Imagine You: Making Patchwork Potholders via Wikipedia

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Patchwork Potholder & Fabric Fruit Bowl

What follows is the kind of lucid and step by step instructions you’ll be following to make one of these beautiful items…

Layering the plain linen underneath the cotton batting, you will sew the strips directly onto the batting.

- Take 2 strips and place them facing each other in the centre of your batting square and sew down one side.

Flip the top strip over (the right sides should be facing up) and press.

Take another strip and place it right side down (wiht raw edges aligned) onto the last sewn strip, sew then flip over and press open.

Continue in this way until your square of batting is completely covered.

Finish the fabric fruit bowl – Turn one of the sewn squares right side out and place it inside the other square (right sides should be facing).

Get the whole story including step-by-step details at: Patchwork Potholder & Fabric Fruit Bowl

Items to Make Your Yoga Bag

While she was cutting fabric for totes last night, She got re-acquainted with a fabric which I thought would be perfect as yoga mat bag.

Okay, I didn’t have to post the picture above AND here’s a few highlights of this fun easy project:

You’ll get one rectangular piece and a round piece for your bottom.

Cut the same pieces for your lining.

You should also cut 2 strips for your strap.

Mine was 33 inches long and 1.25 inches wide.

Sew the long side, starting two inches from the edge, but on one side only.  Marking three inches inches from where you started sewing.

Make sure that you sandwich the other end of the strap between the circular part and your bag.

Sew your lining using similar steps.

Your New Yoga Mat Bag

Meream did this yoga bag in a evening…

-enjoy the whole article with complete step-by-step instructions plus photos that tell the story

Make Your Own Yoga Mat Bag Easy: Sew a Yoga Mat Bag

also we enjoy harvesting what we know of (black walnuts, dandelion, etc) and i am always interested in expanding my collecting knowledge.

thanks!

You can get a lot of good info for your area from your local County Agent, an under used resource. RScott

By Gary McCarty

I’ve read enough papers, first as a graduate assistant and later as a university communications instructor since 1995, to know the mistakes people make and the traps they fall into. Today I’d like to focus on one of the most prevalent and treacherous of all pits into which students fall, the one I label the kitchen sink approach to writing.

Let’s look at a real example of an assignment I’ve given countless times and read thirty times for each of those countless times—an essay on “controversial television advertising.”

Generally, students have little knowledge of this subject except for what they’ve seen on TV, and usually they just remember the Paris Hilton Bentley ad for Carl’s Jr. Therefore, like so many lemmings scurrying off the nearest cliff, they rush to Google and Wikipedia (neither of which is their best recourse, but I’m talking real life here) to do research.

They end up with a slew of articles from which to fashion their essays. However, since they usually don’t bother to formulate a thesis and pick supporting topics, they then rush headlong into writing their essays. Five or so pages later, they’ve regurgitated everything they’ve read, even if it’s not really pertinent, to create a usually rambling hodgepodge of information, statistics, observations, anecdotes and so on.

Now, and here comes the surprise and the revelation at the same time, when they get to writing the conclusion, they have finally figured out their thesis. I often read in the very last paragraph or very last sentence a rather cogent statement such as, “Therefore, all television advertising should be reviewed by a ratings committee before being aired on TV, and anything deemed controversial should be rejected or restricted to late-hour airing,” or words to that effect. What a relief to have figured out what you’re writing about finally!

It’s really a shame that these students have to spend so much time writing just to figure out their thesis statement, which should be what they start with and reveal in their first paragraph. Wouldn’t it be better to brainstorm the research findings and then fashion a thesis? Of course it would!

However, students are so accustomed to the high school routine—cram as much information into as many pages as possible at the last minute—that they shortchange the writing process. It’s time to wash the kitchen sink approach to writing down the drain and start afresh, ugly metaphor and all.

Next: crafting thesis statements.

Gary McCarty
http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/the-kitchen-sink-approach-to-writing-99567.html

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