Last night we celebrated Elanor's 9th birthday. There were 13 of us for dinner and I broke out mom's 1950s era china (which is now my china) and my sterling flatware (which rarely sees the light of day). It was pretty! Steve smoked a turkey, Bernice brought fresh berries and roasted aspargus, I made a chocolate cheesecake… makes you hungry, doesn't it? Elanor got some fun presents and ended up spending the night with us. We watched Kindergarten Cop, one of her favorites.

My mom was at dinner of course. She was worn out from being out and about all day. When I took her home she started telling me that she thought she wasn't walking as well as she should, and that she was feeling sort of like a burden to us. And there was more. Now mind you this was after what I thought was a fun night.

I'm going to admit that I just about lost it at my mother. I've known and loved her for 79 years so I know that she is a worrier. When one thing gets fixed, the next thing in line moves to the top of the worry list. So now it's her walking. I pointed out that doing too much, and lifting what she shouldn't, probably had more to do with her current situation than anything else. And that she can and should take better care of herself. You get the idea. Mothers! You can't reason with them.

I got home and Christopher was in the kitchen helping Steve with the dishes. He said… well I can't remember the exact words, but it made me laugh. Basically, it was that eventually he would be having the same words with me – and he referenced a Star Trek episode.

Do you remember Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra? Picard is on a planet trying to understand an alien captain who communicates in allegory. War is imminent. Chris pointed out that the story of my mom and me trying to communicate now will be like him trying to communicate with me later. We agreed that if he mentions Darmok and Jalad I will harken back to me trying to help my mother see what's best for her.

Now that I've written it that way, I can see that I've got a problem. Of course I think that she is doing a variety of things that are not exactly good for her. But me telling her what I think is best for her is not helpful. Darn it! I suppose I'm going to have to work on lip-biting techniques and hope for the best.

I went over early this morning and we're fine. No residual crankiness from either of us. Darmok and Jalad appear to have come to an understanding. This afternoon I got her garage door opener working. One less thing to worry about!

The Stanley Cup Quilt-Off has officially begun! I hope each and every quilt raises lots of money and that they all find good homes. Last time I checked, Caryl Bryer Fallert's quilt had been bid on. It is a lovely quilt and I count Caryl as a good friend. However, I wouldn't mind it if my quilt had a higher bid on it :-). (I couldn't help myslef, had to throw in an emoticon.)

Several of you have commented that you'd love to place the winning bid on my quilt. Here's your chance to get the ball rolling. Click here to see the quilts and place bids.

In other news, as you know, last night was Halloween. Jack and Elanor looked particularly good this year:

Elanor was Bellatrix Strange (from Harry Potter fame) and Jack was Luke Skywalker (surely you ALL know who Luke Skywalker is). His light sabre glowed a really great shade of blue that doesn't show well here.

Elanor was really lovely as Bellatrix. Lorna did a fantastic job on her hair and makeup.

Jack was very Luke-like. 

Steve and I went to a magic show, GHOSTS, at Austin College. Larry Hass, who is on the faculty and is also married to the AC President, Marjorie Hass, is a professional magician in addition to having a PhD in philosophy. His colleague and friend, Eugene Burger, was the headliner of the event. Larry and he performed some wonderful, scary magic.

It was a dress-up event but it was also Halloween. I didn't exactly go in costume, but I did trot out Christy's Halloween tights. She had planned to wear them this year and mom and I figured she'd be happy to know that they got out and about. That's me, striking a not-so-scary pose. 

Trust me when I tell you that I had the most memorable legs of the evening.

Remember to place your bid at the auction!

You may or may not know that Quilt Market is going on now in Houston. Linda and I are usually there, but this year we don't have anything new enough to warrant showing it in a booth. We both like being home, so we stayed home.

We found out this morning that we had been signed up to teach a Take & Teach class. That is a 1 1/2 hour class for 35 people where you show a new technique or highlight a new fabric or book. These are good classes to go to if you are a shop owner or teacher. We enjoy teaching them.

We sign up to teach these classes almost a year in advance and we thought this one, that was scheduled for the wrong market because we had nothing particularly new, had been cancelled. We were blissfully unaware that we left 35 quilters in an empty room yesterday. Oh my. It's the sort of thing that I might have had nightmares about if I had ever imagined it happening.

As it is, all we can do is apologize and try to think of something that will make these 35 people happy. First, we have to find out who they are. If you are one of those people please know that we wouldn't have done this to you if we had had a clue that we were on the schedule. Email me.

So what was I doing yesterday when I was supposed to be in Houston? I cleaned house with Steve. I sort of enjoy cleaning my house, especially when we do it together. He does the wet stuff, I dust and impose order. I very much enjoy putting things back in place. Once the house was clean I painted the front door, and the screen door. This has been on my list for a year. The door and screen door used to be red:

I liked the color, I was just tired of it. And the colors in the house didn't work with the red any more. When I painted mom's front door deep blue, I knew I wanted to use the same color on my doors. Our doors. Steve does live here too.

