Last weekend was the first weekend: the weekend after the first week of classes. And rather than relax and unwind whilst simultaneously winding (up for the new semester), I sacrificed my weekend for a retreat.

This retreat was different because I wasn’t a standard participant. It’s a First Year retreat, for freshmen to develop their roots as college Catholics. My First Year retreat was a vivid and transforming experience for me, so I felt the need to give back. That need called me to organize the food for the first years. Of course, I also signed up two months before the retreat’s scheduled date, believing it would be a piece of cake when the time finally came.

Only as I was making my Costco list did I realize what I was in for. I had to plan and purchase food (reimbursed of course) for 20 people?! For a weekend?!

Estimating quantities was so stressful that I wanted to give up, to throw my list at anyone else and say, “You do this. I want my first weekend to myself, not around stupid freshmen.”

My wonderful friends came with me to Costco, and the five of us dominated the self-checkout like pros, scanning and stacking and boxing. And my miracle station wagon managed to hold all the food along with a full load of passengers. Even though Brad now cringes at the word Costco, we made it out alive.

And I made it out to a wonderful world of snow, light, and space.

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, yes, but I also spent a lot of time retreating. Bonding with the freshmen over our shared faith, sharing stories and experiences and beliefs. I cooked and served them lovingly, and they all helped me and nobody complained when food was a few minutes late.

What struck me was that, even with a 3-year age gap, our retreat conversations were so relevant. When we were all speaking from our hearts, the feelings were universal.

Then breaktime would ensue, and the bond was broken as talk turned to dining hall food and freshmen classes. But I still remember those magical moments.

So maybe I did need a retreat. Mine was a retreat of service and reflection, and so much gratitude. Grateful that I had gone on the retreat as a freshman; grateful that I had signed up for kitchen duty on a whim. I lost a weekend, but I gained perspective: that’s enough.

(and i served my “secret recipe”, ultimate overnight french toast, so everyone was happy.)

a weekend filled with gratitude is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

It was a mess, but I’ve finally eradicated it from my system and Fluffyland is clean. So we can all (especially me!!) breathe easy. But I still wanted to post a clarification, as well as some tips, for all of you: bloggers and non-bloggers alike.

How it Happened
Many people have said, “why would someone attack Fluffyland?” and I agree: why go after an innocent website? But my site was not independently targeted, or even purposely attacked. Some mean computer geek out there programmed a computer to search through the web, find sites with small security vulnerabilities, and input little bits of code in unexpected places. Those little bits of code can hurt the computers that visit my site, and they are very hard to find. After more than a week, I’ve finally found them all, and upped my security so it won’t happen again.

Blog Readers
If you have visited my site in the past two weeks (between 1/13 and 1/28), whether or not a red screen has come up, you should do a full virus scan on your PC to make sure it didn’t get you. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free anti-virus program for Windows machines, and it has this particular exploit in its list of definitions. If you download that and scan, it will find this virus if you’ve got it.

I am very sorry for any things that the bad guys made my website do to your computer’s health. All I can say is that I tried my hardest and lost a lot of sleep until it was finally gone.

Bloggers
If you have a blog, this could happen to you. I really, really hope it doesn’t… but in case your blog ends up distributing malware (and making you very sad), I thought I’d post a list of helpful links so you don’t have to read as many articles as I did.

1. First and foremost, make regular backups of your site so you will have something to fall back on. I don’t do this enough, and I sure regretted it.
2. Scan your site regularly with the Free Sucuri Site Scanner. Unlike Google scans, this does a fresh scan of your site as soon as you click the button, so you can see if your site (or any site you might worry about!) is clean right now. I am now in the habit of doing daily scans.
3. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools, because they will email you if your site comes under alert. It’s good for catching malware, as well as numerous other SEO-related issues. But the Google scan only takes place every few days, since it has the whole web to deal with, so your results aren’t up to the minute like Securi.
4. Use WordPress plugins to scan through your blog files. Scanning manually is a pain, but I used the WordPress Exploit Scanner Plugin to find the malicious code so I could go in and remove it. Note: read the instructions for this plugin, because it finds lots of files marked “could be suspicious”. Most of them aren’t, so don’t get paranoid. But it’s incredibly helpful when you know something is wrong.
5. The basics: change your passwords for your CPanel login, your WordPress login, and change your WordPress secret key. The articles below give more details. Make sure none of your plugins or scripts are out of date, and know how to take your site down quickly if you need to.
6. Read up. Here are some articles I found helpful for both removal and future prevention:
   • Hacked Site Prevention and Repair Guide
   • WordPress Guide to Repairing a Hacked Blog
   • WordPress Guide to Increasing Blog Security

