Trying New Things

Trying new things is generally not my style.

This year, though, I'm trying to focus on a quote from the TV show Blue Bloods:

I have a secure base.  It doesn't get much more secure than living in your hometown and working for the company that gave you your first job.  Whoever said "you can't go home again" really missed the mark.  You can go home again - you just go home changed.

So though I'll admit that what I've been up to lately doesn't really qualify as daring, it is a new year and I'm making some new choices.

First, a new craft.  My mom bought me a sock loom (I adore socks) for Christmas 2013, and I am finally giving it a try.

You're looking at the better part of six hours of work.

I had to start over at one point, and I'm doing this at work, but still.  Slow going.

This isn't my first experience with loom knitting, but knitting socks is very different.  The yarn is extremely fine (I'm currently using a 2 yarn, but most of the patterns call for a 1 weight), so it has a different texture and the finished product grows very slowly.

The yarn I'm using, in Grapes.

Second, a new beverage.  I have had tea once in my lifetime, about ten years ago.  I can't tell you what kind of tea it was - a coffee shop gave it to me because they were out of what I actually wanted - but I hated it.  My friends, on the other hand, are tea lovers, and one of them is hosting a party for a company called Steeped Tea.  I love to support a direct sales business person!  I'm getting one rooibos tea and one green tea, so we'll see how it goes.

http://www.steepedtea.com/

And last, a new supplement.  Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely an advocate of modern medicine, vaccines, and the power of medical science.  I do not approve of turning our backs on the power of medicine - the recent measles outbreak is proof enough that medicine is an important part of quality of life.  The rise of superbugs and antibiotic resistance is proof enought, though, that sometimes it's better to not have a pill and potion for everything.

So, I'm trying out essential oils.  Several acquaintances have been using oils with good results, and I'm willing to see if I can get any relief from my upset stomach and and sinus congestion.  My first trial run will be with peppermint, cedarwood, and lemon.  We'll see how it goes!

Photo credit

Apps I Love: Envelopes 2

The biggest part of the last year and a half for me, since I finished college, has been getting my financial situation under control.  I put myself through private school, so I walked the stage with quite a bit of debt - almost double what the average Minnesota grad has.

Since I also finally got myself a smart phone, I decided to try out budgeting apps.  And I tried out a lot of them.  I had a general idea of what I wanted, but it was hard to get a firm idea of the important features without trial and error.  Plus I had the added difficulty of trying to figure out what features the app actually had - sometimes the descriptions in the App Store are pretty useless.

After trying a half-dozen or so budget apps, I've finally found one that I have stuck with and would recommend called Envelopes 2 by Emdentec Ltd.  As far as I know, Envelopes 2 is only available for iOS.

My basic criteria for a budget apps were:

1. Defining my own categories - I live in a small town, so I shop at Walmart a lot.  I didn't want the kind of app that automatically drops certain stores into certain categories; sometimes I get groceries at Walmart, other times I get socks.
2. The ability to "roll-over" unused funds/overspending from month to month - for big expenses, I save a little every month, and I wanted the app to reflect that.
3. No need to connect my bank accounts!
4. A free app.

The two biggest obstacles I ran into looking for my budget app were related to my third and fourth criteria.  Everyone knows that free apps are generally not full-feature.  Several free apps I tried only held so many transactions before you needed to upgrade to the paid version. (I know $0.99 or $1.99 isn't a lot of money, but I am being as frugal as possible to knock down my 50k+ debt.  Why should I pay for an app if I can find a free one or I can just do it the old school way?)  Other free apps only worked if I connected my banking info, and I'm sorry, but that's just shady to me.

In homage to the "old school way," one of the apps I tried to use for my budget was Apple's Numbers app, which is just a spreadsheet app that happens to have a budget template.  Personally, I found Numbers to be clunky and difficult to work with on my iPhone.  I think I used it for one month before I gave up.

I have lots of reasons for loving Envelopes 2:
You can have as many envelopes (categories) as you want, and they can be color-coded.
After you set up your envelopes with the specific amount per day, per week, per month, it is only two taps to fill your envelopes.
There are no passwords needed.
You can add a note right to the front of an envelope, which comes in handy if you owe someone money, and add notes to each transaction.

It rolls over the balance from month to month, as long as you don't clear the transactions.
You can empty the transactions from each envelope and start from scratch at the beginning of a new year with just a couple of taps.
Since you can personalize everything, the app is great for people who want to follow the Dave Ramsey system but would rather use a debit card than carry bunches of cash.

If you're considering trying Envelopes 2, here are two things to remember:

1. Because there are no passwords/log-ins with this app, it's pretty much centralized to your phone.  You and a spouse can't both access the same envelopes on your separate phones.
2. This app requires you to manually add transactions.  If you can't bring yourself to do that, you probably want to go find one of the apps that you have to connect to your bank accounts.

