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Getting a handmade quilt for my birthday is a good reminder that at any given moment you never know when there’s a sweet little someone who’s holding you dear in her heart. On a day that I might have been feeling down, my niece could have been preparing her surprise, putting on the finishing touches, maybe those button eyes that I imagine she picked out with great consideration. She might have been stitching through the night to finish the quilt in time or driving through a famous Boise inversion to get it shipped before she headed off to the salon for a ten-hour day on her feet. Or, as I fell prey to the misconception that it’s a cruel world, she might have been choosing fabric that I would like or consulting with my mother – grandma who took a vow of secrecy – about a new sewing technique. She might have been having lunch with her mother – my sister, also sworn to secrecy – showing off her work, so excited to give me the first quilt she had ever made using “an actual pattern.” However it went, I do know that on Christmas day my niece decided to sew me a quilt. She had made one for her grandmother and could hear me in the background over the telephone gushing – actually she said I was squealing – over it. I was. But, I had no idea that my reactions were registering with anyone who might be taking note or scheming to totally floor me with their kindness two months down the road.

Cat Quilt

Cat Quilt

Cat Quilt

What would Two People and a Cat be without an occasional cat video? In this episode, our cat Wilson deals with an admiring Gorilla.

https://vimeo.com/85840953

My uber creative niece expressed no surprise when I told her that I discovered you could sew on paper. I wanted to make money cards for Christmas and one morning between sleep and coffee, a solution drifted into my consciousness such that I understood the perfectness of using a light bulb to represent inspiration. It was exactly like that. Out of nowhere, “I could sew it!” Ding! By 4 a.m. I had confirmed my theory and was loving the results. Old news or not, I might as well have discovered fire.

Needing containers for my collection of cassette tapes that are awaiting digitization and inspired by first considering a grocery bag – a terrible idea as it would have been too deep to be useful – I remembered my experiment and came up with a shorter, more rigid bag that works great.

Sized to maximize shelf space, a shorter bag means that I can easily see what’s inside.

How to Make a Custom Bag with a Grocery Bag

Supplies:

• 2 grocery bags that are the same size
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Stapler
• Marker
• Paper cutter wide enough for the bag; rotary cutter, mat, and straight edge; or scissors and a straight edge
• Tracing wheel
• Iron

Steps:

1. Remove the handles of two grocery bags, being careful not to tear the bag or the handles. If you do accidentally tear anything, don’t worry about it. Set aside one of your bags and the handles you just removed for later use.
2. Measure from the bottom of your grocery bag up to how deep you want your bag to be. Make a dot at this point with a marker (Dot #1). So, if you are making a bag that will be 5″ tall, you would measure 5″ from the bottom of the bag to Dot #1.
   

   Measuring from the bottom of a grocery bag, mark how deep/tall you want your new bag to be.

3. By measuring from the dot you just made (Dot #1) upwards to just short of the height of your bag, mark Dot #2. So, if you are making a bag that will be 5″ tall, Dot #2 will be a little less than 5″ above Dot #1.
   

   A Sharpie marker works great for marking your dots.

4. Cut off the top of the grocery bag at Dot #2, the top dot. Save the cut off piece for Step #6. I love my Swingline paper cutter for this job. A rotary cutter, a mat and a straight edge would also work. If you use scissors, draw a straight line around the bag before cutting.

   

   I wasn’t sure if this paper cutter was going to be what I needed. So, far I haven’t run into any serious limitations for the types of things I am doing.

   

   My paper cutter has different settings for cutting, creasing, perforating…

5. Make a crease at Dot #1. I used the crease setting on my paper cutter to do this and it worked great. A smooth tracing wheel might also do the trick.
   

   The crease will make folding the bag easier.

6. If needed, trim the top of the grocery bag you cut off in Step #4 such that when it is inserted in the new bag you are making, it falls just below the crease made in Step #5. Insert this piece inside the bag, loosely lining up the sides and corners as shown.
   

   

   Lining the inside of the bag with this extra scrap will make it sturdier. I turned my liner inside out, thinking that it would look nicer to show the pattern. However, this gets covered up, so skip that step.

7. At the crease made in Step #5, fold the top of the bag down inside itself. This will cover up the liner you just inserted and hold it in place.
   
   

   It’s starting to look like something!

   

   There!

8. Sew a hem along the top of the bag.
   

   I wish fabric handled as easily as a grocery bag does! Different bags behave differently.

   

   The bag will turn itself as you sew.

   

   Voila! A low-cost way to practice sewing!

9. To make the bag more rigid and look crisper, pinch the corners and sew them in place with a few stitches.
   

   The bag works fine as is, but its sides are buldging a little.

   

   Pinching the corners takes up the slack and gives the bag a neater look.

10. Sew the handles you saved from Step #1 onto the bag as you like. You can use a temporary staple to hold them in place as you sew.
    
    

    Almost done!

    

    I’m loving how these are turning out!

11. Fold your second grocery bag (handles removed) such that it is the size of its bottom. Trim off any extra paper that won’t easily fold and stay in place. Sew the folded bag around the edges to hold it together. Place the finished piece in the bottom of your new bag.
    

    The extra bottom will help hold the bag together.

    

    The insert also hides rough edges.

12. You can iron the bag if you want it to look a little crisper. Put a cloth between the iron and the paper.
    

    

    The altered bag is amazingly strong. For example, it would take some effort to remove the handles.

When someone is sending electric shocks to the hair follicles on your face, you’re apt to listen more than talk. I listened and learned about The Charge – Activating the 10 Human Drives that Make you Feel Alive.

Bev had good things to say about this latest recipe for success and while it made me cringe with its nauseatingly pat tagline, I bought a copy, taking cover under the notion that it would give us something to talk about. While it’s fair that a definitive list of life’s secrets might induce involuntary eye-rolling (I always wonder, “Why ten?”), there is no call for anyone’s tiresome skepticism here.

Upon finishing the book, I gave my copy to a friend who was in need of some insight as she navigated an unbearably dysfunctional job situation that was undermining the confidence of this otherwise competent and fabulous young woman. I thought about JoAnne a lot as I turned the pages.

It had something for me too. While The Charge is the reason why I took on some scary projects instead of lesser undertakings and while it reinvigorated – at least temporarily – the blind courage of my 20-something self who somehow ventured off to Brussels with little money, a copy of Let’s Go Europe and a plan that went as far as “Take the train to ‘Le Gare du Nord'” – I mostly liked it for its solid practical tips more than for its fleeting inspirational passages. For example, “When this, then that” can help you develop lasting good habits. The idea is to add an action onto a well-established routine, as opposed to trying to change a behavior without the benefit of context. It’s the difference between saying, “This year I’m going to eat better!” and saying, “From now on, when I finish dinner every day, then I am going to eat an apple.”

It’s not sexy, but we use the rule to keep the litter box clean. Since it’s in the basement, it could easily be out-of-sight-out-of-mind until there was a revolt. But we have forstalled an uprising by saying: “When we feed the cat in the morning, we then clean the litter box.”

The Charge is loaded with other – probably better examples of – tips that made it worth it to replace the copy that I gave to my friend. While my enthusiasm for it might have been a case of my being particularly receptive to its insights for whatever reason when I first picked it up, I suspect that the book will hold up nicely as a reference.