Fall Flowers

October 1! Where did the time go? Since it's hovering in the low 40's in the morning this week, the first frost isn't far away. Sadly, this will mean the end of my favorite garden annual. I like to plant things carefully in the spring and then totally neglect them as they grow wild all summer. I do water, occasionally, especially when I notice the plants laying flat on the ground, wilted and suffering. Zinnias are very cooperative with my method. I start them from seed in the spring and transplant them in May. I usually do 2 flats of them in several sizes and colors and I plant them just about anywhere there is lots of sun

By mid summer they start to bloom and on the first day of school in August, they look lush and awesome. The blooms last a very long time and they really do not mind drought or hard clay soil. Unfortunately, these blooms can't take frost, so I'll probably enjoy them for only a few more weeks.

I also put in some gerbera daisies in a pot that was looking neglected. I first enjoyed these blossoms in my wedding flowers. I think these were on the table arrangements, but I got married a long time ago. I've never grown them, but they seem to have survived nicely even though I haven't watered them in awhile either.

My husband and I also learned that we aren't such good vegetable gardeners. The garden got a white mold all over the squash plants. I know it is an easy milk-water solution to treat this, but we got to it too late. We'll try again next year. Seeds are not a big investment, and it was fun to watch early in the summer. Chocolate zucchini bread is the most delicious quick bread ever.

I hope your gardens are looking beautiful for this last gasp of the growing season!

Sad Sad Sofa

My friend Susan is moving this week from Chicago to San Diego. I cannot imagine why! We have glorious, dramatic season changes here, and a lovely lakefront. She sold a lot of her beautiful like new furniture. We got a very nice, long sofa and two classy looking side chairs. We are so happy to be able to banish this horrible sofa to the junk heap.

That's it, outside in the rain. I like to think it is weeping tears of humiliation for being so excessively uncomfortable, and for the upholstery fading well before it should. We will never ever buy from Thomasville again after this expensive travesty. Our experience with this purchase reminds me of the Chevy Vega my parents bought when we were kids, and it was such a horrible car, it ruined us for Chevrolet forever.

We feel much sadder about Susan moving away! Farewell, Susan! Safe Travels!

Charlotte Vacation

I went on vacation with my family last week. We visited relatives in North Carolina and had a relaxing time. They live on a lake in Charlotte, so the kids loved tubing and swimming.

It surprised me how woodsy it is there. Here in Chicagoland, Midwest, our rural areas are all farmland or grasslands with a few trees here and there. Out east in the hills and mountains, the rural areas are all woods. It was kind of striking.

We drove a bit on the Blue Ridge Parkway contemplating the difference between the Appalachians, The Smokies, The Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Piedmont Region.

We spent a full day visiting The Biltmore House and Gardens. For years people have told me that I would LOVE it there. I thought much of the house was extremely fussy and overly ornamented, but certainly of it's time. Many of the rooms were lovely, especially the newly restored ones. The mountain location is spectacular and the forested grounds designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead are beautiful.

There is so much to see in that region. I hope we can return in a less steamy time of year. Some time I want to do an artists retreat and learn a bunch of the traditional handcrafts of the region. One friend of mine has done this several times. Next time I want to do more history and nature hiking. My husband and I love that sort of thing, although he grew up in lakes country in Minnesota and likes to look out on sparkling waters too. The kids go along with anything, but they do really like playing in the water.

I read three novels while we were gone including Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Funny!), Life of Pi (Wonderful, thoughtful, and fun), and New Moon (Uh... really a glorified romance novel, but the plot compels me forward.)

The kids at home have taken hold of my crafting mojo and will not release it. They go back to school in a few weeks. Until then we are working on building up our vitamin D outside in the sunshine!

Unfinished Object

This week is all about unfinished projects. This one really makes me feel bad. I had it out for a long time hoping that viewing it would make me work on it, but instead, viewing it made me feel a pang of failure and I still didn't pick up my quilting threads. Finally, I stuffed it way under my bed and allowed the kids to play with my Q-snap quilting frame. The Q-snap pulls apart into sword like sections and my son preferred this to his actual toys.

I started it a long time ago and it was meant to be a simple, quick quilt. I hoped to bring it to the family that graciously hosts us at their summer cabin every year. I even considered the colors of the living room at the cabin. It's more of a lake house really. They've also redecorated since I selected this pattern. This pattern is called "Sticks and Stones". The blue and yellow squares are the stones and the other squares are (obviously) the sticks. If I had to do it again, I would probably not select this pattern and I would not use so much yellow.



