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 Dean's quilt blocks, laid out on a bed sheet in order to make final design decisions. I tried the blocks in a number of different layouts, and Dean chose this one (also my favorite). And then Ken said, "well why not make it queen-size because then it will be more useful for him for longer?" So today I'll make 7 more blocks so I can add a column, and I'll make the run to the fabric store to find a nice steely blue for the borders. Tomorrow it's back to the office, so I probably won't be ready for basting for another week or so. Momentum. It's a thing.

And lunch, that's a thing too. A mid-day break for our favorite kind of snacky- tapas-y lunch, enjoyed along with watching the Liverpool game (a draw against Man. City leaves us barely hanging on to 4th). I think this is why Sunday was invented -- at least, for us.

75

I've got a few days off now; finally, the busiest of busy times at work has past, and with an eye on our school year-end, I've got vacation days that I'm actually allowed to use before they expire. I'm using a portion of my time to finish up the top of a quilt that's been in the works for Dean for too long (that is, too long in planning, too slow in the sewing) so that I can get it basted and start quilting it. I'm going to have it finished for him before he goes back to school in September (there, I've said it).

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly*

Some details, as promised. Of Gina's gorgeous quilt. The one she made and gave away, and that I won. Oh happy, lucky me!
The photos were taken in ultra-bright sunlight which washed the colors out a little, but you still get a sense of her beautiful, perfect fabric choices and workmanship.
I love it. We are planning to make-over our family room before the winter holidays. I'm not sure if 'family room' translates; we certainly didn't call anything the 'family room' in the house where I grew up. We said 'front room,' even, and not 'living room' as they do here in the East (although that's different from the 'family room'). Anyway, it is the room on the ground floor of the house, next to the kitchen, where the sofa and tv are and where we hang out. So my point (yes!) is that Gina's quilt may in fact become the focal point of that room; I was going to hang it in the bedroom but it deserves a wider audience.
Meanwhile, The Season has begun. Hurray! A 6-1 win last week, and the next game is tomorrow. Dean moved up a division and is loving it more than ever. He's a different person in some ways on the field -- takes no guff. That's MY ball. Not in an inappropriately aggressive way, just in an appropriately forceful way. Great to see.

*Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green,

When I am king, dilly, dilly, you shall be queen.

Who told you so, dilly, dilly, who told you so?

'Twas my own heart, dilly, dilly, that told me so.

(and Burl Ives sings it best)

Sproing!

Almost done cutting and then on to sewing -- I will get this top finished this week. When I designed this quilt block, it felt like such an incredible departure from the quilting I'd been doing before; the abstract design was built off a study of symmetry and had nothing to do with traditional quilt making. But by today's standards, the underlying method here (ultra-precise pieces cut painstakingly from perfect templates) makes the project feel dated and uninteresting. I'm pushing on because I want this finished, I want to be able to look at this little quilt up on a wall. There are a few other WIPs in this category -- projects using methods I'm no longer interested in but things I don't want to leave permanently undone. My goal will be to knock a couple off this year without starting too many other things in the meantime. Along with trying to figure out how to like doing housework more, I also need to learn to love the finishing as much as I love the starting.

The unexpected, distracting ingredient in this vacation week is the weather. Oh sure, warmer days with brilliant sunshine were inevitable at some point, but after all the cold and gray we've had I never figured on it just now:

I don't think I'll be able to resist the garden today.

But there already weren't enough hours in the day

I'll spare you my usual Daylight Savings rant. Just know how deeply I despise it. (OK -- my beef is that our government has the bald audacity to think it has the right to change the time twice a year and not realize how deeply that impacts people. Negatively.) Anyway. I'm lucky that I got some spam-ish piece of email marketing calling my attention to it (by way of trying to pull a sale over on me) or I wouldn't have realized it was time to "spring ahead."

There is a small amount of actual crafting going on here, and I've found almost all the fabrics I need to keep going on the quilt that Helen's pledged to nag me about (she's wonderful at remembering and at keeping one on one's toes about keeping promises). If you want to make one of these little guys yourself, the pattern is here. Now, I'm off to bed whether I am tired, or not.

Countdown to clean up

Not the best photo, but I did accomplish a few things last year and one was finishing and hanging this quilt that I had, ah, begun as a baby quilt for friends who were expecting. The child is something like 16 years old now (we gave an alternate gift at the time) so it hangs in our bedroom instead. It is a true square, and the colors are richer/deeper, but there you go.

