Who's got the best mom and dad?

I do I do!

As I've mentioned, I want to make the Hop Skip Jump quilt from Denyse Schmidt's book with my palette of adorable pink prints. I love the projects in this book, but I have come to hate the fact that one must enlarge the patterns 400% in order to make said patterns. One would think this is a straightforward task, accomplished with ease by anyone with a photocopier or certainly by the experts in the local copy shop. Au contraire... apparently a degree in rocket science and advanced training in the ways of the copier are required.

After many false starts at my office copier, I surrendered to our local copy shop, where the guy told me that he could only enlarge the pattern 212% (unhelpful, thanks) and then that he could enlarge 400% but it would be spread across 4 pieces of paper. That seemed fine; I could deal with cutting and assembling the pieces, if only it was possible to know how much of one piece overlapped with the next! After splurging $1 on this enterprise, I abandoned the plan.

Dad to the rescue! Lucky for me, my dad runs a sign business and therefore has a huge 40-inch-plus printer. I scanned the pattern page, emailed it to him and he blew it up to 400% perfection (foot included for scale). Hurray! Now I just have to cut the pattern pieces and the fabric, a task which I've been meaning to do for two weeks now. Maybe this weekend will be the one...

My mom delivered my pattern sheet to me when she came to lunch last week. And look what else she brought! The cutest little post-it note holder I ever did see. Those are knitting needles and yarn embroidered on the front.

Best of all: it's refillable. This is a big thing for me - as a child I never wanted to use up my crafty stuff. This was particularly true with crayons - I only used them until the tips started to get dull. Why this was the case is beyond me - my parents were never ones to deprive me of creative supplies. However, as a result, I have a number of untouched Crayola boxes in my possession, plus countless Hello Kitty stickers, colored pencils, heart- and pony-covered stationary and various other treasured bits of childhood that will hopefully be enjoyed by my future offspring at some point. One day, though, I will show you the trove of glass beads and embroidery floss I unearthed the last time I was home, which I'm now mighty glad I hoarded those many years ago!