My excuse at the time I quit working on it was that I was having an uncomfortable pregnancy. My daughter turned 9 this summer, so that had to be 10 years ago. Next summer will be our 25th year visiting the cabin, so maybe I will finish it for that milestone.



I successfully hand quilted five quilts before this one. Most of those were small wall sizes. On this project, I don't know why I didn't just quilt in the ditch, but I decided to do traditional quilting 1/4 inch away from every seam. At some point in this project, I realized that I hate hand quilting. My grandma and I used to have conversations about what a slog it is to hand quilt things. Gram used to love traditional hand piecing, but she could never deal with the hand quilting part.

So anyway, I know you all have projects like this that you have never finished. People who don't craft will ask, "Why don't you just finish it?" There is no good answer to this question. Often, I don't finish small projects and I just toss them out and forget about them completely. I can't do that with this project, there is too much fabric and time invested in it. Several of these fabrics were given to me out of grandma's stash. All my cabin friends know how much I sew and I really do want to make a project for The Cabin. Alas..

This past weekend was our annual trip. My husband and I got to sleep in what we refer to as The Love Shack. The family refers to this as The Honeymoon Cottage. I think I remember the story that this was the original cabin on the lake property. Other sleeping accommodations include The Dorm, The Sofa, The Master Bedroom, Danny's Room, The Loft, and sometimes The Inflatable Mattress on the Floor. As I recall, some years the sleeping arrangements included Under the Stairs in the Hallway, and Nick reports that once he slept out on The Pontoon. 20 to 25 of us attend each year, often with babies and sometimes with kids, so sleeping arrangements have to be creative.

Summer is more than half over already! I hope you are enjoying yours! I think I'm going to get outside and forget about today's to-do list and just enjoy!

My Own Kids' Baby Blankets

I want to share the quilts I made several years ago for my own sweet babies. My son turned 12 this spring and my daughter turns 9 next week. Where do the years go?

I was a very new quilter when I was pregnant with my son. Before I was pregnant, I tried to make a baby quilt for a nephew who is just a bit older than my son, but that quilt was a total disaster and I never finished it. I learned that I really need to work from a pattern with nice, clear instructions. That nephew received a sewn fleece blanket and a hooded bath towel instead of a quilt.


The pattern was in the book Quilts for Baby by Ursula Reikes. This is a great book and it is still widely available. I saw it the other day at my JoAnns. My son hid from the ultrasound camera so I had to make a gender neutral quilt for him. I hand quilted it. I always intended to quilt the border with some sweet handprint outlines, but I never got around to it and at this point, it does not matter. When he outgrew the quilt, I let my little daughter use it with her teddy bears. My son forgot about it until he saw it our baby photo albums and I told him the sweet story of how I was so excited to have a baby and I couldn't wait to make something special to wrap him up in. He reclaimed it from his sister and I noticed that the quilt was showing up in various places in his room and in his play. It has long since returned to the closet. Seeing it brings back sweet memories of new parenthood.

I have always had a harder time crafting things for boys and men, so just in case I had a baby girl, I made this flannel receiving blanket. Those look like little colorful bunnies, but they are really little stylized flowers.

This was a pattern in a book or magazine I had at the time, but I forget which one. I used fuseable webbing to fuse the shapes down onto cotton flannel, and then I stitched around them with a blind hem stitch using the old sewing machine my grandma gave me. It is two layers of cotton flannel with a homemade double fold binding. I made it while I was dreaming about motherhood, and I didn't use it until my daughter was born.

This animal print blanket was one of the kid's favorites. I found that adorable print at the fabric store. It is backed in flannel and has a fluffy poly batting inside. I wish I knew what brand that batting is, because there is no bearding on that blanket at all. I hate the way poly batting beards...

I cut out some of the animal motifs and stitched them onto some baby clothes that became favorite shirts for our son. We particularly liked the jumping frog and we called our darling son "Froggy Man" when he wore it. I did several other fabric-flannel receiving blankets and another blanket like this one with cars and trucks all over it, but I just couldn't keep everything and those went away to a new home on a charity truck.

There is another gender-neutral quilt I made for my daughter when I didn't know if she would be a boy or a girl, but it is probably down in the basement and I don't want to go down there and face the epic-junk-room-mess, I'd rather be up here getting nostalgic with you.