I’m now armed and ready for the next little robot who tries to take down my site… we’ll just wait and see what happens to him!

what to do when your blog has been hacked. is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

Over Christmas break, my mom and I did a major fabric purge in our basement. We found all sorts of treasures: half-pinned t-shirts, pajama pants missing a final hem, and disastrous fabrics that had been hiding in the bottoms of bins since the late ’80s.

We cleared out pounds upon pounds of fabric (is that embarrassing? maybe.) but we also found a number of should-have-beens that are now back on the project list. The old-but-new project I decided to tackle first was this quilt.

I found all the squares in a wrinkled Ziploc. Some had been sewn together, most were alone. It seemed to be a scrap quilt: some of the fabrics contributed twenty patches, and a few only contributed one or two. I assumed I had picked up the bag at one of the rummage sales I love so much… even though I couldn’t remember doing it, it didn’t seem unlikely because I know how excited I get in those “fill a bag for a dollar” moments!

I started by stitching the squares into sets of three so they’d be easy to arrange. I lined them up as best I could and ran them all through the sewing machine, then under the iron.

Finally, I laid them all out on the living room floor, meticulously rearranging for the most appealing layout. Mama walked by and said, “oh, I recognize that fabric! we used to have that!” And as she got closer, she recognized more and more.

Aunt Jeanie used to make purses from that one!

Oh, I think I had a skirt from that one… it was lovely.

Finally, the mystery was solved as more and more of the patterns became familiar to my mama’s eyes. These pieces were all part of Aunt Jeanie’s quilt, a scrap quilt lovingly cut from spare squares.

Now, at least 20 years later, I’m stitching them all into their rightful places. The quilt top is finished, so now I’m on the lookout for a perfect backing. Then I’ll snuggle up underneath the scraps from my family’s creations, and have sweet seamstressly dreams.

aunt jeanie’s quilt is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

Dunkleosteus: a big, old fish.

(well, first i said “what is that?!” and he told me it was a giant dinosaur fish thing.)

At first, I was worried. Those teeth, all the layers of bone, all the details and hard edges… what if I couldn’t do it? But it was one of those moments where, as soon as I stopped thinking about it, I could see it perfectly in my head. It’s a plush, right? I can do plush. At that point I gave myself a pep talk, rushed to Joann’s, snagged a ton of gray fleece, and got to work.

This was one of the most complex plush I’ve ever made: he’s got side flippers, a top fin, little tail fins. With all the “bone”/exoskeleton layers, the back of his body is three layers of fleece. And then there are those teeth! Man, those were tricky. Symmetry is always a challenge.

He took longer than expected, because there was a lot of pattern drafting to be done. But I think he was worth the wait. Wanna see?

I just love his goofy smile, and the fleece, as always, is just so soft. I also finally broke into the ultimate safety eye stash that I’ve been hoarding for a few years now – it sure is handy to have some of every safety eye lying around!

I just love doing custom plush. It’s always a scary challenge, but they usually come out alright, and that just feels so good! Do you like it?

prehistoric plush: dunkleosteus is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

so this is the new year… (clang clang)
… and i don’t feel any different.

Last year, I wholeheartedly agreed with this sentiment. I wrote it in my little moleskine of little thoughts as a sort of mantra, and although my new year’s post was optimistic and goal-focused, I felt 100% the same. I didn’t feel any different.

It was partly due to stubbornness. Sometimes, I think the whole concept of a new year is silly. We’re not supposed to wake up and feel different. But now I realize – we need it. We need this day, this chance for reflection, rebirth, and rejuvenation.

Today I’m looking back on myself a year ago – and I’m way different. I’ve done a heck of a lot of new things in one year, I’ve learned a ton, and I’ve generally matured as an individual. So if you’d care to join me, I’m going to go on a short little retrospective journey.

In February, I got to take a wonderful mini-trip to Rome to visit one of my very best friends, Katie. It was, of course, amazing to visit the Vatican, eat gelato, and stare at that blue, blue sky. But it was also a great opportunity for Katie and I to catch up and go back to being the friends we were in high school, the friends who saw each other daily. Rome trip? Awesome. Rome trip + reconnecting with an old friend? Perfect.

