Q. My brother's a college freshman this year, and I'd like to make him something really nice for Christmas because he gave me a really special birthday gift. I don't want to just buy him some electronic or anything- I want to give him a personal gift. But I don't have any ideas. I thought about making him a quilt, but I can't sew. I thought about making him one of those tie-fleece blanket things, but they look too feminine.
Any ideas? Please help me!
A. The cookies of the month idea is a good one, or fruit of the month or something else if cookies or things like "quick breads" aren't suitable for him.
Quick breads btw also mail well and last awhile (e.g., banana bread, zucchini bread or even zucchini chocolate bread, pumpkin bread, apple quick bread, etc are some of the sweet versions):
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=quick+bread
http://google.com/search?q=recipe+quick+bread
As for the tied fleece blankets, they certainly don't have to look feminine if you choose the colors/patterns carefully. Instead of flowers or "youth-oriented" images and instead of bright or purple/pink/etc. colors, just get him more-neutral colors, perhaps a pattern instead of "images," etc. (If he has a particular interest like sports or outdoors, etc., you could try and find fleece or fleece blankets in that motif since there are loads of fleece patterns at fabric stores available these days.)
You can do the ties, or you could also just sew two of the blankets or equivalent yardage of fleece together around the perimenter near the edge, or do that leaving a gap then turn the two inside out and sew the gap closed by hand, or add a binding to one rectangle of fleece (or two-attached) again in a neutral color perhaps, etc.
Another simple but homemade way to finish the edges would be to do a "blanket stitch" all the way around with some perl cotton cording/thread just to give the blanket a little more decorative look. You could make the stitches any size you wanted and use any color you want so that the stitching would be very subtle or very visible.
(Fleece doesn't ravel so actually nothing is needed on the edges, but anything you put there may keep the edges from curling inward a bit).
There are some examples of various colors of blanket stitch on the edges of fleece in this search, as well as lessons:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query="blanket+stitch"+fleece
http://www.google.com/images?q="blanket+stitch"+fleece
and more videos on making fleece blankets in general:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fleece+blanket
HTH,
Diane B.
Approximately how much will it take to ship something small to Germany?
Q. I have a friend in Germany, and it was recently his birthday, and I want to send him a late birthday gift. I was thinking of a t-shirt or something of similar weight. I know I can just go to my local post office to find out how much it would cost, but maybe I thought it would be easier to just get an answer on here. Anyone have any idea? The total weight should be about 1lb or less.
Thanks!
A. Pretty likely at least $15. Air mail isn't cheap. Get a Tyvek envelope to put it in. They weigh almost nothing and are very strong.
What happened to all my emails in my inbox?
Q. I used to have about 2,000+ emails in my inbox and now I only have 114. I know one of my emails was a birthday gift card and now I can't find it. Something wiped out the emails.
A. A number of people are having this problem of entire blocks of e-mail vanishing Yahoo have no idea why. The number of people on here who lose important mail, photo's, document's et al is amazing. The first rule of computers is make a back up. The second is..another one. . Hard drives die, memory sticks die, mail goes missing, with 1 Tb drives at the price they are now it's not that expensive. Better safe than sorry.
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