When I had a new baby girl to craft for, I couldn't wait to sew up this pattern which was in one of my Quiltmaker magazines. I could use various colorful prints I'd collected and I liked the restful blue background. I used these leafy-viney prints to make some little accessories and curtains for her baby bedroom in our first house.

I love this quilt, but it isn't my daughter's favorite. It simply isn't pink and girly or cute enough for her. She prefers the one that is down in the basement, because it has a fun jungle theme.

These babies are growing up! My son is at sleep-away Boy Scout camp this week and my daughter is spending a week away from us alone with her Nana later this summer. Here they are on a weekend trip we took recently to the Wisconsin Dells:

Pom Review and Wedding

I reviewed another pom pom making tool for Craft Critique. Read my thoughts HERE. Turns out that even though it's cheap, it is still not worth it.



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Today is my 18th Wedding Anniversary! The years tick by faster and faster all the time. I was almost the first of all my friends to get married right after college. We were so happy then and it has just gotten better over the years. We sort of only celebrate the big anniversaries every 5 years, but I think we'll go out to a nice restaurant tonight.


It rained on our wedding day in 1991, and that is supposed to be good luck. It was! We had a big traditional wedding early in the day. I was blissfully ignorant about wedding planning and just went with the flow. I remember my Mom planned the food and my younger brother figured out the wine-and-beer bar offerings. We hired a talented florist who was just starting out. I told her that I liked big romantic flowers and pink and she did the arrangements and they were perfect. Actually, the florist was a nervous wreck and my mom and I were calming her down.

Our cake was a delicious chocolate with raspberry cassis. Our baker was being featured in Better Homes and Gardens and she called us up the week before the wedding to tell us that our cake was being photographed for the magazine! It was in the batter stage and the photos never ran, but still! That was fun!

We married in my north suburban Chicago hometown, but at the time we were living in hot and steamy south Texas and hoped for cool honeymoon location. My husband and I do not tolerate hot weather very well. It was our dream to go to Alaska, but we were young and low on funds, so we went to San Francisco instead. It was chilly and rainy there that week, but we loved the weather. Alaska is still our dream vacation and we have never been able to go. We have been to Hawaii and it was nice, but it was not Alaska... Maybe for the 20 year celebration.

Mothers Day

I'm remembering my sweet, gentle Grandma McKee today. In this photo, it is the mid 1930's and she is holding her first baby, my Uncle Curtis.

She always had a beautiful project in her hands. When they stayed with us in the summer and over the Christmas holiday, she would always be making beautiful thread crochet motifs that she would assemble into heirloom tablecloths for all her grand daughters and grand nieces.

Here she is with my beautiful Aunt Nancy who sadly passed away this year.

She made cross stitched quilts like this one for all of her adult children. This one was Aunt Nancy's. I am grateful to the family who saw to it that I would receive it. She made a red version of this for my Mom and Dad. This blue one is dated 1965.

I feel a strong connection to both of my grandmothers. Their personalities could not have been more different, but they had the same hobbies which I find that I share. My Grandma N favored sewing and quilting and crafted with her girlfriends for sales and church bazaars. Grandma McK was a content and kind spirit. She stitched in her younger years, but I only remember the thread crochet. Several family members have handmade wool braided rugs that she made with scraps. Her afghans were used and loved.

Gram passed away shortly after Mothers Day about 12 years ago after a long, devastating decline from Alzheimers Disease. Even in the worst stages of her illness, she was kind, loving and sweet, especially to my Grandfather.

Happy Mothers Day to you all. I hope you take this day to remember sweet times with the matriarchs in your families.

Birthday Berry Pie

Last Saturday my son turned 12. He has never been a big cake fan so he asked that I make him a triple berry birthday pie instead. Sure! I had plenty of pie crust dough leftover so I made these little cinnamon crisp cookies. They were yummy too. As you can see, I like a rustic casual style with my baked goods.

We allowed our son to buy his own Xbox last year. It took him ages to save up the money but he finally got his dream gaming system and is just like most boys this age.. he is always wanting to play his video games. I understand this complusion as I have been addicted to Mario and Zelda games on our Nintendo.

Before we opened gifts, I took some pictures. Sam was really nervous that he wouldn't get his dream game and the tension is all over his face here when he is trying to smile. He also has trouble holding his pose and holding his eye contact with the camera. Maybe you can't see it, but this face is saying, "I hope this birthday goes exactly as I have imagined it.":

But dreams do come true! He got his dream game and all is well!