Are you joining me and Helen for clean-up day this Saturday, Feb. 9? I'll be here, posting from time to time between 7 a.m. and 12 noon EST; Helen will clock in on her blog from 12 noon to 5 p.m. on -- gosh, is it Greenwich Mean? Well, the time by the clocks in England, in any case. Let us know if you're catching up on some of your own projects -- cleaning, completing WIPs, whatever's your fancy. Helen sent me some inspiration in the form of chocolate-covered "mint cake" which is not really cake but more candy -- wonderful stuff.

I've shown you all my messes, and I have been making progress every day. Ironing the pile of linens that's been waiting (napkins, tablecloths, table runners, place mats), picking up, sorting out, throwing out, giving away as I go. Facing all the issues of how I get myself into this situation in the first place has been tough, but worthwhile. And I WILL still come clean on the fabric front -- just need a brighter day to take some better photos. For your information, the rest of my home is not a disaster; my issue is that I put my effort elsewhere, almost always, and rarely into taking care of things for myself. No more, I say. Well, I also say, given that we've got a puppy coming I'm yet again taking on something that will take me away from my own pursuits.... So it goes. Tell me what you're working on and what your goals are.

Week of shame, entry 1

Helen is making me do this. Really, I am fortunate to have her friendship, because she is the kind of friend who is pushing me in the way I need to be pushed. She has worked out this great transatlantic method of getting me to get my act together so that instead of merely telling her all the time how impressed I am by how productive she is, she's going to get me in shape so that I can be productive, too.

Here's the story: last summer, I posted about a quilt I'd started years ago that I really wanted to finish. Helen gave me some friendly prompts -- how's that quilt coming along? Well, I did get a different project completed but sewed nary a stitch on that first one. And Helen was good enough to remember and to remind me about it recently. So I had to come clean: my craft room is such a horrific, out-of-control mess that I can't even find the fabrics I need to get going on that quilt. Helen proposed a cleaning/WIP day -- we'll pick 5 or 6 hours on a given day when, with the time difference, we'd both be home and able to work on our projects. We'll check in regularly via email on our progress, chat a little during some break times, and see what we can get accomplished. She thinks I'm exaggerating my mess. I said I'd start posting pictures here of JUST how awful things are so that I'd have the added pressure of public humiliation to push me forward.

This week, then, I'll show you the mess. Up there is my scrapbooking/card making/collage making table, and I've yet to show you the rat's nest underneath it. No surprise that I can't find supplies when I need them nor that I need to spend time pushing piles of stuff around just to scrape out a few inches of open space on the table before I can do anything. It's like that for every craft -- supplies scattered to the four winds and completely without organization so it's a chore just to find what I need, no space to do any work, and effort required to make room to do anything. It means I mistakenly buy things I already have (although less of this lately, since I haven't been buying) or finding too late the perfect thing for a project that's come and gone. But mostly it means years and years worth of WIPs, since if something doesn't get finished then it and its attendant supplies get pushed away in so many different places that it's almost impossible to bring them together again.

Wish me luck.

Done and done

Well. All right then! Pretty pleased with myself here, if I do say so. Set out today to baste Dean's dog quilt and to make a gift for him to bring to a birthday party and I got. both. things. done. And I even did some laundry and ran the dishwasher and folded a (very) little laundry. Ahem. Could just be the whole big start of something here. Or, rather, the whole big actually finishing things here.

So the darling little bag is the birthday gift; Dean said the person wanted "things with horses." I grabbed the horse template from Martha (when Anna Marie Horner was on!) and the reversible bag tutorial is here (a fun blog to explore with some lovely photography).

The background fabric is a richer purple than shows here ) and it needs a little more ironing....

And then Dean's doggy quilt, on which the paper-pieced dogs will look more dog-like after I quilt it and sew on the button noses. The backing fabric has some great dogs on it, and I plan to randomly quilt around the outline of some of those dogs, and to quilt paw prints and some details on the paper-pieced dogs. Having some layout problems with so many photos to show; I'll work on figuring all that out tomorrow!

Making tracks

It is 2 degrees (f) outside right now, although with wind chill, apparently it feels like -13. The high today will be 14. Ah, winter. The snow is too hard now to accept footprints; the ones that are there are preserved, like the footprints on the moon. We delight in examining the animal tracks, identifying which creatures have been traveling through our yard, and wondering how the neighbor's cat managed to leave this particular set of tracks that make me imagine he could suddenly extend the size of his legs (like a cartoon character) and, from a great height, split his trail in 2 different directions at once....

