Patchwork Keds!

Keds "mosaic", originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Keds has a way of suckering me into buying more shoes. Last year it was the Eleanor seahorses and now these. OK, they're calling them "mosaic" but they look an awful lot like patchwork to me.

Ooh! Sale!

Don'tcha love sales? Chronicle Books has 30% off everything (through Sunday), which means that both Sublime Stitching and Amy Butler's In Stitches are on sale. I may be buying both.

Added: Denyse Schmidt's book is in there, too, if there's anybody left in the quilt-blog world that hasn't bought it already. And when I started adding items to my cart, I found out that orders over $40 get free shipping.

(Found via the always-fun Daily Candy.)

Flash!

Protozone pattern
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I love little flash applications you can play around with, and this is a good one - it's not really terribly flexible but you can do some fun things with it. (Try hitting the red button - which I guess is Autodraw - and then switching back & forth between "repeat," "reflect" and "rotate.") Good for inspiration purposes!

(My brain immediately breaks into the Flash Gordon theme when I look at that title. Hope everybody else doesn't have the same problem!)

Save Web of Thread!

String quilt
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Shown at Lakeview Quilters Guild's Mayfest quilt show 2006.

Apparently Web of Thread is having financial difficulties. From their latest newsletter:

One of the things I've heard from people in the wake of stores and vendors leaving the business is that people wish they had known, that maybe it would have made a difference.

Web of Thread was started by Sharee Dawn Roberts in Paducah, Kentucky in 1991. Sharee Dawn was teaching decorative thread techniques and her students had great difficulty finding sources for the threads they needed. I purchased the business from Sharee Dawn in 2001 and moved it to Seattle, where my daughter and I now run it together.

As much as it pains me to say this, it looks as though we may be yet another casualty. We have a certain financial hurdle to make by the end of May, and if we don't make it, we won't be here in June. How's that for being directand to the point? Summer is typically a slow time of year for our type of business, and we simply cannot survive another moribund summer.

She also says this:

NO MONEY WILL BE TAKEN if we can't fulfil the order. Not only wouldn't I do that, but there's also the part about it being a Class A Felony. If you've paid for a class and we do close, that money will be refunded to you.

I have been dealing with Web of Thread long enough that I trust their basic honesty and want to see them stay in business. If you do too, go and buy something! (All Sulky is on sale! Free shipping on orders over $25!)


(She also mentions, and I had already noticed because I happened to look at their website the other day, that the fabulous St. Theresa Textile Trove is also going out of business. But apparently there's nothing we can do about that one.)

Added: Pam of PaMdora's Box visited St. Theresa's recently (picture at the very bottom of that entry). I have never been there, and now of course I'm sorry I didn't manage it during one of my periodic trips to Ohio. I only know them from their wonderful booth that they always have at Quilt Festival. The website reports that they will be there this fall though!