It is wonderfully rewarding to see our children grow up! I am so proud to have such a hardworking, smart, and funny young man in my life. Only one more year until he is a teenager! Happy Birthday, Sam!

Computers and Robots

I don't know what happened, but our desktop computer failed the other day and is completely unsalvageable. Be sure that you have your files backed up somewhere! We did backup. Unfortunately the last time was in 2007, so we have a year's worth of photos and all our music files lost on that faulty motherboard. Alas.. We now have to purchase a new computer when we've been saving up for other important large purchases.

We have this horrible little laptop which is something, I suppose...

In any case, I like to post big colorful pictures, so I went back into my Flickr archive and found this felt robot project I made.


That old camera I used back then was so unreliable! It bugs me that these pics are not quite focused.

I actually made several of these and gave a few out as gifts and shared them in a swap:


The pattern was from THIS book. I was able to assemble some of the parts with the sewing machine, but the details are handstitched.

Wish us luck on our thrifty-but-powerful computer quest. We are not particularly excited about it.

This is my dumb stupid brother

Yesterday I fiddled all day doing this and that on the computer and I felt guilty. Today I embraced it and got totally nostalgic. I have very few photos of my childhood. Mom insists that they exist, but she's hidden them away from the light for closing in on 25 years.

I do have some old scrapbooks and this is the page with the school photos of my brother and me. I was only kidding about him being dumb and stupid. Really we were great friends and he was a bright, fun student. Here he is in first grade and I am in second. It is probably 1974.




You know folks, it is Girl Scout Cookie time! Be sure to support your local troop and stock up! This is a photo of my Girl Scout troop circa 1977. We served homemade cookies at the Winnetka Bank on Saturday mornings. This was back when you actually had to enter a bank to do business. I am the brown haired girl on the far right.


During my nostalgia day today I was reminded that one of these little girls, Susie C, got a GI Joe Man head stuck on her tongue and had to have it surgically removed. I am absolutely serious. Ahh.. the things you remember via Facebook.

Inaugural Hooplah

Congress Debates Adding Elaborate Dance To Obama's Inauguration Ceremony

Oh that the inauguration ceremony would be so entertaining! (Note that video is from The Onion and is totally a joke.)

It looks like there is going to be wall-to-wall news coverage of the inauguration. I don't know what exactly they will cover.. a big bunch of parties? Crowds and traffic? Celebrities? If I recall the swearing in ceremony is pretty quick.

My daughter's third grade is taking advantage of the opportunity to study our Presidents. My daughter is excited to get to do a report on one of her top choices. "Mom! I got Grover Cleveland!" (In case you were wondering... nobody gets to do Lincoln and Washington. They are too easy and well known.) Her teacher is a distant relation to Ulysses Grant, and another teacher can claim Lincoln as a distant cousin. I can claim no such interesting connections even though one half of my ancestry came over during the colonial period.

So anyway... Yay America! We love studying the presidents in our house. My husband wants to visit all their homes, museums, and libraries. I've said this before... the Gerald Ford museum is great. The Lyndon Johnson stuff down in Texas is interesting too. The Kennedy Museum is awful. The best we've seen is the Lincoln Museum and Library down in Springfield, IL.

Have a great weekend!

Creative Blog Feature!

I feel so lucky today to be featured by Kim on Today's Creative Blog!


My article is HERE. Thanks Kim! I'm tickled to be in such talented company! You really should check out all her awesome featured bloggers. Such inspiration! I'm particularly fascinated by people's creative work spaces..



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My brain is fried! We are having our first snowstorm and true to my winter biorythms, yesterday I was drowsy all day and wide awake at night so I got to see the weird snow lightning we had. The power went out when I was watching a spooky Korean ghost movie and crocheting... Don't ask me how I read subtitles and crochet at the same time, but it is fortunate that these Korean or Japanese horror movies are always about the same things: ghosts tormenting schoolgirls. Asians don't seem to have the same good vs. evil themes we have in our scary movies. It's always vengeful ghosts. I didn't see the end because the power went out at my house, but I suspect that the ghost was connected in some way to the scared schoolgirl's family past. They always are!

