I have been busy! I have several pictures to show you of the bias tape being ironed out from that lo-o-o-ong piece of material I made a few days ago. I am having a few technical difficulties posting my pics, so please bear with me if the placement seems awkward.
My biased point of view
I started out with a 4 inch wide strip of cloth I described a few days ago. You fold each side in to meet in the middle and iron flat, with the wrong sides of the material to the inside of the fold. So that is the picture you see here.
The long of it...
It was a lot of material as I said, and it was very difficult to iron it all correctly. It wanted to pile up in the floor off of the ironing board, so I resorted to pinning one end down to my board while I continued folding and pressing towards the other end. When you have this step completed, you then fold the tape in half and iron again to bring it down to about a 1 inch width. It took a little time, but a few steam burns later I had finished my bias tape! Yay!
Next I will begin sewing this long piece of tape to my daughter’s apron….we are getting closer and closer to a finished product! I can hardly wait!!!
Now, you are asking…..what does all this have to do with a pencil? Well, a few years ago I lived in an apartment in Upstate SC. Working on this bias tape has reminded of an apartment story I would like to share. It was a large, nice basement apartment. It was very open and well lit with high ceilings, didn’t feel like a basement at all. I was out in the country too. It really was a nice apartment.
One day I decided to take my bath in the early afternoon, I had been outside working in my yard and needed to bathe very badly. I am near sighted as well, but of course don’t wear my glasses while in the tub. At the time of this story I didn’t wear contacts either, just glasses. 
This is an important point. I started my water, stripped off my dirty clothes and of course laid my glasses on the counter to climb in my tub. Only I forgot I had the tea kettle on, and when it started whistling at me, I jumped out to turn it off. Turned the stove off, moved the kettle, problem solved. Back to that bath, yay!
Walking back to the bathroom, I thought I caught a glimpse of something move at the edge of the bathroom door. I started stepping into the room, but suddenly stopped. Why? Because the pencil I thought I saw in the floor started moving away from me….very quickly! I jumped back as well, not sure what in the world I was going to do completely naked and half blind! I squinted around, thankfully knowing where most things were in my small bathroom, at this point including the snake. I reached over as far as I could and grabbed my toilet brush, and then reached under the sink for a trash can I had there. I threw the trash in the sink, and again reached out pinning the little critter to the wall as best I could with the toilet brush, and scooping the offender inside the trash can, I quickly carried can and snake out my front door into the yard.
I look down into the can, I guess checking that I hadn’t lost the baby king snake in my short walk down the hall. Yep, he was still there. I could see his tiny little tongue whipping out tasting the air every few seconds. I ran all the way across the yard. I decided it was time for a new trash can anyway, and then threw the can and snake into my woods. Then I remembered…… I was naked! I had just jumped out of my tub a few minutes ago…..ooooooooooppss! 
As I said earlier, I lived in the country. As far as I know no one but Mother Nature saw me in my Birthday Suit. Unfortunately though, it wasn’t the end of my adventure. Over the next 6 days I had 7, count ‘em, 7 baby king snakes slithering around with me in that apartment, some in my pantry, some in my kitchen, some in my living room. Thankfully none of them ever made it into my bedroom, as far as I know. Le sigh. Let’s just say that I’m very glad I don’t live in that apartment anymore. I like my new house just fine.
Grandma’s Briefs had a fine story of unwanted critters that prompted my remembrance of today’s story. They got to play with scorpions, yikes! So far everyone is ok. So, what about you? What strange and crazy creatures have you happened upon? Any bug stories to share? I bet there are some real creepy crawlies in somebody’s history! I can’t wait to hear. Now be warned, my next picture might disturb you a little bit…..
My Days as a Snake Handler...
What am I doing with this picture you ask? Well, several years before my king snake adventure I worked at a zoo. I led educational shows for the visitors and this is a picture of me with one of the python’s. No, that’s a boa constrictor. I didn’t like my king snake visitors, they were inside my house and uninvited. But I did like working with the big snakes at the zoo. More importantly, I was wearing my glasses….and my CLOTHES! These snakes never paid me any visits inside my home, or I wouldn’t have been as fond of them either.
Hope you have a lovely uneventful weekend! I promise, no more snake pictures. Not even bias tape snakes…..Angela
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