In May, I learned the basics of piloting a small aircraft. It was difficult, and a little bit scary to be behind the wheel, but now I’m itching to get back up there. This was a pretty cool addition to the list of things I’ve done in my life.

Speaking of cool things to add to my life list, in June I bought a glass kiln. I’m still researching, learning, and collecting supplies, but in December I fired my first glass project. Photos will come soon! This is a big one on the 2012 list: I hope to get a lot more firings done in the coming year.

Fourth of July weekend was spent in Roanoke, and my mama and I had wonderful girl time visiting with my cousins and aunt. We went thrifting, drove around the mountains, made good food and ate good ice cream. Another good bonding trip for the year.

In mid-July, my family spent the week following my mom’s birthday in Ireland. It was probably the best vacation we’ve ever had – great food, great beer, lots of snacks (or snooks, as we called them) and lots of laughs together. We drove through the emerald hills and stepped into the frigid ocean, gazing toward our distant home. I also saw HP 7 Part 2 in Dublin, and my life was forever changed. I’ll always be a Harry Potter book nerd, but that movie was unbelievable.

In September, Brad and I made the chalk masterpiece of all chalk masterpieces at the Cleveland Museum of Art Chalk Festival. I will forever be unreasonably proud of this piece of temporary art.

Molly, another of my best friends from high school, got married over Labor Day weekend. I was so glad that Brad and I could make it to her wedding, it was so pretty and so much fun. She’s the first of my close friends to get married, but certainly not the last… a lot of my friends have been getting engaged lately. I am happy for all of them, but I, personally, would like a few more years of unmarried life. I’m only 22!

Which brings to to my birthday. In October, I turned 22. For me, 22 feels like a major turning point. Age 21 is considered to be “adulthood”… but 22 means you’ve made it in. I’m trying to take this ’22 feeling’ and make it a focus on maturity and responsibility. Hopefully this feeling will guide me toward the adult I want to become.

In October, I got to represent my school at a conference called thinkChicago, which was a 2-day event focused on innovation in entrepreneurship and technology. Definitely something I’m interested in! We attended panels with Google, Groupon, and the mayor; and I got to tour the Threadless warehouse! I also had my first taste of real Chicago-style deep dish… and now just looking at that photo makes me feel forlorn and very, very hungry. I also crossed a visit to the iconic Vogue Fabrics off my list- it wasn’t monumental, but it was certainly my kind of fabric store.

I shipped out 14 narwhals for the holiday season – less than half of last year’s tally, but I was grateful because I had lots more schoolwork than last year. I also made a couple awesome custom projects, and I’ll be showing those to you very soon!

2011, a year of planes, was a year of great change for me, and I’m sure I owe a great deal of that change to those planes.
How many planes, you ask? Let’s count the trips…
5 trips from home to Cleveland (3 visits, 1 wedding, 1 fall break)
1 trip to Cincinnati (skiing with Brad!)
1 trip to Italy
1 trip co-piloting the small plane
1 trip to Ireland (+1 for connection through London)
1 trip to Chicago

Planes: 10 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 4 + 2 = 22 flights, 22 planes.

22 planes for my 22nd year. I’m okay with that.

2011: a year of planes is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

Classes ended a week later than usual this year, so I didn’t end up back home until late on the 18th. Cleveland gave me a gorgeous snowy send-off, but Virginia’s warm and flipping between bright sun and heavy rain, like Christmas in April.

I’ve sewn a handful of cool things lately, and I can’t wait to show them to you! I had a great custom request this year, so once Christmas is over I will put up the pictures. Nothing’s better for my creative spirit than someone showing a ridiculous picture and asking, “can you make this?”

I hope you are all having a cozy and wonderful Christmas Eve! It’s the best night of the year. Merry Christmas!

for old time’s sake is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

I’ve had this tape since just after last Christmas, and I finally get to use it. Hurray!

guten morgen, dezember! is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

I hope you all have a wonderful thanksgiving filled with food, family, and blessings! I’ve got lots to be thankful for, especially my family, friends, and the wonderful chance to forget about classes for two whole days!

And just a heads-up: to save myself some sewing stress, I’m encouraging early Narwhal orders with a sale! All narwhals ordered before December 1 are $3 off!

happy thanksgiving! is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog