Oktoberfest

 

 Once again, we gathered at the Carpathia Club for the annual Oktoberfest. This year Tony and Paul decided to join the group.

 

 I think Grampa and Dad went shopping at the same "German shirt" store. Tony kept calling them Smuckers!

 

 Levi and Mike were also ready for the festivities.

Mike's mom even joined in the fun.

Gramma and Grampa were so happy to see everyone.

Levi is hanging with his uncles.

Hello!

Here we are ready to get some brats and potato salad.

I made the outfit Levi is wearing for Tony when he was 6 months old.

Sorry, Tony, this is Levi's now.

 

 Grampa asked to hold Levi on his lap. I think he got more than he bargained for.

 Ok, I think Grampa's done.

Happy boy!

The Garlic Festival

 My good friend, Deb, and I decided to go to the Garlic Festival in Cleveland, OH

 Here we are!

 We arrived right at the opening. I can't wait to visit all of the stands.

 First though, I'll pose with the Garlic Crusader...

Deb and I and a few friends visited the first stand selling garlic. Deb is hoping to grow garlic which should be planted in September/October.

 Among the stands was a food demo tent...featuring garlic, of course.

 Many garlic items were available like garlic ice cream and the garlic jelly in this picture.

These "garlic" dancers swept around the festival. I loved the bird they flew.

It was really neat!

 Deb and I relaxed with beer...interestingly they didn't offer garlic flavor.

 Just waiting for the belly dancers.

Oh, there they are, yay!

 

 Check out these dancers.

A super good day at the garlic festival...the super food! (at least that's what I heard)

Bean Bags...

 I decided to make bean bag chairs for Carla's classroom.  First I downloaded a pattern off of the internet and transferred it to make it life-sized. Then I used any material I could find for the inner lining.

Here I'm using an old sheet from the basement. It worked beautifully. Each bag had six side panels and a top and bottom. I sewed 8 pieces together to make the lining for each of the 4 chairs.

I went to the Foam Factory for the filling.

 Now for the filling. I used shredded foam. Katie warned me about the mess so I closed myself in the bathroom with a wisk broom, needle and thread, scissors, and a vacuum. I stuffed a towel under the door and got to work.

 I tried several ways to fill each bag. One of them was to set the entire bag in the bag of foam....it worked pretty well.

 Although the foam was pretty messy, it was a lot better than I had imagined. It did stick to the outside of the bags though.

 A bit more to go....

 Whew! They're all full, the foam bag is empty and now I have to sew up the openings.

 I used three vacuum bags to suck up all of the excess. They don't look too bad. They came out better than expected. Now I'm headed to Benton Harbor for work. I'll be back at the end of the week.

 It's time to finish the bean bags. I decided to sew the outer shell out of nylon. It's easy to wipe clean and super cheap with my Joann's coupon. I cut out all of the pieces and sewed the velcro to the bottom circle.

 I then sewed two of the sides together.

 I wanted all of the edges to be extra strong so I added a zigzag stitch to each seam.

 Here is my companero in sewing crime.... notice the thread...

 One of the ladies at Joann's recommended Guterman thread. She said it doesn't ball up when you're sewing. I decided to try it and I really like it. It comes on a giant role and it worked really well with the nylon fabric.

 I have the six sides sewn for this one and I'm getting ready to attach the bottom with the velcro opening.

 

As you can probably guess, getting the lining (with the stuffing) into the outer nylon shell was a bit daunting....

 

 Both Helmut and I worked at stuffing it in....

 There we go, mission accomplished...for two of them at least.

 Here is the last one. I'm hoping Carla's students will enjoy them.

Here they are waiting to be delivered.... I hope you like them, Carla!!