April’s Junk

The men and women serving in the U.S. army do their jobs. They show up every day and work to ensure the safety and security of not only the Americans that live here, but for the safety and security of the American way of life.

You don’t have to agree with war to appreciate a soldier for the freedoms they are willing to protect even if they don’t agree with your ideals.

For 7 years, and 7 deployments and countless other training cycles that have kept him away for days/weeks/months, I have sat by as my Husband has proudly served his country. He gets up every morning at 4 am to get ready to go to work, and many days throughout his career in the military, he’s not gotten home until well after the sun has gone down. Home just long enough for a bite to eat and then back to bed to start the cycle again. He has never called in sick, or played hookie from his job. He faithfully ensures that he shows up for work and that he is ready every day to defend you and your beliefs regardless of what they are.

He listens to the news and protesters and all the negative things in this world, many of them in recent years directly relating to his job, and he takes it in stride. He doesn’t complain about how ungrateful some Americans are for the job that soldiers do. He often notices the irritation I feel about it, and his response is always the same. “Baby we can’t pick and choose who we are fighting for. I have to be just as willing to protect their rights just the same as I protect willing yours.”

He does a job 90% of us aren’t willing to do. He works with a million other people that feel some sort of passion about preserving YOUR way of life.

And right now, there are many spouses sitting at home with their loved ones in a war zone, worried about wether or not they are going to be able to make ends meet if they don’t get paid because congress is being a bunch of little sissies. Over a million people unsure wether come next week or not if they can buy groceries because the government isn’t doing their jobs.

My Husband may not say anything, but I will. Every election, we all hope for the best people to go into office. We hope and pray that the ones we elect will make a REAL DIFFERENCE in our world. Then the bad mouthing starts between them, they drudge up how frequently politicians don’t even show up for work, how many votes they don’t even bother to show up to make. How many times they’ve used their work travel budgets to go on leisurely trips that are unrelated to their jobs. And when the votes are counted, the best we can hope for 9 times out of 10 is the “lesser of two evils”.

They go in and cut jobs for our teachers, affect the lives of our children, they take money from corporations and protect their interests over those of their constitents. They write themselves in pay raises to help take care of themselves. They increase our taxes. They sit by and do nothing even when the cost of fuel is so outrageous that many people can barely afford to drive to work much less do anything else. AND NOW they say, there is a very good chance we aren’t going to pay those that are willing to give their lives to protect our freedoms? BUT not only do they say this, they say that these individuals are under contract and are to keep performing their jobs even if they aren’t being paid. That contract stated that pay would be made to soldiers, they did not agree to work for free or to be paid ‘when it is convenient’.

IF you went into work tomorrow and were told that you wouldn’t be paid, but please stay and continue to come back and ‘eventually’ you would get paid, would you go to work?

Do you want the men and women that are actively in harms way to be worrying about wether or not their families can eat and pay bills or about the missions at hand that they are actively involved in? I can tell you hands down, in all the Soldiers I have been blessed with knowing, if they are worrying about their loved ones, they wouldn’t be able to perform the jobs that they do.

You don’t have to like a soldier or support the war to understand that this is wrong. The politicians are still being paid, and honestly, being paid eventhough they are not doing their jobs, yet they expect our military to continue to do theirs potentially without pay? Creditors aren’t going to care that pay will come ‘eventually’. Bill collectors will still call, and in this economy, so many of us are already behind, struggling to make ends meet. Soldiers are no different.

Don’t let congress get away with this, it is a disgusting injustice and should not be allowed to happen.

Please tag and repost and let others know please do something! I have this set so anyone and Everyone can read it.

With all my love,
April Doyal
a proud Military Spouse

Not alot of typing tonight just some photos of what I accomplished this week.  Have a show up in Seattle Occidental Park in Pioneer Square, weather should be beautiful!  Managed to make 13 of the space needles they were time consuming buggers! A number of new magnets, 2 mirrors almost finished & a few pendants just for fun Photos are pre bails attached

I recently participated in the Mini Art quilt swap over on craftster, and my lovely partner SeamlessGem sent me this beautiful art quilt so I wanted to share it here as well.  It’s a beautiful piece she called Headspin it’s full of beautiful textures and varying rich shades of red with black accents.   Thank you so much Gemma!

Hit a thrift shop looking for a quilt to cut up, didn’t really look as I bought it, omg I’m in love

I wish that my Grandpa were still alive to tell me about these photos.  none of them were marked.  But I know that they tell a story.  Some I can identify landmarks, others symbols, but in all I see the innate beauty within.  I felt they needed to become something, but would not dare ruin the originals, I did preserve them the best I could by not altering the scanned images in anyway.  there are others too all from the same era but these captured my interest in a way I cannot explain.

I can’t beleive it is halloween already.  I’ve been up all night making spooky treats for a spooky dinner tonight.  I should be working on my Son’s halloween costume (yes horrible mother that I am I’ve waited till the day of).  Possibly, just possibly, I should be working on adding more stock to my own shop.  But instead, I find myself thinking ahead to the Christmas Season which is fast approaching I decided to do a little window shopping in my favorite place to shop, Etsy.com.  I find myself enamored by all the wonderful fun things there are to find there like these beautiful felt foods, they would make a perfect gift for a child, or just the young at heart.

