Sewing in Public

Every Sunday morning this summer, bink & I have gone to a certain coffee shop.  I was there sewing leaves (sunflower leaves) on the lion puppet yesterday when a barista asked if she could feature me on their Instagram.

I made sure the lion was facing the camera:

I'm really pleased: the photo shows the sort of person I would want to be.

I got a small payment from my father's life insurance last week. I've spent almost no money on sewing, so I'm giving myself a grant to focus on it a little more seriously--which includes spending money on some supplies. 

I have plenty of scraps of good fabric that I got free or cheap, but I've been making do with inferior sewing notions and thread. 
Did you know thread deteriorates? Old thread breaks and snags more easily.  I bought a bunch of new skeins of embroidery floss (74¢ each) to replace the ancient stuff I'd bought at Steeple People thrift store: the new thread is amazingly smooth to sew with.
Good supplies & tools are worth it.

And classes. I signed up for two one-time classes on September Saturday mornings at the textile center. Sixty dollars each seems expensive to me, and I could learn most everything I need from YouTube, but I'd like to meet other sewers. I learn more when someone is present to guide my hand, too.
I'm especially looking forward to the class that teaches beginning embroidery through stitching Mod Flowers:

My mother taught me to embroider when I was ten, so I remember the stitches but am unskilled. I still have my unfinished sampler from 46 years ago. Maybe I'll redesign and finish it. But probably I'll focus on embellishing toys.

I'm not sure what to do about paid work. 
Even though I'd like to work around people again, maybe I should look for freelance work since every job I've had in a workplace has ended with me leaving in outrage at the awful, incompetent management. 
I've complained here about the nursing homes and thrift stores I've worked in. Good management has not been the norm in the more professional settings I've been in either. 

The only reason I lasted twelve years at the art-college library was I worked alone in the evenings. The directors were unbelievable. When one of them quit,  she left her pit of an office for staff to clean out--a half-eaten sandwich was layered among library materials, brochures, and revealing personal papers relating to her divorce. Her moods were mercurial, but at least she'd taken care of the library, a little.
The next director was the opposite--a control freak who wouldn't let anything change or any money be spent. When I left in 2001, the library catalog still hadn't been computerized.

In my next job as an in-house proofreader for a publisher, the editorial director used her old, outdated college textbooks as reference material. I would point out slight factual errors in manuscripts, and she would say, "Don't worry about it--this isn't an academic press."

She wasn't the only one I met in children's publishing who had the attitude that nonfiction books for kids didn't really matter. One editor told me, "They're just for kids to write reports from."

(Humans. How have we lasted this long?)

Luckily there's been a big turnover since then, and the editorial staff is pretty great. But I still wouldn't want to work in-office. 

I am better suited, overall, to sitting in coffee shops sewing on stuffed animals.