Waffle Week

Those of you who keep up with me on Facebook and/or Twitter should know that I have declared this week "Waffle Week." It was a little last minute, brought on by Monday's Get Fuzzy so I didn't have a lot of time to prepare. Fortunately I bought a box of frozen waffles at Costco last week so at least I have waffles to eat. But a truly Crafty-Ass Chick would have found a waffle related crafting project to do in honor of Waffle Week. Oops.

So, instead of being crafty myself I will share a story of someone else's craftiness that involves two things I love: waffles and the University of Oregon.

Bill Bowerman was the track coach at the University of Oregon in the 1960's and coached the infamous Steve Prefontaine. Bill Bowerman also went on to co-found Nike with Phil Knight, a University of Oregon alum and former runner. Knight worked the business side while Bowerman experimented with Shoe design.



While coaching for Oregon he learned to cobble and custom made shoes for his runners. In order to create a lighter shoe Bowerman did some waffle inspired crafting.

Bowerman and his wife often ate waffles for breakfast - not an unusual or special event for them. Yet one morning, while thinking about his shoe designs and eating waffles, Bowerman had a flash of inspiration. He ran into the garage with the waffle iron and poured rubber on it. With that one idea Bill created Nike's now famous waffle soul. As it turned out, when place on a lightweight shoe, the waffle sole gripped running tracks better than the established ripple soul. It soon became a major success story.

So that is how waffles changed sports forever!

Hooray waffles!

Another Old Post from MySpace

How fast can you quilt?
Sunday, June 10, 2007

I went to a baby shower today, so yesterday I was looking for a gift. I don't know much about baby stuff and what's hot in infant couture right now, so I was a little perplexed by what I should get.

Well, yesterday I also happened to be shopping for costume stuff, so I was in the fabric section and thought, I should have made a little quilt. I made one recently four Lexy's graduation...it took me four years. But I thought if I simplified things I could do it in one day. So I bought some fabric and headed home.

I simplified things by doing absolutely no piecing. I made a sandwich of pink and white fabric (with batting as the bologna) and all the exciting stuff went into the quilting part.

And it worked! In less than 24 hours I had made a quilt. Granted it would have been a lot nicer if I'd had more time, but there wasn't much more time then the time I did it in anyway.

So here are some pictures of the quilt (front and back):




And some detail because it's hard to see stuff above:

Christmas Dress

I found this picture and I love this dress. I love the yoke and gathered bust. I love the cream accents. I sort of love the green – it’s a little dull, but I like the antiqueness of it. I love the cap sleeves and the little bow at the collar. I love the shape of the collar and the piping at the bust.

I want to make this dress.

I don’t think it will be too hard to come up with a pattern for it – I don’t know what the back looks like, but I could guess. I learned a lot about dressmaking for Sound of Music and I think I can take some patterns I already have and adjust them to be what I need. One tricky thing for me would be the pockets – because the SOM dresses didn’t have to be practical I always left out the pockets.

The biggest problem is time. I have so many projects that I want to do and so many that I’ve started that it’s illogical at this time to plan another one. That’s not to say it will never happen, I just think that I’d have to finish 2-3 of the quilts I’m working on and at least one purse I have planned before I could justify a new project. Plus I don’t have a real need for this dress. Yes it’s cute but I don’t know when I’d wear it.

My crafting time is limited since I have a full time job and a social life, so it’s hard to do everything I want to. I think I’d like to learn to knit, but I hardly have time for the crafts I know how to do, so when will I have time to take on a new one. Ack!

I have a whole lot of ideas for future projects. I’ll just have to file this one away for later…