The view from my chinny-chin-chin...

I was sitting here in the dark last night, nervously hand stitching on a block while watching a PBS show about Kennedy, waiting to hear news of my MIL's surgery, when it occurred to me...I have never shared one of my favorite tools that allows me to stitch ANYWHERE...the fantastic light that hangs around my neck.

It is called "Beam and Read" and there is a phone number right on it (but I also found it here on www.Amazon.com).  I am able to keep the switch in the "off" position while it is flat (as pictured above)...then just swivel the light head to the angle I want (it comes on automatically when the head is swiveled).  

I guess if you wanted to use it in the flat position, you could just turn it to the "on" position.

I love this thing!!  There are different versions, but this one has 6 little LED lights that are wonderfully bright...there are less expensive versions that have 4 LED lights, but I like how bright this one is.

It came with a colored filter to snap over the lights, but I have never used that...also came with a magnifying lens that you can snap on, but I don't use that either.  It takes four AA batteries, does not generate heat, and only weighs a little over 6 ounces.

I can sew in a dark room when my family is watching a movie, sew in bed, sew during meetings, sew ANYWHERE!!!  I used to use the clip-on book lights, but found those terribly inconvenient...the clips were clumsy and the lights not very bright...and they used those hard-to-find round/flat little batteries.  I would clip them on my hoop while hand quilting, which was clumsy...this is WAY better.

Weasley is fascinated with this old, beat up, but still functional sousaphone 

that I found at a junk shop over the summer.  Perhaps if I attached the mouthpiece, we would hear him tooting in the night when he is frisking about while we are trying to sleep. He enjoys slam-dunking cat toys in the "net-like" bell of the instrument.  I guess if he is ever missing, I will know where to look first...

  

On an unrelated topic, I was overwhelmed by the responses to my last post...thank you! Really, I promise I wasn't fishing for comments, but simply puzzling out all the things I don't understand about blogging (ha! which is everything...).  I never worry about the number of comments, but do, from time to time, check the stats for the number of page hits. The blog readers do cut into those statistics.  

Someone emailed me and told me how to determine the number of people who follow me on Bloglovin'.  And for grins, I signed up to "follow myself" on my own blog.  This morning, I got an email with that last post in it, which can be read without ever going to my blog. Interesting.  That makes reading a particular blog very nice and convenient, but no button for commenting, so THAT explains a lot...if I had an iPhone or iPad I would love that little convenience.

What was I thinking when I dragged THIS home over the summer? 

The fact that it almost didn't fit in my Subaru Forester should have been a hint...

I have no intention of stopping what I do...I appreciate and really enjoy...the online quilting community, even when I don't really know who is out there.  Google and Blogger have never made it easy for people to comment in the first place.  

I guess Facebook makes it easier for people to communicate with each other, or simply "like" something, and I do have a Facebook page (which is so neglected and not up-to-date at this point...).  My husband says I should start another one that just has to do with my fledgling pattern business and quilting.  

Hmmm...maybe when I master folding space and time...

In stitches,
Teresa  :o)