Sheesh!

My friend went and had her baby two days early! The nerve, I tell you. She called last week to tell me she was breech and would be going in for a C-section on Tuesday (tomorrow), and that threw me into high gear on the quilting front. But then she moved it up some more! Now I am officially late with the quilt, and that is bad. I'm more industrious when the deadline is looming than I am when the deadline is past. I'm going to fight that, though, because I spent the morning making a rather ambitious Christmas list, and thanks to Sew, Mama, Sew's gift ideas, at least half the things on this morning's list are hand-made items. We'll see if I make it happen.
Anyway, here is a little peek at the hand-quilting:
It's hard to see, but if you look closely, there are those stitches (which good quilters would make MUCH smaller) I've been slaving over for the last week and a half. Yikes, I say. Plus, when I really look at it I'm sort of horrified: it is quite big for a baby. Newborns are notoriously small, and this quilt is very large in comparison. She will grow into it. Yeah, that's it.

Now, to find my thimble and get cracking.

Progress!

It's a little less fun to post this since the picture isn't very good...
But look! I finished the quilt top. Of course, it ended up being a LOT easier than I anticipated. Those strips were just so long--I guess I put it off because I was afraid it was going to be an ordeal. Or I put it off for the sheer, perverse pleasure I always derive from putting things off. That's a problem.*
Anyhoo, it's based on a tutorial for "pocket change" or something. (I went to link to the tutorial and it's gone! I bookmarked it but it's been taken down--I forget what site I found it on, but if I come across it again I will link it up). The top looks really pretty and I'm proud of it. Right now I'm working on the back--I had a few leftover squares, so I thought I'd incorporate them into the backing, like I've seen some people do. The squares are verticle on the front; they'll be horizontal and more scattered and in shorter, more varied lengths of strips on the back.
The middle panel is 5" while the four others are 3". I cut an obnoxious number of 5" squares, so that's what I'm using for the binding. I'm going to sew a bunch together and cut it in half so I have a really long 2 1/2" strip. I don't know how well it will work, but we shall see.
Our drive on Thanksgiving is just unbearably long, and I will need something to keep my hands from strangling the state of Ohio for its vastness, so I'm either going to be turning the binding or quilting this baby by hand over the holiday.**
It measures about 48" by 55"--I looked up other baby quilts and I think they tend to be about this big. Yay for me! It really got me out of my rut, too--it was so satisfying to have it put-together and pretty that I just holed up in that sewing room all day yesterday. I was very productive, which is, of course, out of character for me. I hope I can do the same today!

*I have a friend who went on antidepressants for a while and she said the most incredible thing about them was that they made her pay her bills on time. Crazy. She said she just got a bill in the mail, wrote a check and sent it off with a stamp on it (this was in the nineties, before click-to-pay stuff). That's not exactly revelatory for organized people, but for the scatterbrained among us, it is nothing short of miraculous. My friend told me because she knew I'd understand the extremity of such a change in behavior. It's certainly tempting, but she also said it severely inhibited her ability (even her desire!) to have an orgasm. A sex drive! My credit rating for a sex drive! Puh-leez. I think it really says something about our capitalist, Puritanical society, that we would even put something like that on the market--and know it will sell! Aaargh! Wait. Where was I? Oh, yes. Quilts...
Wait, though: before I quit this footnote, I have to say I understand that antidepressants do more than make you pay your bills on time. I get that doing that is more a symptom of improvement. But still, I am baffled by the public's willingness to give up sex for happiness. It is so counterintuitive, isn't it?? I just wish the pharmaceutical industry would have worked a little harder to keep their Prozac from affecting our lust. Listen, I'm still on my first cup of coffee. And I think I'm back to tree-in-a-forest-not-making-a-sound status, so I'ma leave to their own devices whatever logic flaws I've accumulated here.
**Listen, I know hand-quilting is just like dumb in this modern, machine walking-presser-foot age, but when I told my mother I'd gotten a presser foot for quilting, she told me that my Grandma Peg always said that a machine-quilted quilt was not really a quilt. I am certainly not such a purist, but there's just something about hand-quilting my first quilt that appeals to me. Grandma Peg died last year and it feels a little bit like honoring her dear memory to at least partially finish this little guy by hand. Plus I can do it while I watch TV--Ohio State plays Michigan on Saturday, and that's like the biggest rivalry in sports (even when Michigan is a terrible football team). I love my Buckeyes, and it behooves me to have something to do with my hands during stressful spectator-sport situations.

