More Birthday Mail-Call!

I’m pretty well embarrassed that it took me til this morning to get through opening the mail.

Mostly I was avoiding the bills that were in there….invoices, contracts, etc --- and knowing that replies couldn’t go out until Monday, I left the pile to sit until I had time to open each and every little thing…but I should have jumped on it sooner!

This has been, hands down, the most fun birthday I’ve ever had! Thank you so much for thinking of me and stuffing my mailbox with such wonderful goodies!

There are too many people to thank. I don’t want this to be a roll call of who sent what ---but the array of cards has cheered my soul!

My hope is that if you sent something, you will recognize it here amidst its friends! There were some great funny ones, and some hand made beauties, and of course cards with quilt themes…love them all!

And there were so many blocks that the table top could not contain the array….so I laid them out in the kitchen!

These blocks will be combined with the other blocks I showed earlier, and yes, I WILL have a 50th birthday quilt! It might take me a long time….kind of like that millenium fabric still hanging around --- do I have the whole decade to make myself a 50th quilt? :cD

This cracked me up….it’s an “over the hill” doll! LOL!!! She came in a box packed with wonderful scraps of all colors and kinds!

Another friend knows how to pack a small box well…these strips were rolled and folded and packed ever so tight!

A friend send a lovely lavender smelling pincushion! Isn’t this adorable? And I love the smell of lavender – the whole BOX it came in smells good now!

She also included a block with our pictures in it….yep, THIS goes in the 50th quilt too!

Here’s a sweet teenie tiny hexagon block……might applique this down to a square and include it in the quilt too!

Thank you so much everyone, for making my birthday SEW SPECIAL!

As for the post about my dying Bernie yesterday ---I want to say this. We all love our machines for various reasons. Machines are like cars --- we all drive different ones and what fits one person is not necessarily going to be what another person likes. I tend to get really attached to inanimate objects that are a part of my every day life.

So to me, as crazy as it sounds --being told it was time for a "new" one was like saying....."Sorry your dog died, but you can get a new one". I know it's silly ----but I'm that attached.

And I want to EMPHASIZE that *I* was the sole responsible one for running Bernie into the ground -- it had nothing to do with the skills of the technician. She's fabulous. Sometimes things are either beyond repair, or it becomes a money pit to keep putting funds into a machine that will continue to have problems due to aging circuit boards.

When I was little --- my dad traded in our old Corvair --- for a VOLVO. And I hated that car, and I cried and I cried and I cried…((I may have been about 8 or 9)) because I don’t do “different” very well. Never have. When mom got rid of the old ugly colonial style sofa in favor of a newer more comfortable model --- I cried then too. Familiarity is my comfort zone.

All day yesterday I kept telling myself that no matter how much I loved my Bernina 1080, it was never going to love me back. It was just a machine. But so much of my life has gone into that machine..it’s been my haven, my confidant ---my friend. Even if in reality it was just a machine. And that is why I am having such a hard time letting go.

It isn’t about what I can or can’t afford. It’s the feeling I get when I sew on it. Any new machine is going to feel like a stranger, and it is going to take a long time for me to consider a new machine as a friend.

But reading all the comments helped me to see that I can have an older mechanical machine as my travel machine…I need something I can bang around and take with me. And maybe, just maybe, I can have a machine with bells and whistles at home where I can enjoy them without worrying that taking a fancy machine on the road is going to be a danger to the machine.

I never meant to upset anyone by posting what I did --- machine owners are fiercely loyal to their brands, just as we are our cars, our appliances, or anything else that work well for us.

And maybe --- the fact that I don’t do change well, and am fiercely loyal to my friends --- is why I tend to keep them around my whole life as well. They mean THAT much to me.