Where have you been all my life?

I was watching a series of videos on youtube about quilting.  This was right after I taught myself to do a yarn over by watching a video on youtube.  (If you don't know what a yarn over is, it's ok, I didn't either for a long time.)  You can learn just about anything you might care to know, by watching a video on youtube.  If you are a visual learner like me, this is amazing.  You can try to teach me something verbally a million times and unless I see it, it will never stick.  If I have to remember a phone number, I picture it in head, like it was written on a piece of paper, otherwise, poof!  It's gone.

Back to the topic at hand.  One of the videos in this series was on basting, which I assumed meant basting with thread.  I'm pretty sure that's what Little House on the Prairie meant when Laura talked about basting dresses together, which is the first time I read the word.  Believe it or not, basting didn't come up very often when I was growing up in suburban Maryland.  In the video, thread was never used.  I was pretty shocked.  I know you must be as well.  There was an aerosol can of adhesive, which looked pretty scary, and I'm sure Ma Ingels is rolling over somewhere.  There were also these babies.

Those are curved safety pins so that when you pin your quilt sandwich together, the point curves upward and the pin is easier to snap closed.  So very, very, very much easier to snap closed.

I ask you again, Where have you been all my life, beautiful curved safety pin?  Between the curved safety pin and finding out that all those little cross hatches on my ruler can be used for something, I'm having a good week.

Ok, you don't have to run off to google.  A yarn over is a knitting term for purposefully making a hole in your project and increasing a stitch at the same time.  Beginners tend to do this accidently, but if you know the term and make a bunch of them, then you can say you did it on purpose.

Feel free to remind me of my disparaging remarks about spray adhesive basting.  A year ago I would have said you were crazy if you told me I'd be trying to teach myself free motion quilting in 2011.  I'm even considering learning hand quilting.  Never say never, unless you are James Bond.