A New "New Girl" and 2 Baby Blankets

Hello friends. 

How are all of you today? 

Hey Deanna and Margaret!!! 

I miss you so much. 

I almost came up this weekend to visit Jerry's Mom at Countrywood, but there is so much going on here, I am cancelling.  Would LOVE for you to come visit, but it looks like it will be a month or two before I can properly entertain anyone other than the construction crew and the new employee.

And, of course, Phylly.  No Phylly-time gets me down, but maybe one day soon.  We are going to Skype on Mother's Day.

Oh, yeah.

You don't know yet.

The new employee -- the one from the last post -- she isn't there anymore.  She called in the second day and said the job was just too hard for her.  All she did the day she was there was look up authorization codes from Medicaid. 

Good heavens!  How hard is that?  I could do that half asleep while drinking coffee and eating a donut!  She said she didn't like computer work.  Well, WHY ON EARTH did she take the job?????????????????????

That isn't actually a bad thing though because as it turns out, there was a darling girl who just walked in about five minutes after I had hired DJ.  I didn't even meet her because I had just hired DJ, but I did get her application.  She EXCELLED at my very favorite first impression of an applicant:  BEAUTIFUL handwriting.  It gets me excited, let me tell you, and not only that -- she spelled everything correctly, and she followed the instructions.  I almost cried because I had hired DJ realizing she really wasn't a perfect choice.

When DJ called and quit, I had Candi call the "darling girl" right away.  Turns out she was VERY interested in our job, and she came back ASAP for an interview with me.  I almost hired her at first sight.  She is a combination of Candi -- my personal assistant and office Supervisor -- and Darcy, my former Store Manager who worked for us 10 years. 

The "darling girl" is named Candice, so we now have Candi and Candice.  Their last names both start with B and are also very much alike.  Must be some kind of sign.  Candice has 4 years of college courses and a year of blood-taking school (can't think of the proper name for that right now).  She worked at a Blood Insitute in Ardmore -- a 45-mile drive for her.  She hated it.  She also had to work evenings and weekends.  She was willing to make less money to work in Kingston where she lives.  She will save a lot on gasoline and time.  She will start working for us Monday morning.

One of my employees is out on maternity leave.  Her name is Gracie.  We have not heard from Gracie, and we don't even know her baby girl's name.  We have called and texted, but haven't heard back.  A paycheck sits on her desk.  Her husband was to come by to get it but didn't.  Last we heard, he had to take her back to the hospital because she was sick and had a fever.  We are SO WORRIED!

Anyway, I decided to make a couple little baby blankets for her.  Unfortunately, my longarm machine decided to give me a major problem today, so the pink blanket isn't as good as it could have been.  The longarm has a button that you push to make the needle go up or down.  One push = up.  Another push = down.  Just once, and then it is supposed to STOP.  You can't begin and end your stitching without this function.

Today, every time I pushed that button, the needle flew up and down a hundred times, and I could not get it to stop.  I do know how to fix this problem, and if it didn't involve removing about 50 screws and lifting off big metal covers to expose the world's itty bittiest screw that I can barely SEE, never mind get the world's tiniest screw driver into, I would have done it.  Decided to wait for Jerry.

Here it is.  No big deal, but you can't have too many baby blankets.  It is just a cute flannel print with white cotton on the back.

And here is the back of the pink flannel baby blanket.  Just loops and hearts.

And here is a little blanket I made her yesterday.  I would use this one for a bath mat since it has duckies all over it.  It is just flannel on top and cotton on the bottom with no batting in between.  I sewed a piece of Petersham ribbon all around the top to finish this one.  My quilting is just the simple wavy lines.

Jerry is on his way home. 

I have two ribeye steaks thawed out, and 12 extra large shrimp.  Good dinner tonight!  And did I mention a bottle of wine to go with? 

Hugs, Joy