There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears the human soul!
Emily Dickinson
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival
My family and I went to the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival a couple of weeks ago and had a great time!
While we were there I met a girl who just happened to be knitting. She was making dish cloths and so I asked her for the pattern and they are so much fun to make.
Here is the pattern: Cast on 4 stitches
Row 1- k 2 yo k to the end of row
repeat Row 1 until you have 41 stitches
Then k 1 k 2 tog yo k 2 tog k to end of row
repeat till only 4 stitches remain then cast off
I hope you enjoy them! They are easy to make and very fun.
While we were there I met a girl who just happened to be knitting. She was making dish cloths and so I asked her for the pattern and they are so much fun to make.
Here is the pattern: Cast on 4 stitches
Row 1- k 2 yo k to the end of row
repeat Row 1 until you have 41 stitches
Then k 1 k 2 tog yo k 2 tog k to end of row
repeat till only 4 stitches remain then cast off
I hope you enjoy them! They are easy to make and very fun.
A Wonderful Birthday Present
Wow! I just had an awesome time with a good friend this afternoon. For my birthday she gave me a photo shoot. We had so much fun just hanging out and taking pictures. Christin (the photographer) has a photography business and she has the best eye for a wonderful shot. Her business is Cloudy Day Photography. We went out to about three different locations here in the valley; one was in front of a fancy hotel, another was in a field with some hay bales, and the last was in an apple orchard. We hit Dutch Bros. Coffee before heading out to do some shooting.
Along one of the highways here there is this fancy little “inn” that is kind of out in the country. It has these really beautiful trees out along the highway and we just had to stop and do some shooting there. Now I am not very good at posing for pictures, but she made feel so relaxed and I enjoyed it very much! Well after spending some time in front of those trees we decided that it was time to move on to the next location.
A little farther on down the highway we found this small field with a stack of rolled hay bales. We couldn’t resist so we pulled in and started shooting some more. It was totally like being in an Anne of Green Gables book for sure! The wind was blowing a little bit and doing some fun things with my hair. It also smelled like the coast out there. I attempted to do a fierce face that only ended with a big smile in the picture instead. There was this orchard that we really wanted to try to get into, so off we went to find the entrance.
We found the entrance to the apple orchard and I felt instantly transported into the book The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery. We played in that orchard for quite a while. Orchards are so beautiful, I am so thankful that we live in such an agriculturally rich valley. “There is so much scope for imagination” in an orchard, to quote Anne Shirley.
When we were done taking pictures we went to the yarn store. Christin picked out some yarn for a pair of fingerless gloves that I will be making her. She picked the most beautiful shade of olive green that I have ever seen.
I will be posting some of the pictures really soon!
Monday, June 6, 2011
Sewing and the Sewing Machine
Well today I would like to share with you is the history of the sewing machine. The following was a report that I did a couple years ago so I hope you enjoy.
"She makes linen garments and sells them; she delivers sashes to the merchant." Proverbs 31:24, sewing has been around from the beginning of time. Today I am going to tell you about the invention of the sewing machine. You might be thinking that the inventor of the sewing machine is Isaac Singer, but he is not the inventor, although he did contribute a lot to the sewing machine. The inventor is Elias Howe. I am going to tell you about Elias Howe, the history of the sewing machine and the effects the sewing machine had on society.
Elias Howe was born on July 19, 1819, in Spencer, Massachusetts. When he was a young boy his parents leased him to a neighboring farmer due to financial necessity. When he was 16 years old he left the farm and went to Boston to work for a machinist and earned $9 a week. After working for the machinist for a few years he go married. He was forced to quite work due to chronic illness and his wife was forced to take in sewing to keep the family from starving. After watching his wife toil away at her stitches, Elias Howe was convinced that a sewing machine was needed. So after 14 years, lots of observation and many tries Elias finally made the first working sewing machine. He patented his model on September 10,1846. To get the public interested he had a competition with 5 seamstresses who were known for speed in a public hall. He finished 5 seams at 250 stitches a minute, before any of the seamstresses had finished even one seam. However his machine did not grab the public's attention so he took it to England to see how it would do. Unfortunately, the sewing machine was not very well accepted in England, so he returned to America to find that in his absence the sewing machine had become popular.
