I happened upon this TED Talk and it’s too good not to share. (If the video doesn’t open in this post, click here.)

I don’t think I’ve got the time to do this myself, but it is very tempting :-).

My oldest son, Chris, loves books. He has quite a collection on shelves that line one wall in his and Lorna’s bedroom. They recently rearranged and the books looked overwhelming in the room.

There were cute parts, but even they were hard to see unless you were right in front of them…

Chris and Lorna have both been seriously tidying their house and they decided that embrace the KonMarie technique and de-clutter the shelves, without letting go of many books. They took everything off the shelves and rearranged by color.

What was a jumble is now really nice to look at! The clutter is gone, and amazingly enough the books are more engaging. I want to stop and browse where before I just walked on by. It almost makes me wish I had a whole bunch of books to do this with!

If you get the Piece O’ Cake newsletter, you’ve seen Linda’s Hexy Bird quilt, but if you don’t get the newsletter, here it is. Isn’t it cute?!

Click here for more information on the Hexy Bird pattern. I have to say that I love this 15″ bird block and plan to offer it as a class. It combines applique, hexes, and a little embroidery. What’s not to love!

The setting blocks are all 1/2″-hexes sewn together and then appliqued to a block:

As I said earlier, what’s not to love! Click here for more information on the Hexy Bird pattern.

Cableone made me mad and I have had enough. If you are like me, you’ve heard about the television cord-cutting trend but are not sure how it works, so I’m going to tell you what I’ve found out.

The biggest change when you cut the cable cord is that you have to decide what to watch. There’s nothing playing on the TV until you decide what to put on. As near as I can tell, DVRs don’t work with an internet only setup but that’s OK with me. I quickly realized that the shows I was recording can be found online if you are willing to subscribe to a few services (Netflix, Hulu, etc.)

There is a huge amount of content online and it is really easy to find something to watch. I can already tell that I am never going to run out of interesting shows. I like being able to watch a season of shows at whatever pace feels good.

For this to work, you need to be able to connect the internet to your TV. I have an Apple TV device connected to the TV in the living room. Apple TV can connect to the internet via wifi or with an ethernet cable. I use the cable because I think it might be a better/faster connection, and because I had the cable already in place.

The TV in the kitchen has a wireless Roku stick. This is a little thing that looks a lot like a flash drive that plugs into an HDMI port on the TV. It has a cord that plugs into a power outlet. Neither of these devices was that hard to set up. It took a little time to enter passwords and set up channels (Netflix, etc.) on each device, but it was easy to do.

Both of these devices work well and allow you to watch a variety of things. I am currently watching subscription services like Netflix, Hulu, CBS All Access, but there and I’ve found  a variety of free channels as well. Additionally, you can connect both Apple TV and the Roku to your computer or other smart device and stream from them.

My cable bill is about 1/3 of what it was before. The combined monthly Netflix/Hulu/CBS/HBO fees will be a little more than what I was paying Tivo (my DVR provider). I’m saving money—that hardly ever happens!

The one downside is that we don’t get local/live news. I solved that problem with the WFAA app on my ipad. (WFAA is the ABC channel in Dallas that we watched until Cableone took it away.) We usually watch evening news and this app works for us. I suspect I’ll be able to get more news using other apps… in fact, Nowhere TV might work very well.

I hope this has answered questions for those of you who might have been thinking about doing this yourself.

Regina Grewe, who lives in Germany, sent me this wonderful email before Christmas. Both her story and her quilt made me grin!

It is finally done! My Santa Quilt needed fourteen years to be finished and it finally decorates our house. In 2001, I saw a beautiful quilt during a trip to the US in the shop window of a quilt shop. Appliqued houses and fir trees and reindeermade up the village at the North Pole, where – as everyone knows – Santa Claus lives. Absolutely irresistible!
Luckily for a beginner like me with no fabric stash at all the store offered not only your book but also a bag for each block filled with colorful pieces of fabric! Of course I flew home with the complete treasure trove … The applique of the blocks by hand went surprisingly quickly – thanks to your practical advice. Full of excitement I decided to hand quilt the good piece – as it should be. But this is soooo not my thing!
And therefore the work was put on the back burner repeatedly. I would do a few painstaking stitches and then set it aside – again…and again. Until I decided this summer that this had to end. I took stitch after stitch and lastly finished. The decorations with embroidery, beads, buttons and all sorts of odds and ends needed additional patience, but finally the quilt is on display! Pictures can be found in the gallery on my website: http://www.reginagrewe.de/03galerie/0306ap_e.html

 

I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU for giving me such neat appliqué ideas. I wish you a merry Christmas.

 

Welcome to the North Pole, made by Regina Grewe

Detail from North Pole by Regina Grewe

As I said yesterday, Christmas rolls around every year. If you’ve been wanting to start a North Pole quilt of your own, now is a good time! Click here to find the book.