So there's my noble resolution, and then all the usual health-related ones, and finally my creative resolutions. I'm going to baste Dean's dog quilt tomorrow and I hope to put some quilting stitches into it every day until it's done. I have a serious backlog of WIPs to attack, which makes me a little uneasy knowing that what I'm most thinking about is learning how to crochet. It's my nature to be thinking about new stuff -- not thinking that these new things are destined to end up as more fuel on the WIP (work in progress) fire. Discipline. Organization. These are the things I need. Maybe some kind of reward incentives are in order; finish Dean's quilt and then I can start something new. Hmmm. Well, and seriously, I've got to clean up my craft stuff before I buy a single new thing, and somehow have to break my habit of "cleaning up" by opening a closet or drawer and simply stuffing things inside. I'm awful that way. I also keep waaaay too much stuff. Sigh. But now it's time to get ready to go to work. Yeah, Dean and I have got to go out and face that cold....

At long last

Back in August, I really did finish this small broken dishes quilt (titled "Too Much Going On") and Dean promptly claimed it. Here's my picture, promised so long ago; I literally picked up the roll of film today. Better late than never? Dean was giving me his "but I AM smiling normally!" smile -- I miss the days when the camera didn't bring out some other creature in him, when he didn't go all pose-y on me. He does cooperate, though, so I know I shouldn't complain. Dean likes to put this quilt on his bed and sleep under it, which has pushed me into working on a real bed-sized quilt for him. Hope to have it done after the holidays, and then maybe by spring I'll have a picture to share.

Back around

[A Quilt For The Child I Never Had by Jane Burch Cochran]

I knew I was overdue on posting but didn't realize it had been a whole week -- that makes total sense, though, because it has been quite the week! All good, mind you, but as super-busy as I can possibly manage to be. The personal highlight had to be meeting up with Heidi at the New England Quilt Museum -- my first experience in meeting a fellow blogger firsthand. We took our time touring the museum, then really took our time exploring the gift shop (more of the most perfect quilting books and fabrics gathered in one place than you would imagine). Lunch was apple/butternut squash bisque at a quirky little organic/vegetarian place across the street (the kind of place that you wish were in your very own neighborhood). I'm looking forward to another adventure with Heidi, AND to getting up to the museum again soon.

So otherwise it has been work and soccer and family activities that have kept me hopping. Tomorrow I get to go on a field trip with Dean's class to hear a "Conversations in Jazz" concert here and he has a friend coming over after school (the game plan is for me to do my grocery shopping after the concert and before the play date -- wish me luck). Then I'll have my regular work week and I think it's back to just the usual level of mayhem.

I had kind of a revelation -- a small one, granted, but still -- when we were all asked for our Christmas wish-lists yesterday. Rather than three lists, I'm going to offer one little list of things that we could be given as a family. Some board games we've been eyeing, a gift certificate to L.L. Bean which is one store where we all shop (and where we get outfitted for our camping adventures), things that we can all share and enjoy. This simplifies things all the way around, and moves us toward an even easier plan for next year (I am delighted to be a part of an extended family that generally has the holidays pretty much in hand by now, so we can't pull off wholesale change this late in the game).

The US, with 5% of the world's population, uses 30% of the earth's resources. How can we all scale back?

We learn

And so the first week (half-week, really) of back-to-school draws to a successful close. I need to spend some time thinking about what I want to learn this year, what goals I have -- I know my wish would be to hang on to this feeling of freshness and possibility and energy. For all of us.

After creating this post, I'm going to cut out the pieces I need to complete a bed-sized quilt for Dean that I started, of course, years ago but never finished. Although I'd officially had other projects ahead of this one in my queue, I am inspired by Dean's love for the small quilt I just finished and bequeathed to him. He thinks it's beautiful, he loves holding it and wrapping his stuffed animals up in it, he plans eventually to hang it up in his room -- how can I not forge ahead with a quilt he can sleep under? And I never have finished a bed-sized quilt before so it is about time.

Cheerios

I'm not usually a fan of yo-yo quilts; they don't seem like real quilts to me when they are the sewn-together strings of yo-yos with all the gaps in between. Just not cozy. But this quilt caught my eye, with the yo-yos appliqued on a top and then the whole thing backed and quilted. I like the cheeriness of the red and whites, too. It's from this catalog, if you're curious. And no, I still haven't finished any of my current quilting projects yet.