People have been sewing for a very long time. Sewing needles use to be a piece of bone with an eye for the thread, and now is a piece of iron. Here are a few people who worked with the idea of a sewing machine before Elias Howe. One of the first people to try and invent the sewing machine was Thomas Saint. Although he did patent it nobody thought that much about it till later, because it was filed under "wearing apparel". Somebody finally tried his idea, and had to make a lot modifications before it would work. Another person who attempted the sewing machine was Bartholomew Thimonnier. He had learned the tailoring trade and had noticed how short a time it had taken to weave a piece of cloth and how long it took to sew the garment together by hand. He secretly worked on his machine for 4 years, ignoring his shop till his neighbors thought he was crazy. He succeeded in having 80 machines that would work and he used them to make uniforms for the French army. Worried tailors however, could not be quieted and a mob destroyed the machines and Thimonnier died penniless in England. Walter Hunt also worked with the idea of a sewing machine. He was the first to use the lockstitch idea; previous machines had used a chainstitch. But he did not think that his invention was worth much so he sold his idea for a small amount. Elias Howe was the first person to make a working machine using the lockstitch. Elias Howe had taken all the good ideas for a sewing machine and had put them into one machine. He had the only working machine that did not try to copy the human hands. As I said earlier his machine was not popular at first, it was not until he came back from England that it became popular. Isaac Singer is the man who started the Singer Sewing Machine Company. He liked Elias Howe's machine and made many changes to it, making it better. He is responsible for making it popular. Singer got sued by Elias Howe for not getting royalties and lost. Elias Howe got $5 for every machine sold in the U.S. and $1 for every exported machine. He had become a millionaire by the time he died. Singer made his fortune off the sewing machine business. He was a very business-minded person and started a good number of merchandising practices such as, installment buying, advertising campaigns, and the provision of service along with sales. Helen Auguste Blanchard was the inventor of the zigzag sewing machine. Out of her 28 patents 22 of them deal with the sewing machine. The paper pattern was also invented at about the same time, by Ellen Curtis Demorest. She had seen her servant cutting a dress pattern out on wrapping paper. Ellen Demorest thought it was a good idea, so she and her husband figured out a mathematical system to print patterns in a variety of sizes. Unfortunately they forgot to patent it, and Ebenezer Butterick patented it. Ebenezer Butterick is the founder of the Butterick Pattern Company, which is the leading pattern company in the world.
The sewing machine had both positive and negative effects on society. Some of the positive effects are that it helped women cut back on the amount of time it took them to sew, let's say a man's dress shirt. By hand it took a woman 10 hours to sew a man's dress shirt, but with a sewing machine it took her only 1 hour to sew. This gave her 9 extra hours to do many other things that she was not able to do before, such as play with her children, enjoy some leisure hours, and it gave her more time in her day to work on other household chores. After the sewing machine was invented people realized that if they built a gigantic building, and put rows upon rows of tables, with countless sewing machines on these tables they could then hire people to make clothing to sell. Thus started the mass clothing production era. This had both a good and a bad effect. The good thing that it did was to open up more job opportunities, that way people could make money so that they would not starve, because of the hard times. The bad that it did was that it pulled families apart. When this whole thing started there were no child labor laws, so children would work long, hard hours for very little wages, it also took them out of school.
Thanks!
"She makes linen garments and sells them; she delivers sashes to the merchant." Proverbs 31:24, sewing has been around from the beginning of time. Today I am going to tell you about the invention of the sewing machine. You might be thinking that the inventor of the sewing machine is Isaac Singer, but he is not the inventor, although he did contribute a lot to the sewing machine. The inventor is Elias Howe. I am going to tell you about Elias Howe, the history of the sewing machine and the effects the sewing machine had on society.
Elias Howe was born on July 19, 1819, in Spencer, Massachusetts. When he was a young boy his parents leased him to a neighboring farmer due to financial necessity. When he was 16 years old he left the farm and went to Boston to work for a machinist and earned $9 a week. After working for the machinist for a few years he go married. He was forced to quite work due to chronic illness and his wife was forced to take in sewing to keep the family from starving. After watching his wife toil away at her stitches, Elias Howe was convinced that a sewing machine was needed. So after 14 years, lots of observation and many tries Elias finally made the first working sewing machine. He patented his model on September 10,1846. To get the public interested he had a competition with 5 seamstresses who were known for speed in a public hall. He finished 5 seams at 250 stitches a minute, before any of the seamstresses had finished even one seam. However his machine did not grab the public's attention so he took it to England to see how it would do. Unfortunately, the sewing machine was not very well accepted in England, so he returned to America to find that in his absence the sewing machine had become popular.
People have been sewing for a very long time. Sewing needles use to be a piece of bone with an eye for the thread, and now is a piece of iron. Here are a few people who worked with the idea of a sewing machine before Elias Howe. One of the first people to try and invent the sewing machine was Thomas Saint. Although he did patent it nobody thought that much about it till later, because it was filed under "wearing apparel". Somebody finally tried his idea, and had to make a lot modifications before it would work. Another person who attempted the sewing machine was Bartholomew Thimonnier. He had learned the tailoring trade and had noticed how short a time it had taken to weave a piece of cloth and how long it took to sew the garment together by hand. He secretly worked on his machine for 4 years, ignoring his shop till his neighbors thought he was crazy. He succeeded in having 80 machines that would work and he used them to make uniforms for the French army. Worried tailors however, could not be quieted and a mob destroyed the machines and Thimonnier died penniless in England. Walter Hunt also worked with the idea of a sewing machine. He was the first to use the lockstitch idea; previous machines had used a chainstitch. But he did not think that his invention was worth much so he sold his idea for a small amount. Elias Howe was the first person to make a working machine using the lockstitch. Elias Howe had taken all the good ideas for a sewing machine and had put them into one machine. He had the only working machine that did not try to copy the human hands. As I said earlier his machine was not popular at first, it was not until he came back from England that it became popular. Isaac Singer is the man who started the Singer Sewing Machine Company. He liked Elias Howe's machine and made many changes to it, making it better. He is responsible for making it popular. Singer got sued by Elias Howe for not getting royalties and lost. Elias Howe got $5 for every machine sold in the U.S. and $1 for every exported machine. He had become a millionaire by the time he died. Singer made his fortune off the sewing machine business. He was a very business-minded person and started a good number of merchandising practices such as, installment buying, advertising campaigns, and the provision of service along with sales. Helen Auguste Blanchard was the inventor of the zigzag sewing machine. Out of her 28 patents 22 of them deal with the sewing machine. The paper pattern was also invented at about the same time, by Ellen Curtis Demorest. She had seen her servant cutting a dress pattern out on wrapping paper. Ellen Demorest thought it was a good idea, so she and her husband figured out a mathematical system to print patterns in a variety of sizes. Unfortunately they forgot to patent it, and Ebenezer Butterick patented it. Ebenezer Butterick is the founder of the Butterick Pattern Company, which is the leading pattern company in the world.
The sewing machine had both positive and negative effects on society. Some of the positive effects are that it helped women cut back on the amount of time it took them to sew, let's say a man's dress shirt. By hand it took a woman 10 hours to sew a man's dress shirt, but with a sewing machine it took her only 1 hour to sew. This gave her 9 extra hours to do many other things that she was not able to do before, such as play with her children, enjoy some leisure hours, and it gave her more time in her day to work on other household chores. After the sewing machine was invented people realized that if they built a gigantic building, and put rows upon rows of tables, with countless sewing machines on these tables they could then hire people to make clothing to sell. Thus started the mass clothing production era. This had both a good and a bad effect. The good thing that it did was to open up more job opportunities, that way people could make money so that they would not starve, because of the hard times. The bad that it did was that it pulled families apart. When this whole thing started there were no child labor laws, so children would work long, hard hours for very little wages, it also took them out of school.
Thanks!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Isaiah 40:8
Proverbs 15:13
by Emily Dickinson
I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast
You, unsuspecting wear me too-
And angels know the rest.
I hide myself within my flower,
That fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
A Fun Word to Say
While this is a fun word to say hopefully none of us will be described as gauche.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Colosians 4:6
Colosians 4:6
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