Friday, January 20, 2012 in I Forgot To Pick A Category

I got hired because of my work ethic

Friday afternoons I try and take off. This involves not checking on things constantly, but instead a few hours apart.

When I have my afternoon “off”, I like to go quilt. Sometimes I go to our local quilt shop, but it was snomageddon outside, and if I was going I really should have gotton groceries instead. So. I went to my room of my own and sewed.

I made this:

StudioPress quilt block

Nice, isn’t it? Now go look at the logo of the company I work for.

I think I might like my job a wee bit too much. Is that possible?

The first time I tried to explain my job in a nutshell (other than “I do customer support & documentation”) I told the person I did the same things I was doing before, except now someone pays me to do it and I can still do it at home in my pyjamas.

While I was saying that, it occurred to me how lucky I am and I said so, all astonished-like. The person said, “Yes, yes you are.”

Thursday, January 19, 2012 in all about me

Ra and Helios

I used to think I liked winter, at least from indoors. Over the years, I’ve refined my preference. I like snow at Christmas, I like the changing of the seasons, I like the predictable nature.

I don’t like the wonky weather we’ve had over the past few years. My tolerance for cold has lessened. And the dark. Yes, it’s the dark. While I don’t spend all summer outdoors and can, in fact, get too much sun, the dark of winter is what chases me towards spring.

Earlier in the week, the sun came out, brilliant and shining. So drastically different from the other days where I’d been turning lights on at 3pm, shivering under sweaters. The warmth came through our blanket covered windows – the ones with hundred year old wavy glass, wooden frames you can’t get to open yet somehow let in every draft.

Our bedroom, a dark cave for sleeping, faces east and south, a delicate corner perched on the second level of our home. I pulled down the blanket covering the large south window, since just by walking past I could feel heat radiate and even the dark blue fabric could not stop the sun from streaming in.

The sun and the heat and the light came in, and I basked in it, face upturned. My pale Canadian skin soaked it up, and just for a moment I thought maybe my neighbour might really think me crazy if I stood there stripped down.

February is so long for a short month, so dark and so cold. But this year we’ll be going to Texas in early March, a reward for hanging on, and while I am there I will worship the sun as much as possible.

Saturday, January 14, 2012 in I Forgot To Pick A Category

Of irons and vikings

I don’t think I mentioned I bought a new iron. It shuts itself off for starters. It has a digital readout. It costs about as much as I have spent on irons in my entire marriage – which might sound like a lot but really isn’t. Tip: yard sale irons are not much good. Neither are cheap $20 ones, if you do a lot of sewing.

Looking over my last post, I just realized how else I could have done that corner design and it would have been much easier. Duh on my for not getting it the first time.

I stopped by the quilt shop and picked up the other follow the line design book they had and a 1×12 ruler for small cuts, which I have been wishing for but onyl while I was in my sewing room making small cuts.

We also went to the library to hear our friend Kate give a talk about Vikings. I tweeted what we were doing, and one of my followers thought it was really funny – since he is in Norway and technically a Viking. Tho I’m not sure how much he goes out berserking.

Saturdays are turning into my “bless my household” days, where I try and catch up on house work, do extra baking, send time with the kids and do less work than usual. Sometimes I don’t even check my laptop for a couple hours.

My two bffs both observe Saturday as the Sabbath, and I miss them from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. :D

Thursday, January 12, 2012 in crafty things

it was bugging me since yesterday

So I was poking around, taking a break ad quilting, when we finally settled on a border pattern for Meaghan’s quilt. It’s a curved fern design from Follow the Line Quilting Designs volume 3 (heads up: I LOVE this kind of thing). The only problem was, in the one corner sample given, the leaves changed direction. It was not a simple matter to simply mirror image the pattern itself to be able to turn the next corner. The leaves themselves would have had to turn direction midway.

I’ve been mentally trying to figre this out since yesterday afternoon. Then I made extra copies of the designs, scanned it in and flipped it, printed off those and even then could not get it to line up.