Today is Bob C.'s 40th birthday -- Happy Birthday, Bob! Bob is the youngest brother of my best friend growing up, Pat. Their family lived next door to us, and we all grew up together (the 7 kids in their family and me) in the best kind of neighborhood way. I was five when Bob was born, and I have such vivid memories of his babyhood and childhood; for me, he's one of those people who can never be "old;" he'll always be the youngest one of the gang. It doesn't hurt that he's also always been a truly kind, sweet person -- those qualities always seem to make people young for life in the best possible way.

Homefront

I have been busy quilting lately, honest I have, but I'm still a couple of weeks away from having anything to show you, so I'm pulling out the way-back machine and showing something from, well, way back.

This is a fragment of a quilt I made for a guild challenge, back when I belonged to a guild. The red brick and multi-colored fabrics were required, and the theme was "home." They are hard to see here, but each "dream home" (blue units) in my quilt is embroidered with a word -- here we have "Elation," "Charity," "Understanding," and "Forgiveness." I did not particularly love this quilt -- I still don't -- and it's largely why I ended up dropping out of the guild. For all the good experiences (and there were many), I got tired of working so hard, and exclusively, on guild-driven projects that I really wasn't wild about. So, yes, I was pretty productive during my guild years, but I was making things that really weren't "me." But I later used the embroidered word idea on another quilt and am thinking about it again, so it wasn't a total waste.

Hey, it's hard to quilt when it's about 90f and about 90% humidity (and you know what they say, it's not the heat...). What are you making?

Happy Trails

If by any chance you are casting about for summer reading material, I cannot more highly recommend this book -- Heidi's Alp. It's non-fiction -- an account of a family's summer travels across Europe in search of locations mentioned in or that inspired some classic fairy tales. I re-read this regularly. If you happen to live in or near Europe, all the more reason to read it since you have a very real opportunity to then check out some of these places yourself. The link that I made on the book's title, above, takes you to an Amazon page where this book is currently available used for as little as one penny. A penny! Give yourself or a dear friend a real treat.

Speaking of travel, this is likely to be my last post for a little while as we pack up for our own little summer vacation. Oh, I'll be back before you know it, before June is out. We head out bright and early tomorrow morning, assuming I get everything packed up this afternoon. We'll be calling each other by our Hobbit names, or maybe by our elven names, the whole time.

If you're looking for some quilt project ideas, I'd like to share a site that's new to me: Quilter's Home magazine. I was impressed by the quality of their free patterns -- not the usual stuff. I've never seen this magazine on the stands but will keep an eye open for it -- it seems pretty fresh.

Hungry

Happy Friday, everyone!

I'd like to urge all quilting and sewing enthusiasts to check out this doll quilt tutorial; this project (and the tutorial) by 'Lady Harvatine' was so well conceived and produced. I can imagine all kinds of possibilities from this beginning. For me, it's the kind of project I just keep thinking about during the day (this is probably where I get myself into trouble, but so be it).

And this little card will go off today or tomorrow in a package to a new friend. I still would like to spend some dedicated time to card making so that I had a handy supply to pull from -- or, at least, solid starts that I could embellish with particular recipients in mind. I did decide that this summer I will take my entire craft room apart, clean it ruthlessly, organize it, and invest in some storage/display/organization solutions so that it's a workable space that's inspiring to be in and that does NOT make me feel as though I need to keep the door closed if anyone comes 'round to visit. Anyway, being able to do things like make cards should be an easy thing, and should not require the rebalancing of several towers of 'stuff' just to be able to clear about a 5 inch workspace on the table....

A parent at our school submitted an article for this week's newsletter about how his family took the Food Stamp Challenge. The issue is that the food stamp program in the US (giving vouchers to low income families that they can use to buy groceries) has been grossly underfunded for years and is facing further cuts under the current administration. The program "allows" $1.00 per person per meal. Members of our congress undertook the challenge -- to feed themselves and their families on that budget for a week -- held press conferences offering lunches based on that budget -- and inspired the family at our school to try it. The result of course is that (1) you can only afford to buy processed, high-calorie, low-nutritional foods because (2) that's your only hope of filling yourself up so that you aren't constantly hungry. And the "option" of buying a lot of healthy, bulk foods to cook up yourself generally isn't a choice for these families, because the hours they need to spend working/commuting etc. don't leave the kind of time it takes to cook that way. And like so many other programs, this one has a vicious cycle built into it -- your income has to be really low to qualify, so you have no incentive to try to earn more because that will take you out of the program but still won't leave you with enough $ to feed your family. I don't know how much of my grocery bill I should subtract out to account for non-food items, but I'm calculating that we easily spend between $3 and $5 per person, per meal -- perhaps sometimes even more. And that includes snacks and drinks and things outside of "meal" time, which of course is a luxury that food stamp families don't have. I can't imagine living on $3 a day for food. Can you?

