Showing posts with label crawfish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crawfish. Show all posts

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Cajun Corner – Vol. 6, No. 12 – May 4, 2014


Cajun Corner – Vol. 6, No. 12 – May 4, 2014

 

Bon Jour!  Welcome to Cajun Stitchery’s weekly email and welcome to our family.

 

ΘΘΘΘΘ

Don’t forget to visit us at www.cajunstitchery.com, www.flickr.com/photos/cajunstitchery, and, www.cajunstitchery.etsy.com often.   We are also on Twitter and Facebook. 

Visit our on-line catalogs at:



I guess I’m supposed to write about what happened this week at Cajun Stitchery and the antics of our family.  To sum it all up, it rained.

This rain storm should have a name, like when they name a hurricane.  This was definitely a rain-a-cane.  It was like a hurricane that did not come in from the Gulf.  Winds were 60-70 mph.  We could call it rain storm Lena.  Like my mother, it looked docile on the surface, but once enraged, all hell broke lose.  The rain came and with it came an unbelievable thunder and lightning demonstration that lasted most, if not all, of the night.  We slept downstairs Tuesday night.  The reports that we heard said in one hour we received more rainfall than Hurricane Ivan delivered.  We ended up with almost 27” of rain and 75,000 lightning strikes.

Once or twice during the night our lights flickered on and off but we never lost electricity.  Many homes did lose electricity and had to endure the storm in the dark.

Wednesday morning our yard looked like a lake but the water subsided by the end of the day.  No water got into either house.  We were very blessed.  Sadly, that was not the case for others.  All around us homes were flooded and roads torn up.  A multitude of vehicles were abandoned in streets.  Many vehicles were seen in the giant holes in the road where the water washed away the ground under the pavement and the pavement then collapsed.  Downtown Pensacola was flooded.  The photographs and videos on Facebook and the local news are incredible.

Then came the damage assessment.  The government is still doing their damage assessment, which means that FEMA is not here yet.  Many people have lost their homes or have to move out of their homes while the damage is repaired.  Just like when Ivan hit, all of this causes a home and apartment shortage.  All of these displaced people are looking for a place to live.  Many small businesses were damaged, even at the end of our street.  It is a mess.

A friend of mine on the beach said that it was just so weird to have this kind of storm and Pensacola is the first to have damage, rather than Pensacola Beach.  In fact, George and I went to a wedding on the beach yesterday and saw no damage on Pensacola Beach.  Maybe it just says something for the tenacity of Pensacolians, but in order to get to the wedding on the beach, we had to detour to another road because the Crawfish Festival was blocking Main Street downtown. 

Our precious Manna Food Bank suffered 100% damage.  We are just waiting to find out what we can do to help them.

My friend, Pandora de Balthazar’s store, Pandora de Balthazar European Luxury Bedding, made it through the storm okay but her 7 warehouses were not so lucky.  She has been pulling out antiques, family pictures, and collectibles that she has collected over her lifetime, all damaged.  She has been having a fabulous “damage sale” though.

In an effort to help support small damaged businesses, I went shopping at Pandora’s sale.  I walked away with a beautiful Euro King pillow.  This isn’t your normal Wal-Mart pillow.  First of all, the pillow is about as big as I am.  It is a Hungarian Down pillow and softer than anything you can imagine.  She even took a photo of me hugging one of the pillows at her store.  I’m going to use that pillow at the studio for display purposes.  Once I got home, we were so in love with the pillow that I contacted the store and bought two Euro Standard pillows for our bed.  These pillows are also huge and soft. 

The pillows are so special to me that I’ve decided to make special pillow cases for them.  To be honest, I’m making pillow cases for them partly because I don’t own pillow cases that big.  I’m making the pillow cases from 100% cotton fabric.  You know they are going to have embroidery on them.  The pillow case fabric was cut today and the embroidery has been designed.  I’ve begun the embroidery process.  Fingers are crossed that it turns out as special as I want them to be.

All joking and embroidery aside, being a small business owner myself, I think it is imperative that those of us who were blessed by having little or no damage should help those small businesses in need.  For a retail business the best help is to buy.  I encourage everyone to follow suit, even if all you can afford is a small trinket.  Forego Wal-Mart this one time.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the jail.  We have the great flood and the following day the jail explodes from faulty gas lines.  I don’t know if this was neglect or the flood.  Gas lines did burst in a few areas other than the jail.  However, the jail explosion ended in the death of 2 inmates.  I’d say, “when it rains it pours” but I guess I shouldn’t.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK
If you are not a subscriber and would like to receive Cajun Corner weekly, please email cajunstitchery@yahoo.com and let me know to put you on our email list. 

No time to read Cajun Corner?  Visit our blog at www.cajunstitchery.blogspot.com and click the Odiogo button to hear the computer read the blog.

 

Cajun Stitchery

(850) 261-2462
P.S.  You are always welcome to stop by and look at all of the catalogs and pass some time with me, cher.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Cajun Corner - Vol. 5, No. 17

 

 

 




Cajun Corner – Vol. 5, No. 17 – May 5, 2013

 

Bon Jour!  Welcome to Cajun Stitchery’s weekly email and welcome to our family.

 

ΘΘΘΘΘ

Don’t forget to visit us at www.cajunstitchery.com, www.flickr.com/photos/cajunstitchery, and, www.cajunstitchery.etsy.com often.   We are also on Twitter and Facebook. 