For those looking for creative ways that aren’t wasteful (eg non paper gift wrap) the seller emjdesign has a number of different fabric gift bags available at very reasonable prices, I think my favorites I’ve found are these aqua and brown bags, at $5 for 8 the price really cannot be beat!

This lampworked beaded bracelet from bm1coastsbeadworks would make a great gift for a good friend or the hard to shop for mother in law.  I love the flame like interior of the beads and how it combines natural colors with fire.  She has many other beautiful bracelets in her shop too

We all have that family member or friend who loves nothing more than to be in the kitchen cooking or baking.  Teristreasure has a number of  wonderful quilted goods for the kitchen, but my personal favorite so far has to be this whimsical retro design featuring polkadots and vintage style aprons.

adorable cannot begin to describe these gift tags from craftheart, pink and penguins, I never would have thought to combine the two but seeing it done makes me wish I had!  I envision these atop gifts under a tree decorated in retro style ornaments.  Just beautiful!

I think peppermint reminds us all of the holiday season.  From candy canes to discs there is something about the scent of peppermint that brings a holiday smile to the face.  Swanmountainsoaps has a wonderful product bringing two favorites together with vanilla and peppermint in a sugar scrub.  I am a personal huge fan of sugar scrubs they leave your skin super soft and touchable.  at $4 for 2 ounces you could easily afford to buy a few to give to co-workers this holiday season.

While on the subject of soaps,  from smokeymountainscents, we have the perfect gift for those on the naughty list, coal soaps. I can think of at least a million people I know that these would be fun to give to (ok, maybe I am exaggerating just a tiny bit).  These also just make me giggle, and anything that makes you giggle is definitely something you should have.

I will be the first to admit that the gift selection for the men is a little more sparse, but I found these key chains to be quite nice and I think they would make a great gift for the manly man on your shopping list.

And lets not forget it can get cold in most parts of the country, that means it’s scarf and hat weather for many, this scarf is both cute and fun

Ok I will call that done for now, I hope you’ve enjoyed shopping on etsy with me.  And until next time have a great weekend!

I’ve worked quite  a bit lately on getting things done, and have 10 crochet and knitted projects to show.  not the best photos

Crochet projects:

Knitting (less projects and less detail but I”m still real pleased with them)

I’ve also spun a few more yarns but haven’t yet had the chance to take photos of them.

I have found a new love in the art of spinning yarn.  It’s taken me a few skeins to work out how to get decent yardage (the very first skein was 30 yards, and I’ve worked up to 106 now)  but I don’t think they are bad for the first yarns I have ever spun.  Without further adeau:

carnivale – this is the 2nd yarn I spun using commercially dyed mernio with about 5% tencel and 15% new zealand top wool, approx. 50 yards

Ocean breeze 100% merino commercially dyed in shades of blues/greens mixed with cream  approx 65 yards

Frightful – 90% merino 15% new zealand top, commercially dyed, plyed with cotton thread approximately 65 yards

Autumn Fire, merino in red/goldenrod/harvest orange/espresso ply with a commercial merino/micro acrylic, 110 grams 106 yards,

or why the CEO’s and decision makers at Hershey Company are dicks.

I am sure we have all heard about the decision Hershey Company made to quit using cocoa butter due to the current economy.  If not, a quick summary it’ll no longer be Milk Chocolate you are getting, but ‘chocolatey goodness’  when you drop your $1.20 for a candy bar, because the company has decided to eliminate using cocoa butter to cut costs, and go to using vegetable oil as a substitute.

I know I cannot speak for everyone out there, but I must say when I spend my $1 for an indulgence of candy, I want to know that I am getting  something good, not something chocolatey.  But I have a tendancy to take things a step too far.

After catching a short bit on Adult swim about the profits that different companies make ‘per employee’ in gross sales, I decided to do a little investigating into the Hershey Company along these same lines.  While I could not find Gross sale (before taxes and costs) numbers, I did find net sale (after costs and taxes) numbers.  In 2007  The Hershey Company netted almost 5 billion dollars in sales, with approximately 13,700 employees they are a very large company making very large profits.  (for the adult swim and/or math junkies out there this is over 3.6 million dollars NET PROFIT to the company per employee they employ) Here is an exerpt from the 2007 report:

 For the full year 2007, consolidated net sales were $4,946,716,000 (source reuters Hershey report summary)

I cannot even begin to fathom that much money, but I can fathom the taste of the new chocolate formula, it is yucky (in layman’s terms)

It is said that the change was to increase profit margins due to the rising cost of cocoa butter and a struggling economy.  Even if the ‘rising cost’ was $500,000,000  a year in raised costs, that is still roughly a 4.5 billion dollar profit margin for the company.

Companies like Hershey’s that put profits before product quality need to realize that if the quality lacks the creamy goodness we’ve all come to know and love, they won’t have to worry about profits in the long run, because there won’t be customers to buy their products.  We will take our sweet money somewhere else.   It isn’t the stock holders they should be concerned about — it’s the consumers.

And that’s all folks.

I’m back home after 3 weeks away and while I told myself I’d spend a few days sitting and doing nothing, I apparently lied.  I could not resist the temptation of playing.  Here is the result of yesterday (and today’s) resin play. I will not bore you with too many details, but you may notice I currently have a slight obsession with trees.