Envelopes 2 works great for me.  If you try it, let me know what you think!

Surviving Long Distance

Pinterest is one of my favorite places, certainly.  For someone like me, who loves to bake and craft and frequently needs to surf endless funny pictures on my phone in order to fall asleep, Pinterest can be such an interesting place of discovery.  And it is a great place for bloggers.  You can link your articles there, and with the right keywords, people from across the world may find themselves in your writings.

But sometimes Pinterest (and bloggers) get it wrong.

Stuff about long-distance relationships always comes up on targeted pages for me.  It's not a surprise, I've been in an LDR for about 3-1/2 years now, and I read, write, and talk about it a lot.  People blog about LDR a lot, which isn't surprising.  In the world we live in, where technology connects every corner, where the job market is what you make of it, where finances control so many decisions, a vast number of couples find themselves separated by distance for a least a little while.  And what most bloggers want you to believe is that there is some kind of recipe for surviving being apart, because that is what readers are looking for.  Couples who suddenly end up launched into the crazy mess of "how do we behave apart?" are looking for answers and methodologies and testimonials that show you exactly how to survive.

That's crap.

All of those articles are basically going to tell you the same things - don't rely on texting, Skype x number of times per month, include each other in decisions, be 100% honest, countdown to the next time you'll see each other, etc., etc.  None of these posts understand individuality, though.  None of them will tell you how awkward timezone transitions play in, how having a job that isn't M-F 9-5 can totally mess with together time, and how sometimes you just won't have a clue when you will be together again.

I haven't had a phone call from my other half in over a month.  We haven't Skyped since 2012.  I haven't seen him in about 18 months, and I couldn't even hazard a guess as to when I will see him again.  Sometimes we've both told white lies and had to apologize for them.  Sometimes we've had misunderstandings and screaming matches and angry silences and had to fight our way back from them.  Even with all that, though, we are still 3-1/2 years strong and committed to staying strong. And therein lies the secret.  The only thing that will get you through a long-distance relationship is wanting to.  It doesn't matter how "good" you are together or what your work/financial life is like or which timezones you inhabit.  If you are both committed and connected and try to be there for the other person as best you can, you will make it through to the other side.  You will be battered and bruised, yes, but you will be tougher as well.

Stay strong, all you long-distance lovers.

Quilt Designing

Like most females my age, I have an addiction to Pinterest. While I think Pinterest is fantastic with its sea salt body scrub recipes and fastest way to fit abs workout routines, one of the drawbacks of Pinterest is that your pins don't necessarily go anywhere.  This is especially true of my favorite Pinterest subject, quilting. I pin quilts because I love the picture – whether it's the colors, the pattern, or the textures that draw me in – without regard to where that picture leads. 

A couple months back, I spent an afternoon searching through my quilting board, looking for just the right pattern for a childhood friend's wedding gift. I finally found what I wanted in this Flickr picture:

photo credit

Unfortunately, that's all it was, just a photo with no link to a pattern, credit to a designer, description, or even a size.  That left me with few options, now that I was feeling like this had to be the quilt for them.

I decided to design my own pattern for a quilt inspired by the picture.  There are many upsides to making your own patterns, one being that you get the size you're looking for (my best guess would be that the quilt in the picture is twin- or full- sized, and I wanted a queen-sized).  Pattern making in quilting is easier than you might think, especially for a quilt that contains only basic shapes, in this case squares and half-square triangles.

These two items are my quilt designing must-haves: graph paper (any size you choose) and a fabric calculator.  Graph paper is essential.  At the heart, almost every single quilt is based on a series of squares and rectangles manipulated and arranged into beauty, and the graph paper helps get all those shapes into proportion without hours staring at a ruler.  I always have my FabriCalc with me during designing sessions, purely because it's faster to calculate yardage than using a pencil and regular calculator.  I highly suggest buying a fabric calculator only during sales, at a JoAnn/Michaels – my mom and I did so on Black Friday and got ours 50% off.

Other items you'll want to have handy:

• pencil (I think mechanical work best) with an eraser that won't smear
• colored pencils
• a pen to help differentiate between different areas where colors are similar
• scratch paper to write down yardages, do math, or whatever else you might need

With only those supplies and a short amount of time, you can have the pattern you want!  I finished my pattern in less than an hour – it probably wouldn't have taken that long, but I rearranged the stars a half-dozen times or so.

The final product

I will post pictures of the finished quilt in about two weeks, after my friend's wedding.  Right now, it is complete except for the binding, and I am very proud of it.  Here's hoping the happy couple loves it!

Leave any questions about my pattern making process in the comment section, and I'll be happy to answer them!