Snow lightening is odd because you can't hear any thunder. Since there was already a white blanket of snow on the ground, it was unearthly urban orangey light outside. Then just as the ghost was scratching at the window in my movie, the sky lit up bright orange like an explosion. I thought we were having some strange fire while the power crackled out. I went and peeked outside and it was that glorious, wonderful silence that you only experience during a snowstorm. All was well by morning although all our clocks are wrong. My kids even seem to fit into their boots from last year and my son has gotten to the wonderful middle-schooler age where they do not require snowpants every day during winter.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mr. Turkey is handsome, but he is also delicious. This is one of my very favorite holidays! This year we go down to Indiana to my brother's house for the big meal. They eat earlier in the day, so we'll be up bright and early in the morning to get there for the turkey feast.

We used to always go out to Iowa to visit with all my grandparents and I'll always fondly remember bonding with my grandma over her fabric collection and sewing plans. My Grandma N was usually very nervous at the holiday and going over all our crafty interests would calm her down. Sometimes she'd send me home with some of her collection, but that wasn't why I liked going through it all with her.

My husband and my dad LOVE watching hours and hours of high school football tournament games on the local TV stations. They both prefer these games because they are exciting and have no commercials.

I hope you will be making nice new memories this Thanksgiving with your friends and families.

New Fine Art

I have a wonderful new object in my home! I am very happy to be keeping this for a short time for some friends. It looks fantastic in my living room.


Many thanks to my friends who have loaned this to me for a time.

Another 40th Birthday!

Happy Birthday Blair!



Today is the day my brother turns 40 and for just about 2 weeks we are the same age. My whole family (Mom, Dad, Brother) has our birthdays in the same 2 week period, so we always look forward to our get-together for Family Birthday Weekend. That's me sitting quietly back on the lounge chair and he's the little guy in front ready to entertain.

I did not make anything handmade for my brother's milestone birthday. Have you heard me say before that crafting for men is very hard for me? To me it can be a little bit like being trapped in hell. Even so, in the past I've given him many things. When we were teenagers I stenciled a big Christmas goose on his underpants and he wore those every holiday for many years. At least he told me he did, I didn't actually see them. When he was married I made him and his wife a new bed-sized quilt that I actually completely hand quilted. One day I'll get a photo of that as it predates the digital era. It was THIS pattern.

Brother and I grew up very close. He is extroverted to the extreme and I am less so. He is very funny and was a terrific youth minister at a very large Presbyterian church until he changed careers to have more time for his family. We were involved in the same high school activities including stage crew, band, Amigos, and the church youth group. We have many of the same long term friends from those days and even spent some time as roommates at the college we attended together.

Here's a more current photo of us. It's an unflattering angle of me and a little bit blurry. Practically every other digital photo I have of him he's hamming it up in some silly way.

Have a great day, Blair! Enjoy the 40's! It's a great age!

My Crafty Daughter

This was my 8-year old daughter's "secret project". She was inspired by the stack of synthetic felt I gave her to use in any project she chooses. This is impressive to me because she used her sewing machine all by herself without any supervision. I think she did a good job top stitching those pieces onto her pumpkin. She told me she even ripped out a seam with the seam ripper and didn't tear anything.


Last week daughter made a brass shrine of her tooth to impress the tooth fairy. She has been trying to extract more $$ from the tooth fairy with little success.



I saved this poster she made this summer. It says, "Craft is Cool, Oh Yeah". I wanted to make it in felt and embroidery, but haven't gotten to it yet.

My son sums up our family interests in a paper he did the first week of school, "On Sundays during the fall, me and my dad watch football. My sister and mom are really crafty. I'm not crafty." I wish my son didn't feel that creating things like this is a girl thing, but he just takes after his dad and appreciates this as a hobby, but is interested in other things. Son makes charming drawings of people with giant arms and hands and is interested in filming videos.

ThankYou Mr. Electrician!

Hooray! All the brass fixtures have now been eradicated from my home! We also got 2 new fixtures in the bathrooms and a new ceiling fan as well. I know this is a pretty ordinary unglamorous light fixture, but let me tell you, it is a HUGE improvement!

Next I'll change out the brassy dented doorknobs, but there are a LOT of doorknobs... I hate hiring contractors. I always forget to ask my neighbors and local acquaintances for recommendations, so I just look in the yellow pages for medium sized ads for companies in my community or very close-by. I do get several estimates, but I never can really tell who to hire. So far this has worked out okay for me, but it really isn't a good method.