Visit our on-line catalogs at:



This week we were emptying Mama’s boxes of other than kitchen stuff.  We found that apparently we had a small hole in the roof of the garage and several of the boxes were ruined.  George fixed the roof but the roaches were so bad in some of the boxes that we just opened them up in the yard.  There was not much to salvage from those boxes and they were mostly clothes.  The ruined clothes were tossed.  Those Mayflower people really did box “everything.”  We found a horrid looking brown substance wrapped up and it turned out to be chocolate kisses.  That went in the garbage.  The cookie jar still had cookie remnants in it.  The medicine cabinet stuff was covered in bugs.  That was tossed.

We found Mama’s sewing machine and a lot of her sewing notions.  It broke my heart but I did get rid of most of her scrap fabric.  George reasoned that I already have a house full of scrap fabric, would I really use this?  Darn logic.

Mama’s towels and linens are being washed as I write this.

The house started to become very dark with all of the boxes in there.  Our plan is to have that house very bright and cheery.    It will look better when I have the curtains finished and everything is put away.  We finally decided that once we get all of Mama’s stuff in the house and put away, then we can decide how to decorate.

I did make a sham for one of the pillows.  It turned out beautiful.  Then I discovered that Mama loved shams, too.  She has lots of shams.  I’ll just have to start embroidering on them.

Several weeks ago we purchased some water bottle koozies that were on sale at one of my favorite online stores.  Two of the koozies have pink feathers at the bottom.  This week we sold those 2 koozies.  The initials were embroidered on the koozies and they are adorable.  We still have a bunch of the same color water bottle koozies and 2 beer bottle koozies in the same color, but no feathers.

After embroidering the koozies, I decided to put a monogram in the same font on my shirt cuffs.  Did that.  Then I decided to monogram my tennis shoes.  Oh, yes I did.  Each shoe now sports a pink P.  As long as I can get it in the machine, I can pretty much embroider on it.

Yesterday George and I went to the Pensacola Crawfish Festival.  We had a wonderful time.  The line for crawfish was very long but moved at a pretty good pace.  By the time we were at the front of the line, we looked back and the line was almost outside the festival entrance.  Oh, that crawfish was good, sha.  We each got a 3lb container of crawfish and ate every one of them while listening to band from St. Charles.  Yes, it was messy but well worth it. 

Since we ate the crawfish we weren’t hungry for dinner.  Later in the evening I made some beignets for us to snack.  This morning I awoke with a bit of a queasy stomach.  I guess it was overindulgence of spices and/or rich food.  Again, it was well worth it.

This morning was a baby shower for a friend.  Because I wasn’t feeling very well, I cancelled.  Now I’m sitting at the table looking at these cute little infant socks and wanting to embroidery the baby’s initial on the cuff.  I don’t know the baby’s name.  Perhaps the embroidery should be the first initial of the last name.  The initial would have to be about a half inch tall but we definitely can do this.

We have an order for a queen’s cape.  Well, actually she is a little princess.  The fabric is pink velveteen.  I contacted my trusty tech on the hazards of embroidery on velvet and I think we are going to be able to do a very nice design.  Thanks go out not only to my wonderful friend and embroidery tech, but also to all of my wonderful beach friends who are always directing potential customers to me.  This customer was referred to me by two of my beach friends.

Speaking of my embroidery tech, she surprised me this week by telling me that she will be here on the 19th of May.  Whoo hoo!  We always have such a good time and talk about gardens, embroidery, and conservation while imbibing our favorite wine.  She is only staying one night but we will have a grand time.

Poor Evie has been looking like a miniature, shedding, bison lately.  She is 13 this year and the weather has been too cool to bath her outside.  I have been brushing wads of fur off of her.  Today she got a bath in a nice, indoor, warm tub.  Even after her bath the fur was still flying but at least she is clean and silky soft.

Two beautiful handkerchiefs were made this week.  Pictures were taken.  They were ready to be uploaded on Etsy when the computer gave me a message that they were not jpg files.  Yes, they are jpg files.  The “help” section gave the parameters in pixels.  The photos were pulled into Paint and the parameters were adjusted.  Etsy still won’t accept the photos.  Facebook and Flickr accepted the photos but not Etsy.  I just cannot seem to get these hankies uploaded on Etsy.  They are beautiful and they are for sale.  $10 each. 

Have a wonderful week.

If you are not a subscriber and would like to receive Cajun Corner weekly, please email cajunstitchery@yahoo.com and let me know to put you on our email list. 

No time to read Cajun Corner?  Visit our blog at www.cajunstitchery.blogspot.com and click the Odiogo button to hear the computer read the blog.

Found the following at:  http://lorajeansmagazine.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-make-doily.html

How to make a doily


(Go to website to see photos)

The images are pretty self explanatory but here are the steps.

  1. Trace a circle using a cup.
  2. Use large scalloped scissors to cut around the circle.
  3. Use a hole punch to punch a hole in each scallop.
  4. Punch another row above and in between the other holes.
  5. Erase circle or flip it over.

And done! 


Peggy Henshall
Cajun Stitchery
(850) 261-2462
P.S.  You are always welcome to stop by and look at all of the catalogs and pass some time with me, cher.