Ahoy there, matey!

In case you need a reason to be tempted, Keepsake Quilting is having a sale. If you're not familiar with them, they are one of the largest independent quilt shops in the US and provide excellent customer service (internationally).

Another quilting resource I'll mention while I'm at it is All People Quilt. Now, I think this is a very odd name, since it isn't true. I'm funny that way. But it's worth stopping by for a look as it's sponsored by Meredith Corporation, which produces a number of the top US quilting magazines.

True story: we're all sitting on the sofa the other evening, and I notice Ken looks a little odd so I ask, "what's wrong?" Ken says, "Um, I don't know." And Dean pipes up: "Short-term memory loss?" No, we could not stop laughing....

Whose memory....

Another calendar page in the works. This one doesn't feel finished yet, but I'm happy with the way it's coming along. It's helping me to end the day by doing something productive that comes out the way I'd like it to -- it's been a very weird weekend of fits and starts. (For the record, I scan in and print out copies of my old photos to play with -- I never use the originals. I feel I should be careful to keep all these 'purchased ancestors' aside and clearly marked, lest Dean or anyone else someday be confused about exactly how we're related to these people....)

Anyway, I also basted the Broken Dishes quilt (which I just may title "Too much going on") with the idea of starting it now and finishing it by the time we're back from our Maine vacation later this month (it's small -- a wall hanging or if Dean has his way, a blanket for a stuffed animal). I've never been good at getting projects done while I'm on vacation, but I'm inspired by Helen who seems to accomplish more on the road than I do at home. Oh, and I finally finished my pocket apron for the current tie one on challenge; just have to get photos taken of me wearing it and then get the filmed developed and then get a flickr account so I can post it. Before the end of the month. With the end of school and a vacation thrown in for good measure. I also scrubbed the upstairs bathroom today; that should count for something, right? and did dishes and helped Dean with a craft project he's giving as a gift this week and read him the last few chapters of Order of the Phoenix. [Apparently there is some magic protecting it; no matter what I do, I cannot get a link to connect to the book title. Harry Potter, in any case, you know.]

Yes, ma'am

What went right today was my trip with a friend to an antiques mall, and a stack of old photos from one estate that had been carefully taken care of and were reasonably priced. I cannot walk past a collection of old photos and the mysterious stories they tell; this one says "To Cousin Lizzie from Minnie Trennam" on the back -- isn't she grand?

What didn't go well was attempting machine quilting for the first time -- just a mess. And the knowledge that my machine really is overdue for a cleaning/service doesn't help. And no where to go to put away the mess in the craft room here -- I don't even know where to begin. Maybe it's the blast of heat and humidity that's making me feel a little hopeless. But the cherry tomato seeds did germinate and Dean had fun (and didn't pass out from the heat) at his last soccer game of the season, and maybe tomorrow I can get my sewing machine back to at least working for regular stuff.

What is so rare...

Wow. My scanner really doesn't do well with deep pinks! The colors of the fabric are much more dusty rose than you'd ever guess from seeing this. Anyway, it's a portion of a block done years ago as part of an international round robin that went horribly wrong (one person kept someone else's stuff and dropped from sight, which prompted certain other people to also keep what they had rather than send it on to the rightful owner -- of course I returned everything and ended up with nothing of my own coming back to me so I never received the companion blocks meant to go with this). Water under the bridge. But I'm thinking of what it might be fun to do with this; I'll keep you posted.

Despite an overall break from the world o' swapping, I couldn't resist the siren call from Melly and Me, and invite you to check out my swap partner Linda's great blog (I've added her to my standing list as well). This is already shaping up as a wonderful experience.

And, June? June!? How on earth did that happen? It's hot and humid and yet "June" seems an impossibility.

Is ours the only household delighted by the Harry Potter Park news? We finally have reason to tear ourselves away from Walt Disney World on a future Orlando trip and hasten over Universal-way to check this out. Not until 2010, but still. We were disappointed to read that plans for the park do not include having characters from the book walking around; we were looking forward to a whole new autograph/photo scene....