Dear Blog,

Today I have to make up for some recent setbacks. Some of my setbacks have been good (like getting lots of subbing jobs) and some have been bad (like "go ahead, order that second pitcher of margaritas!"). But they have all contributed to a stall-out in my productivity. I am so close to finishing the toaster cover, even though it's going to have some surrrious wrinkles on the lining. And that baby quilt is all happening, lined up and ready to be assembled as soon as I assemble the necessary motivation to put it the eff together.
Anyway, I'm writing to make it official that my productivity is back on track. I thought if I told somebody about it, it might make me less likely to watch "Battlestar Gallactica" and more likely to get up there to the sewing room and sew like the wind!
That's really all I've got to say. The coffee I'm drinking hasn't done its job of sweeping out my cobwebs, but it's doing its best.
Love, S

Eeeeeeeeeyooooore

We didn't go to happy hour. Husband had a late meeting, so we just had a cocktail at home. It's for the best, of course. I made chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, a recipe I've read about like four hundred times and every time the writer says it's absolutely incredible. I found a crock pot version in one of my slow cooker cookbooks, and tried it. It was really really good. I will post pictures and stuff once I get the camera back from Husband, who has it to take pictures for work.
Yesterday wasn't exactly the mid-week holiday I wanted it to be--H. had to work for most of the afternoon after all, and we did laundry and cleaned for the rest of the day. It turns out that one day-holidays are a little bit disappointing. With long weekends, you get to say "it's Sunday but it's really like Saturday" when you get a Monday off--it turns on its head that dreaded "I thought it was Friday but it's really Thursday" phenomenon. Mid-week days off don't give you that thrill--we were so looking forward to yesterday, and then *poof* it was 7:00 last night and H. has a long day today...
Oh, and I'm shedding an egg, which makes me tired and irritable and relentlessly negative. The worst thing about it is my obliviousness--thankfully H. knows it's happening and points it out to me. That sounds like he's a terrible dude who chalks everything up to "monthly bills," but he's really not. I went off the Pill a while ago, and now I really get down and pouty; since I almost always fail to make the connection to hormones, my inexplicable jerkiness is that much more disturbing to me. So H. is actually doing a favor when he points it out. Not that I'm always fawningly grateful for it. But yesterday when he suggested that my quiet, doleful digs about him having to go to work might be attributable to my period, it really was a relief. I don't want to be this person, and if I don't realize why it's happening, I start to think maybe I'm just essentially unhappy, and this is how it's going to be from now on unless I can find some way to make a major change. The drama of that sentiment is 100% me, but the truth of it comes purely from the onslaught of hormones.
I'm coming to the end of it, though. And today is beautiful--the house is flooded with sunshiney light and the few leaves left on the trees are rustling like maracas in the lively wind. I will take Dog for a walk up the hill and I will finish that baby quilt top. It's going to be a weird size, I think...I have just a little bit of proportion to work out. But I have all day to do that! Yay coffee!