My problem with hiring contractors helps me get to projects on my own. My husband is totally and completely hopeless about home improvement projects. I'm not sure he knows how to open a ladder and I know for a fact that he is at a loss as to how people hang framed pictures on the wall. Husband has many other wonderful qualities, so this has not been a big problem for us.

Cabin Weekend '08

Sadly, the summer is waning. We just returned from our favorite annual summer weekend with old high school and childhood friends at a lakeside cabin in Wisconsin. We came home to the kid's teacher assignments for the next year so it's inevitable that school starts again really soon.

Boy, was it a fun time! We've been getting together this way since long before they invented water noodles. It was the first Cabin Weekend in many years that all 22 of us were able to come for most of the weekend. I'm not sure which was more delicious, Martin's Pie Night or John's Carne Asada Night. Lisa also throws together awesome dishes from whatever is left in the fridge.


Thanks, Rick! Can we come for a month next summer?

Amish Museum Quilts

Gah! Where is my camera?! I've been working on a baby quilt with really cute sailboat fabric. I ran into some complications, and I'd love to show you my progress, but my camera has gone into hiding somewhere.

Yesterday the kids and I did a field trip to Chicago. We stopped at a cupcake place that was very good, but I like to bake and those cupcakes weren't really any better than the ones I make except that they use real buttercream and I do powdered sugar with much less butter for my icing... We planned to go to the Field Museum of Natural History. Unfortunately, we were running so late after a couple side trips that we just walked Michigan Avenue instead. I was weak and let each child pick out something from a store. Daughter got a cute set of stuff from American Girl Place. Did you know that they have a new "Historical" doll from the 1970's? That's how they get you over there... I wasn't the only 40 something mom at the display saying, "I used to have that when I was a kid!" Son could not get out of American Girl Place fast enough so we went to the Lego store and he picked out a set of basic pieces and people. This was an excellent purchase because the kids have been playing Legos all day long with no arguing and no complaining about there being nothing to eat in the house.

I went back into my photo files and found some Amish/Mennonite quilts I meant to share. This first one was on display at the Denver Museum of Art. I love the colors here. I usually want to pair up my blues with yellows or orange, but this inspires me to try to tone down my color choices.


This one was on display at a little museum in Shipshewana, Indiana. The museum explained all the history and theology of the Anabaptists and how the Amish and Mennonites are different. I won't go into it (martyrs are very important), but it was a very good little museum. Here again is the tame color palate, but that sparkle of red and pink are perfectly placed. This one is my favorite:


Lastly, this quilt was also on display at the same little museum. It pulsates with color. I've seen patterns for this sort of star (is it the Lone Star?) and it doesn't look that difficult, but those diamond shapes and their perfect points intimidate me:


Now.. where could that camera possibly be?

Videos and an Update

My summer goal is to get at least one of my new quilt tops quilted on my home sewing machine. My camera is not cleaned out of the pictures from our trip because our summer weather has been too beautiful for sitting at they computer. If you've been to the theater lately you may have seen the preview made fun of in this video.

This video from The Onion is also funny:

High School Tony Awards Honor Nation's Biggest Drama Club Nerds
I was a theater kid in High School so it brings back memories. I never ever did any acting and never wanted to be onstage. I was in the band and on the Tech Crew. As the crew, we sometimes used to joke that our shows would go so much more smoothly if it wasn't for those danged actors getting in the way. If theater kids were considered nerds, I suppose the tech crew was really low on the totem pole, but life is much more fun if you let your geek flag fly!

Anyone watching Swingtown on CBS? I had to take my post about my connection to the show down because I was uncomfortable about all the hits I was getting about it. (I happen to have grown up in the same neighborhood at the exact same time as the creator of the show who loosely based the show on his childhood recollections.) My blog was coming up on the first page of google searches on the topic of the show and I prefer the coziness of supportive crafty blog readers to the snarky judgement of pop culture blogging. My Chicagoland Craft Collective friends wanted to know, so I'll say that the unhappy judgemental woman angrily baking pies is not my mom! I'm also not the young girl who ran away because her mother is more focused on her coke fueled affairs. However, the map she drew to her woodsy hideout is nearly accurate! I don't remember anyone's dad being an airline pilot but lots of people were traders at the commodities market. Our train station does look like the one in the show, but riders to our neighborhood would come out of a spooky underground tunnel which was covered in graffiti in the 1970's.