FUTURE SHOCK

Happy Saturday! I like to blabber on sometimes. Yesterday I came across a way to make a sock into an iPod/iPhone arm band for people who are runners. Well I'm no runner, but I do like to listen to music while I'm working around the house and being a woman with no pockets in my shirt it's very difficult to carry around an iPod or even to have my phone on speaker and having to keep moving it with me. Ya, I know, I should wear an apron.

So I'm going to make myself an iPod arm band out of a sock. I'll show the result when I'm done. Once I get on YouTube it's very hard for me to get off. Everything just looks so interesting. On the same page as the videos for making arm bands I came across a video for the Cicret Bracelet. So I clicked on it. Take a look, you'll  be flabbergasted, or not, maybe it's just me. It's still in phototype phase but it reminded me of how much the world has changed since the early 50's when I was born. I really never thought I'd live to see something like this!

We didn't even have a telephone until I was 7 or 8. We couldn't afford one. But my dad finally broke down and got us one. It was a party line which I guess don't exist anymore. I'm assuming it was cheaper than a private line. Our phone looked like this

Boy was that sucker heavy! and to call a number with a zero in it took forever. I still remember the phone number CE2-0169.

By the 1960's when we moved we got a fancier phone. This one was on the wall in the kitchen

Still took time to dial the zero but it was lighter and had a longer cord.

Then in the 1970's when we moved West we got a touch tone phone. That was so exciting (it doesn't take much for me to get excited about things). My grandmother had gotten a touch tone phone just before we left and I thought that was just the cat's pajamas.

So much easier to dial or push or whatever the phrase would be. 

Eventually in the late 1970's we didn't have to specify rotary dial or touch tone when we ordered phone service and not only that they put 5 free phone outlets in our house so we could move the phone around with us! That was really something. We still had to rent a phone if we wanted a serviceman to come out free but we were given a wider choice. So we ordered one like this (but push button). I think it was called a Princess Phone. 

We had a couple of phones in the house but eventually as long as we rented one phone we could get free service so we were able to buy extra phones so we had them all around the house.

In the 1980's our neighbour bought a cell phone. It was like the size of a walky talky with an antennae. I thought it was neat but it would cost a fortune and how were you going to carry the thing around? Couldn't just slip it in your purse. He let me try it once to call my mother across the country. I thought that was so neat, but I ended up instead talking to an operator in Australia. I have no idea how that happened... but I sure hope he didn't have to pay for the call! I didn't try again.

In the early 2000's I got one of the new flip phones.

I never really did figure it out completely but it was nice to have for emergencies. Problem is the cell towers weren't so good so reception wasn't really good. And there was no texting in those days. If you wanted to text you had to push the corresponding number the right number of times to get to each letter. But it only cost 25 cents to text anywhere so that was neat, cheaper than a phone call in those days. Also the batteries didn't last very long and then you had to buy a new phone. 

Now I have an iPhone 4S. I don't need all that stuff but I can call my sister 3000 miles away and talk for 3 hours absolutely free (well, aside from the monthly charge) and we can even face time. That is so cool. 

I can even text to the US free of charge. My daughter was texting with a friend for about an hour before she realized the friend was in Palm Springs, not Vancouver. Very funny considering it was free.

I thought I was doing pretty well handling technology, I'm behind in some things. I don't tweet and stuff but who needs to do that? But when I saw the circret bracelet I just about fell off the chair! I honestly NEVER thought I'd see anything like that in my life time. Invention is just going faster and faster all the time. 

It looks like she has a phone embedded in her arm!

And now I saw an ad for an app that allows you to take a picture of a cheque and it will be deposited into your account! That is kind of cool but between that and being able to swipe your credit/ATM cards for purchases up to $100 I'm thinking technology is getting ahead of itself before it has the proper protections in place.

Is There Life After Quilting?

I want to blog again but I haven't been quilting. Then I realized maybe I don't have to be actively quilting to use this blog.

The last almost two years has been interesting to say the least. I can think straighter now,  even though my daughter would disagree cause at 64 I'm doing the going into a room and forgetting why I'm in there thing. On the other hand I heard that as we get older we've just learned so much in our lifetimes that our brains are too full of information and it takes longer to retrieve some things. Okay... I'll go with that one.

I found that after my husband passed away in 2013 I just didn't want to sew anymore. For anyone who hasn't been a widow it takes a very long time for powers of concentration to return. Dealing with numbers is the worst. And concentration is really important when making quilts. I've done some but when I look at the accumulation of quilts I have why would I need more? Half the ones I made I don't even like or use anymore. I've given 50% of them away, at least. And with the cost of quilting, where I live anyway,  that's a heck of a lot of money to throw away! I'm still doing volunteer things but that's becoming less and less. My group doesn't understand that to really sell things they need to look good. They use any old fabric they have whether it is appropriate for the project or not. I can't get excited about that. So I'm getting choosier. For last year's bazaar we did have a few projects donated by the family of a woman who had passed away. Some of them were embroidery and I figured I could handle that.

This is the only one I can find. I also did two snow people ones. They were a lot of work but I like embroidery. When I offered to embroider this year I was told the towels I wanted to use were too expensive, even though I offered to pay for them myself for a tax receipt for donation. So I said I'd go to IKEA and get the 79 cent ones. No, those are too cheap. So you can see why I won't be embroidering towels. They want me to embroider bath guest towels. Sorry, can't do that. Guest towel fabric is loopy and you can't hand embroider on them. Machine embroider maybe but I can't afford, and admit in the final third of my life I don't want, to spend money on an embroidery machine. I'm still attending the group but my enthusiasm is dampened. I only go to get out of the house.

But I did make one thing for myself. I did it by hand and it took a heck of a long time but I love it.

I'm simplifying my life as far as "things". But I still like a homey touch.

I like to do hand work but I've also lost the ability to hand sew/embroider and watch TV at the same time. With no one to share my life with I watch a lot of TV in the evenings. Maybe part of it is that now I watch things that I really want to watch and some need to be paid attention to. I'm watching a series on how volcanos formed the continents. Very interesting.

My health is not great but I feel good. The only problem is I can't spend more than 3 hours out doing something or it takes me two days to recover. I hate that. I have Polycystic Kidney disease and my kidneys are now operating at 20% of normal. That also affects my thinking because the blood travelling through my brain is full of crap the kidneys didn't get rid of. But I do feel good overall, I just pace myself a lot and I hire people to do things for me.

I've been working on genealogy cause it's a nice quiet hobby and interests me. I've written a 46 page chapter on my dad's family line, which I have back to 1555. I'm going to see if I can get a free website to post it on. If not I'll have to use thumb drives I suppose to send it out to my nephews and nieces.