So we turn to the old fashioned way of pencil and paper. I got another sheet, made sure each side of the border I traced was heading to the corner in the right direction, then figured out how to fill in a leaf myself.

Final result with the original corner and the drawn version of the next corner.

Each corner will be used twice in one quilt, at opposite corners. Note how in the original the leaf is tucked in and you hardly notice the direction change. In the opposite corner, the leaf has to point out, or at least look like it did.

Now I can stop thinking about how to do it and maybe go quilt some more.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 in I Forgot To Pick A Category

if i could think of a title there would be one here

What have a I done lately other than work / eat / sleep? And even then the sleep part has gone badly… Its too hot or too cold or too whatever. Or my lungs have started to fill, just enough to be irritating and keep either me up or Ron up or both. If I take non drowsy allergy meds (and I have tried a few different ones at this point) they fix the lung issue, but render me unconscious for a few hours, then spacey when I wake up. Like, accidentally burn things spacey because I forget I’m cooking dinner in the middle of cooking dinner.

I did try a half a pill and that helps with the spacey, still knocks me out a bit and only marginally helps with the allergic reaction I got going on in the lungs department.

(and all that by ron using the vacuum cleaner. the second time I stayed at the other end of the house for a good 2 hours)

Anyway. I made myself not cut out any more quilts. Oh SURE I have plenty planned, but I am not to sew together more from the huge pile I have waiting to be pieced until I quilt the two.. no three…oh wait, four that need to be quilted immediately. Meaghan’s quilt is half done now the one I was making for her birthday back in November. I have 2 top secret projects I am also working on.

I started these diamonds with my walking foot, but there was too much turning back and forth and even around, so I switched to my free motion foot with the stitch regulator. I love that thing, even when I think it’s going to sew right through me. Halfway done the top, then a curvy border. We already found a nice grey on grey floral for binding, just to frame all that white.

I picked up a nice piece for the back of Kaytlyn’s quilt. the local shop has some extra wide quilt backing fabric and had done up some precut bundles. Somehow the width did not click in my head and I have enough to back her quilt TWICE. But it’s not like I won’t need the extra somewhere else. ;)

My nose is cold, my laundry pile is high, the boxes of decorations are still out, and I am still working on that whole balance thing. My brain has ramped up into the not shutting up part as well, so that’s not helping with the whole falling asleep and staying asleep situation. Either that, or my age is catching up to me.

Oh, got a haircut. nice and short. Why do I always wait so log? I’m going to dye it blonde again, and I was thinking of getting pink in it but now I’m leaning towards a nice shock of mermaid turquoise right in the front. Just because I can.

Friday, January 6, 2012 in crafty things

Oops, made another baby quilt

Well I was piecing the leftover scraps for Kaytlyn’s quilt and since there were so many little bits and a couple leftover blocks from the first quilt I made… it wound up a new baby quilt.

There’s enough going on it would get lost as a quilt back. So. Baby quilt it is.

Bonus shots of a couple close-ups of the fabrics used. (different lighting so the colors are washed out in some.)

Friday, January 6, 2012 in crafty things

Kaytlyn’s quilt progress

I think I started this quilt back in September maybe. I had made a baby quilt in pink /orange / yellow and of course Kaytlyn being Kaytlyn, she loved it. :D

stippling

But it was baby quilt sized and it sold out of my Etsy shop rather quickly. The up side was I looked at the leftover fabrics from that quilt and realized I could make a whole ‘nother quilt! Some more brain waves, a couple of scrap bag finds later and I introduced purple into the mix.

The only think extra I bought was a fat quarter of a really bright orange batik print. It was mostly orange and yellow but with a faint pink /purple in some spots. Perfect!

I picked the perfect pattern to highlight the fabrics and more importantly use them all up. There are large 6.5″ by 15″ blocks and since I was stretching out the color scheme with some solids too, I knew I had lots of space for creative quilting. The only thing that came to my mind was feathers.

Big, lush, feather quilting.

Which I had never done.