The 2nd photo shows the color better. It's not electric, nor is it purple at all. It is a good, deep, rich blue. If you look at the photo above you can see that it opens into a space with a carribean blue. These are blues that only sort of work together but I like the dynamic. It reminds of the best kind of Mexican color combinations. Steve likes it. AND I get to mark this task off of my list.

Earlier this week Mom decided that she was ready to give away Christy's clothes and shoes. We each went through and each found things that we would happily wear. Then I called a couple of my friends who are Christy's size and they got to go shopping today. More tomorrow.

My sister had boots – lots of boots – and I was sincerely sorry to have feet too big for her boots but Laurie and Karen were very, very happy. Interestingly enough, Laurie and my sister were just about identical in size. Laurie went home with bags of clothes. I have no idea how she will fit them all into her closet.

What's left goes to the Crisis Center tomorrow afternoon. Christy would be pleased. She was a practical and generous person. She loved her clothes and shoes. She would be happy to see other people wear them rather than to leave them gathering dust. Mom has plenty to remind her of Christy. She doesn't need a room full of clothes.

The other news, and I am again burying this at the bottom of my post, is that I have added fabric to the web site.

This is fabric from Moda that we did not design. I just like it. A lot. I didn't order a lot of this stuff because I'm waiting to see if you like it too. There are fat quarter packs, no yardage. At this point I don't have room for bolts of fabric. I might make room for bolts of fabric if it turns out that you all like the fat quarters. Click here and here and here to see what I have.

I only have four of each fat quarter pack. I don't know if that's a lot or not enough. I might or might not be able to get more of these fabrics.

I'll probably send a newsletter later in the week letting everyone know what's new but I'm also still trying to guage how long it takes to fill orders when a lot of them come at once.

I tell you what, being an eRetailer is an interesting experience.  So far I'm learning a new thing every day. If I ship you an order and you want to let me know anything about your experience (good or bad), please do email me. I'm happy to learn how to do a better job.

Ami put together this YouTube slideshow of the auction quilts. If you are going to Houston, be sure to go check them out. Let me know how they look hanging together. I won't be there…

I bought this elephant for Donna who takes such good care of my nails (which are looking lovely these days!) when I was in Paris a few months ago. It's a stand for her iPhone:

I bought this at Pylones in Paris, France – not Texas. After seeing how great it is on her desk I thought to myself "I need one of those and I'll bet I can order it online." 

Pylones is online. And I did go shopping on their because I needed this extremely cute tape dispenser for the office: 

However, I hunted the site in vain for an elephant iPhone holder. I contacted Pylones and a very polite person let me know that you can only get them in France. I looked at the Pylones French website and didn't see them there either which makes me think that they are only in the stores.

So here is my plea: If you are going to Paris you will see at least one Pylones store. There are several And if you like Piece O' Cake, you will be sucked into the Pylones store because the colors are so luscious. If you are there and if you have a little bit of room in your luggage for up to 5 of these things I will happily pay you back for them and for the shipping to get them to me. If you are that rare, wonderful person, email me at becky@pieceocake.com so that I can send you a check. I am happy for you to pick the elephant color(s)!

Now that I'm running the web site, I find I'm doing a lot more mailing these days. Mostly I use stamps.com which is excellent in many ways. But I had to go to the actual post office yesterday and I had to buy stamps. I didn't 'have' to buy them, it's just that these stamps cried out to go home with me. 

I do use stamps and I have always thought that it's better to use interesting stamps. I give sheets of stamps as stocking stuffers so I like to 'stock up' on the good ones. Buzz Lightyear is my personal favorite of this bunch…

I got to visiting with the postal person at the counter. These are all forever stamps so won't be affected by the rate increase in January. Stamps go up a penny. Not that big a deal for what you get, we agreed. Which is really where I am going with this post… 

Am I the only one who is amazed that you can send a letter or package to a specific address almost anywhere on the planet, afix postage, and that letter or package will usually get to the intended place? I sometimes wonder why we don't have to pay a lot more for this service.

In my town, as is true in many places, we often navigate by landmarks. For instance, I live near the old Dillingham – which was torn down years ago. It no longer exists. When I tell people I live south of the old Dillingham, they know where I am – unless they didn't live here then. It drives my mother, who navigates by street names and addresses, crazy.  

The more I think about it, the more amazed I am that we, as a human race, have devised a system of addresses that work. I know that address formats differ from country to country, but that doesn't seem to matter. Every place has a set of coordinates that tell you where it is. Addresses are so much better than landmarks. 

As I said at the beginning, I'm shipping more because the website is now my baby. So, on a mildly related note, I've put some new things on the POC home page. If you've read this far and have time, you might want to see what's there. While it's still there. This is sort of a quiet sale, so that I can see what it's like to get a many orders at a time. I hope I handle it as well as Linda always has.