My Brand New Bag!

I'm trying to write this while Chick is doing her level best to get us in trouble with the neighbors again.  They already called the city on us for letting her roam around the cul-de-sac.  To prevent this from happening again we have now lock-bolted the gates so Max and his friends can't leave them open.  Meanwhile, see the motionless BBQ Sue pictured above?  This causes problems for Chick too.  Here was my Facebook report from earlier:

My tireless pit mix dog has 0 tolerance for intruding mannequins. In fact, she is so against the existence of BBQ Sue that I'm tempted to call her a fake-person racist.

And then followed that with a further account:

Philip brought BBQ Sue, (our store mannequin back when we had our store), out onto the porch for me to use to model the new tote bags and Chick caught sight of her and barked insanely for several minutes before I thought to see what the big deal was all about. I forgot how terrified she is of mannequins and how wrong she thinks they are. It's so much more menacing to witness a "person" standing motionless for hours at a time than it is to see someone scale the fence of your yard with a pickax.

In just a few minutes I am running off to the post office to send my first order that my friend Taj placed.  Her order is the reason that we are now running our household heat again.  We've been surviving without it on for the last few days and our house has been between 53- 54 degrees, but when it dipped to 51 I couldn't stand it anymore.  I can almost be comfortable at 58 degrees indoors so I've just set the temp to maintain at 58.  That should keep this years bills down a bit because we usually keep the indoor temp between 65-68. 

Now, I never did get those precious elderberry cuttings indoors and before I run my errand I'm going to go out there right now and bring them in because tonight is supposed to dip down to 28 degrees. 

If any of you would rather make this bag than buy it I do plan to do a tutorial on drafting it yourself and sewing it but if you know me at all, you know it'll take me forever to get to it.  But I promise I will.  It's a great beginners sewing project and you literally can't have enough of these bags to do your shopping with.  We always have a couple in use, a couple we can't find, and a couple in the wash.

BBQ Sue says hello from the cold cold porch!!


*For those of you sad individuals who aren't indoctrinated in the world of textile love, what all this means is that I'm sitting here staring at the bag like a drooling zombie.  (That reminds me to mention that I am not saying that Monica drools, ever, but you know, she does sometimes when she finds a pretty shiny awesome piece of quilting cotton...I love you Monica!)  If anyone needs further elucidation on what it means to have new bag/pattern/fabric love, there are two other experts you should be sure to discuss this with:  Pam and Elizabeth.  Go to their blogs and say that Angelina sent you to find out if new fabrics/pattern/bags ever make them drool.  Don't be shy.