finished! mostly

This photo is from June of 2010 when I was seriously underway on this afghan.

I traveled through time in the slow, regular calendar way to January 2013 and now it's finished! No photos of it done yet, but maybe tomorrow. Hooray!!! Today was seriously bumming me out because every single thing I did felt like I had weights on all my limbs and the atmosphere had turned to thick invisible molasses which made the day s l o w and annoying. Except I'm not annoyed anymore, because THIS IS DONE.

cabin fever correction

I've been doing a lot of indoor projects lately I'm rapidly approaching cabin fever mode. I need to get outside. I've needed to get outside for months. The hard part is that I'm ALMOST DONE with so many of these projects so my inclination is to just stay put and work on them until they're finished, but I think I'm getting slower and slower (and crabbier and crabbier). Something must be done!

My modest Sunday ambition is to be outside for at least a half hour. Doable! even if it's pouring down rain.

it surprised me too

I finished the quilt! I bought the fabric just after Christmas and finished it 2.5 weeks later, which is a record for me.  It was a simple pattern (simple in the good way) and not that big (perfect for reading on the couch), but DUDE: I got it done!

I used the Wonky Simple Math instructions provided by Elizabeth at Oh, Fransson. She writes very clear instructions and also  often has cat helpers in her pictures. I feel a certain kitty sympatico.


For example? Here Busby waiting for me to move so he could help in the crucial quilt sandwich stage.


Of course once it was done, I noticed squares that I would move, but that would have happened no matter how long I'd taken to do it. I'm so pleased I got it done!


I love the backing fabric, which is a little more olive and a little less brown than it looks in this photo. It was on SALE, which made it even cheaper than the solid fabric I'd chosen to begin with.


Front, back, binding  - I'd never machine quilted something this much before. (I'd only machine quilted one other time!) It was so fun! I'll definitely try it again.


This photo is a little washed out (especially on the bottom), but I wanted to get this up tonight. Because WOO HOOO!

In other news, I've got to get outside more. I had to run to the grocery store this afternoon and the sun was low and bouncing off the dark clouds onto the fir trees and it was AMAZING. They looked like they were lit from within. Then I was sitting in the parking lot (not scenic at all) looking over the gas station, and a flock of gulls flew through that same light and it just made me so glad to see. It enlarged my tiny little winter heart. I don't know what it was, but I felt lucky to witness it.

project list

I was thinking just the other night that I was all out of sewing/craft projects and WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT? But then I got over my temporary euphoria/amnesia, and remembered that I had these projects still to do:

1. finish the binding on the quilt I made my sister. (which I did finish since the other night. If I were standing in front of you now, the quilt would be described with handwaving and maybe a thought bubble showing me sewing the binding by hand wearing clothes from three days ago that indicate this task is already completed.)

2. purge supplies. I know this doesn't sound like a project, but when you have a box full of nothing but different kinds of glue (mostly dried up) IT IS. I'm about 1/2 done with this and hope to finish it before the weekend.

3. make new bag. I need a work bag. Since I go from branch to branch I don't have a locker, so my regular purse-bag is not enough. For a long time I thought I just needed a purse that satisfied every eventual need, with many pockets and flaps and whatnot. I was planning on making one (waiting for that never available IKEA fabric!), but in the meantime I started using one of those reusable shopping bags (from powells -- it has a squirrel on it) and discovered that this humble bag was just about the perfect size. I can drop my purse into it, and carry around water bottles and notebooks and whatever, plus it fits over my shoulder. The downside is they get ratty pretty fast, especially when a person drags home a lot of heavy pointy books. I bought some groovy canvas weight fabric last week and hope to make a replacement. I could have just gotten another squirrel bag for .99, but this other fabric makes me really happy so we'll see how it goes. I think I'm going to start this tomorrow.

4. Finish crocheting babette blanket! I need to get busy and finish this before it gets hot and I don't care anymore. There's no more room in the "it's too hot/cold, I don't care anymore" cupboard.

5. I really want to do some embroidered something on something, but I don't know what and I don't know where. Or when. #5 is an embroidered tale of frustrated longing, is what it is.

There's more, but five is respectable, so I'm going to go answer some email and go to sleep! (notice how I have gone one whole week of posting every day and not whining until right now about how it is hard.)

LIST BONUS: Here's a lovely Blitzen Trapper video for the song Furr. I saw it all over the internet today, but all roads seemed to lead to Pitchfork.tv. I love so much about it, but especially the bears, the woods, and the stop motion paper animation.

it drove the women of my family insane

BEST quote without context from today: "I experienced only one hour of menopause. It's a good thing, too, because historically it drove the women of my family insane."
everyone else in the room: "..."
reply: "No, really."

BEST thing to wear on July 31st, 2008: RADISH SKIRT! I hadn't worn it in forever, and it cracked me up all day! It also seemed cheering to other people, which made it even better. "Are those radishes?" (this picture is weirdly distorting -- the skirt comes just below my knees, which is not two inches above my ankles like it looks in the photo.)

BEST place to eat lunch today, even though the trees were having some sort of tree pollen confetti party: Laurelhurst park, where I noticed that someone has started a bizarre collection of lawn creatures on the little island in the middle of the pond. There is a plastic chicken, a flamingo and an assortment of garden gnomes. Where do they come from? How do they get there? Do they move around at night when nobody's looking? Are the turtles that live on the log in the pond somehow involved? (I feel certain that they are...)

