fact that humanity's most impressive monuments were erected to honour the Almighty (and almighties).

'Nuff said.

6. I was chased by a bear in our gorgeous Canadian Rockies once - and lived to tell about it :) Many years later, I was chased by an angry bull elephant. If good things come in threes, what's going to be chasing me next?!

7. I'm a MEAN chef (and a damn good one, too!). My walnut torte was so famous in the family that a close relative decreed it should be her wedding cake (I obliged). But then, I got bored with cooking, and bowed out of the kitchen. I now enter it only to stoke the fires and harass the chief bottle washer. And, just to keep the rest of the household on their toes, I clear the decks on Thanksgiving (I bake a WILD STUFFED turkey!) and Christmas (poppyseed strudel, anyone?!) My boy and I play against each other with frequent fruitshakes and cranberry muffins, but that doesn't count as cooking, does it? Repeat after me: I'd rather be sewing....

8. When I was in college, I spent a summer selling encyclopedias (Collier's, FYI) in Newfoundland. That was the 2nd best summer of my life (the best, honestly, was getting chased by bears while working in Jasper NP). Bet there aren't too many people who have visited nearly every home on Fogo Island! Newfoundlanders in the days of my youth were a delight - warm, hospitable people who knew how to live on a shoestring, loved to talk, and all of them, it seemed to me, wanted to move to Toronto. Toronto was not only the Mecca for the inhabitants of Canada's most easterly province, but also the edge of the world - not one person ever mentioned a single destination further west. I got to visit St. Pierre et Miqelon on the same trip; portraits of Georges Pompidou hung on every wall of the "pension" where I stayed, and you could get a glass of wine for a quarter (un franc) at the local cafe.

9. I'm impatient. When I see my way to the end of things, I often lack the motivation to go through the whole process: though still at A in reality, I might already be at Z in spirit. Sewing provides a bit of discipline for this personality flaw, since if I don't go through the whole process, I'll obviously have accomplished nothing. I get bored with the guts of books, and skip to the end. I don't stand in queues. I abhor repetition - I'll do it once, do it twice (yawn), but don't ask me to do it thrice (musical practice excepted). That's why I don't cook any more. I don't suffer fools, and I have no time for chronic whiners. My glass is always full, even when bone dry empty, because I know how to refill it.

10. I LOVE museums, zoos, and safari parks. It's a clear case of imprinting: I grew up next to a museum of archaeology and one of natural history, and was taken to them often. I've been to most of the museums in London, Paris, NY, LA, and many other places; a visit to a museum does wonders for one's sense of place in space and time. My hubby is the only person I know who can outlast me in a museum: one time, after 8 solid hrs in the M. of Natural History in NY, I faded, but he was STILL pressing his nose to the cases of minerals. Sheesh!

Back to sewing now!