Happy Hour: A Censure

Today is Tuesday, but it's a little bit like Friday. Tomorrow's Veteran's Day, one of those crazy holidays we never, ever relegate to a Friday or Monday. Thank you, veterans*. I get to have Husband home all day, and we have nothing scheduled or compelling. It's just a free little surprise (being only marginally employed, I do not track holidays so much--the Christmases and Thanksgivings don't sneak up on me, but one-offs like this one certainly do, in a wholly welcome manner).
*I mean thanks for everything, like making tremendous sacrifices to protect your fellow citizens and being brave and fighting wars even if...well, even though wars are exceedingly bad, the spirit of Veteran's Day is good: veteran's deserve our gratitude.
I think we're going to see "Where the Wild Things Are." And tonight we're going to Happy Hour! This is something we don't do so often, because by the end of the week (when the proximity to the weekend makes a night out more prudent), Husband's tuckered out and heading straight to a bar after work doesn't appeal to him so much. Also, we sometimes get carried away by the happiness of Happy Hour. And by "we," I mean "I." And by "sometimes," I mean "once," which was very much enough. Allow me to explain.
When we first moved to this little college town as adults (we both lived here in college, but didn't know each other), I turned to my friend S., who lived here while her now-husband finished his Master's, for advice. (Boy, how's that for excessive explanation? The coffee is strowng this morning). S. told me the best way to make a place for ourselves would be to go to Happy Hour frequently for a little while. In no time, she said, we would make friends and lots of people would know us. Never mind that Husband is not a grad student, but rather a decidedly visible member of the city administration--we didn't make that distinction. And you know what I mean when I say "we."
Anyway, the two of us headed out for Happy Hour and I learned a valuable lesson about the local microbrew's wallup. I got sloshed, and then I got friendly. I began talking up another friendly couple who actually knew, through friends of theirs, my friend S! Small town, indeed. And the guy grew up in the same small, effed-up town my mom is from. I characteristically spazzed out and gushed about how nice our new friends were and doesn't S. give the best advice and etcetera.
Later we found out that our new friendly couple friends are actually swingers. And I don't mean they like to don zoot suits and go dancing. I told S. we'd met them, and that I'd embarrassed myself thoroughly, and she said "NEVER go to their house. Ever." That sentiment has been echoed, verbatim, by lots of other people since then.
That was a year ago, and we haven't been back to Happy Hour since. Tonight we're giving it another try. I recount the first experience here as a reminder to myself: sip, Sadie. For Christ's sake. Also I'm going to cook something in the crock pot so we don't come home with greasy paper bags full of sloppy pizza and smelly gyros. We are, after all, grown-ups. And by "we," I mean "Husband." I have yet to earn that distinction.

P.S. I have no photographs that illustrate this point. Or rather, I have no photographs I'm willing to share with the world wide web that illustrate this point. Here is a photograph of a drunk stranger I took at a bar after our friends' wedding in February. (In a way, it does illustrate my point.)
P.P.S. I have no idea whether this woman is a swinger. If I had to guess, I would say she's not. However, I have been wrong before.
Finally, I promise I will get back to the subject of sewing in the near, near future.

omg

Holy moley! I just performed what had become the most fruitless task of my day: checked over old blog posts to see if anyone had commented. Guess what? People have been here.
I freaked. I ran around in a couple of poorly defined circles and shrieked down to Husband "Two people read my BUH-LOG!!!" You guys (if you came back and if you didn't I totally understand), I read your blogs all the time! I really admire the stuff you do and love reading the stuff you write. I feel like I'm at camp in third grade and my awesome counselor just told me I make really good bubble letters. It is a really great, childlike kind of happiness. Or maybe a doglike happiness:
So thank you for being so nice!
On my camera (but not yet in my computer), I have some new pictures of my little sewing space, which is newly and fantastically tidy. I idiotically forgot to take Before pictures. I always forget the Before pictures! You think I'd have learned after being the agent of so many dramatic disaster-to-acceptably-organized changes. And dear God, I love before and after pictures. Anyway, I took a photo of some of the scraps I picked up off the floor, but that doesn't really give the sense of chaos I managed to tame in only six hours last week... Right, so eventually I will put up those pictures.
Thank you. Bye, actual blog readers!

great giveaway

Look! Hawthorne Threads (a newly launched online shop) is having a giveaway!

http://www.hawthornethreads.com/giveaway

http://www.hawthornethreads.com/fabric/designer/patricia_bravo

And I will have something to show you soon, after a triumphant flash of genius garnered me some very inexpensive fabric...