BEST bicycle seen today: one of those crazy welded together two-story bicycles ridden by a guy who I'm pretty sure walks around in stilts when he's not on his bike. Someone who eats fire for breakfast and swallows swords for snacks. In my imagination he would be a charming but tedious neighbor: "I get it! you're a fire eater! Yes, you've mentioned you're going to ride your weird tall bike all the way to Burning Man. Neat. Do you think you could you maybe stop with the arc welder and carnival techno after midnight? THANK YOU. p.s. your chickens got loose and crapped in my rain barrel again." (in imaginary reality he probably works in a bank, is still going to ride his weird tall bike to Burning Man, but doesn't weld after 10pm out of thoughtfulness for me, his imaginary neighbor. his imaginary chickens are too well behaved to crap in my imaginary rain barrel.)

BEST change in weather: this morning it was overcast and hazy, but after about 10AM it started getting sunny, sunnier, sunniest. Then it took a turn back to clouds and will probably rain tomorrow, but those 8 hours of sun were really sweet!

and now I'd BEST get to bed because I'm really freaking tired! I was going to have some blah la la about how this month went (mostly good, with a few pinches of misery for old times sake), but I'm tired and well aware that it's not exactly breaking news.

... and because I uploaded it so why not, here's a picture of what my unfinished project I found in a box looks like when I lay it out on the floor:

everything crooked and wonderful

I have finished painting! Mostly. I mean, I still have to do boring parts like put all the faceplates on and stuff like that, but the part where I'm in danger of backing into a wall of wet paint is OVER. huzzah! It looks really good -- say what you will about painting as a method of cleaning, but it does the job! I was going to compose a list of helpful painting hints, but I find that I don't want to think about it anymore. Maybe sometime soon. (they were really helpful!)

In other project news, I had a visit today from Weird Cousin Bonnie -- she's actually my mom's cousin, and she's not really weird in a pejorative sense. She marches to her own drum; at the time the "weird" was applied to her name, the drum insisted on a pantaloon jumpsuit. (what can I say? I think I was fifteen when I first met her and if I could have taken a pill to be invisible I would have. A pantaloon jumpsuit was faaar from my comfort zone.)

She's just started quilting and brought over what she's been working on. It was very nice -- much nicer than my first quilting projects, which were extremely boring because it hadn't quite occurred to me yet that they didn't have to be. I really liked what she was doing -- she has a great sense of color, but it was fairly rigid and from a pattern (her mother in law is a very precise pattern quilter). I had to make sure that she knew there were other Accepted Methods! (it's a delicate balance between being helpful and supportive and being obnoxiously bossy in craftland.) So I told her to do a google image search on Gee's Bend quilts (source of the photo in this post) -- I did it as I was telling her about it, and I forgot how much I love those quilts. I get the same wobbly legged feeling I get when looking at certain paintings. Everything is crooked and wonderful.

Anyway, a lovely side effect of the visit (beyond the Gee's Bend google) is that she caused me to run all around and assemble my recent(ish) quilting projects. I realized that I have finished more than I thought. This is a rare feeling!

I found one that I had started in the one and only quilting class I ever took. My former employer used to offer remarkable classes until they cancelled their education program, went bankrupt then insane. I continued to work for them for six more years. But I digress! I took one quilting class. Long story short, my quilt was never finished. Looking at it now, I can see that it is the antithesis of my natural quilting style -- lots of fussy little pieces, and HUGE. But today I had an epiphany -- I still really love the fabric and I have a bunch of squares already put together. If I just make 9 more, I'll have enough for a good sized lap/bed quilt (it would lay on top of the bed, but not hang over) and that would be fine with me. I think it's a much more versatile size, not to mention the joy of finishing a project bleepety years old! Updates as warranted.

In the meantime, here's a video I came across via d.Sharp. (I came across d.Sharp via angry chicken, who I came across via Posie Gets Cozy, who I came across because I really liked her shop. What do these three blogs have in common? Well, besides being well written by funny craft goddesses, they are also all from Portland!)

But back to the video! I hadn't heard of this song or Thao and the Get Down Stay Down until this turned up in my feed reader. I love the rambly shambly charms of the song (it turns out I like singing the words "bag of hammers"), but I also really dig the 8 panel photo collage effect in the video. BONUS: there is a claymation video for the same song, if you'd like to see it with brightly colored clay-people with little clay guitars.

found it!

The library book that was lost now is found. Hooray! It was right in plain sight, of course. (in my own defense, "in plain sight" is a visually confusing place right now due to moving everything out of one room and into another in order to paint.

I'm up to my elbows in wet paint (I wish this was an exaggeration) and have to get back to it, but here's a video that made me laugh. ("Mailbox!! Mailbox!")

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

broom shaking is an option

I have had a crazybusy week, but now things should be settling down so I can do crazy things of my own choosing. (hooray!)

Big projects are tempting me. If the weather cooperates (and I think it will) I'm anticipating some major work in the garden. It's scary out there, but it's only going to get wilder and woolier if I don't do something. (you're probably thinking "gardens can't get wooly. she clearly needs a vacation!" to which I would reply: yes they can! but you're right about the other thing.) It's my hope that a bit of concentrated effort will at least get it out of the Scary House On The Corner zone. (You kids get off of my lawn!) Or maybe I should just practice cackling and broom shaking and go with it. Hmmmm.

I'm also itching to paint (a room, not the great american abstract), and I think this will happen soon as well. Blondie always says "it's only paint!" and that it's the fastest way to change a room. She's right! I need some new vistas, a change of view; I need to think about things in a different way. This is starting to sound sort of TV talk show faux-empowering, so I had better back slowly away from the keyboard before I stir up my some-say-irrational-but-they-are-wrong Dr. Phil antipathy. I need to go buy paint anyway.

tune in next time to find out if my mysterious itchy-eye allergy is to TIME (my initial self-diagnosis: "I think my eyes are allergic to time. nothing else makes sense!!") or to cat dander (my aunt's counter-diagnosis: "you are not allergic to time! You are allergic to cat dander"). Please note that she is not a doctor, but she is bossy.