Those following on flickr saw my multiple tests and tractising to get it right. Not only does it lok good, it’s pretty fun to do too. :) And by the time I get all the blocks done on this quilt, I should be pretty good at it.

more feather quilting

Here is the quilt on my design wall. Right before Christmas I was still attempting to at least get the top all pieced, but alas. It was not to be.

So last night I really needed a sewing break, so I made sure I worked on this quilt alone. I got pretty far, but I think I mis-pieced the middle row. Good thing I have pictures from earlier to check… except by them I was tired enough I could not find the pic on my camera.

Le sigh.

There was one row I pieced with the long pieced sashing and the horizontal bars were not lining up. So I did take my handy seam ripper and rip out that very long seam and pinned it to line it up in a couple spots and sewed it all over again. Much better.

Not long to go now. Then I will piece all of the leftover fabrics for a pieced back because I really really want to have no leftovers. :D I’ve angsted on the back for a while too. The quilt shop has some really cozy fluffy soft fabric, but the colors are dull and muddy. They also had a bright yellow mottled backing fabric (no piecing needed) expect for some reason I think that is too plain.

I also picked out a poly batting to try again with this machine and because it will make it poofy. Kaytlyn also likes heavy quilts so I may find a flannel sheet to put in the middle as well, but I don’t know how difficult that will make it to quilt, with my quilting plans. I may have to skip that bit and make a simpler but heavy quilt for the both of them later.

(which I’m sure would be terrible. Oh the problem of lots of quilts.)

*janitorial notice – I’m going to try and use the built in image galleries a little more, see if I can figure them out and see if I can eventually replace flickr.

** whups – sorry about the not rotated photos

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 in I Forgot To Pick A Category

Trip to town

Meaghan & I went to Fredericton today. We left early enough for us, before 10am. I did a round of forums support before we left. It was bitterly cold, -25C with the wind chill in some areas and I had to wash my hair before I left. Ron suggested I just dry it in front of the pellet stove. Works like a charm!

I forgot to eat breakfast, so when we got to Sarah’s we went in and I ate the lunch I brought. It was 11;30 anyway. I had one package of the Recipe to Riches Slow & Low pork. I only bought it because it was on sale for $5. No way I;d pay regular price – the whole box would feed 2 people and the box had a LOT of wasted space. :-/

We went a few blocks downtown, parked and walked to Yarns on York. Oh my yummy yarn. I don’t knit because I cannot stand the feel of yarn on my fingers. The clerk suggested maybe I was using cheap yarn (probably) but I also pointed out I don;t even like hand lotion for the same reason. *shivers*

Sarah suggested we go to this new spot – Pretty Little Freaks which sells retro stuff. OMG gorgeous. They had some steampunk heels my bff Rebecca would totally die for.

Then we went over to A & K’s house where I distributed the chocolate we got from England (thank you very much) and gave them 2 casserole dishes I had cleaned out the night before. Seems I have way too many and the ones I got for Christmas would not fit in the cupboard and are much nicer and more useful anyway. (some smaller one person and two person sizing).

Izzy was adorable as usual – she did eventually give me kisses. :D She was wearing her sleeper with rubber boots.

we hit the mall after that. Gahhhhhh… too many stores for absurdly skinny people. I was tweeting the whole time too so Ron would not worry e were in a ditch somewhere. Also? La Senza seems to have tarted right up. I told Sarah the only thing missing was the sex toy section. “They’e in the secret room at the back,” she said. I think she was joking.

After that, Michael’s where Meaghan picked up an armload of yarn. Sarah & I were pretty tired by then. We dropped her off then we went home. That was pretty much my day.

Work since then. I got home in time to put some supper in the oven.

Monday, January 2, 2012 in all about me

Skipping class

Quilt guild is tonight and I hemmed and hawed about the roads then decided not to go. Then it got nicer but by that point I was set on staying home anyway. :P

I finished all 6 baby quilt tops I mentioned last entry, with my headphones blasting. Do you think the other old ladies at the guild listen to rappers or Beyonce? I’m thinking maybe only a couple.

Today is also my WordPress birthday. I installed it 7 years ago exactly. And as my friend Sherry says “AND in that time you’ve totally made it your bitch too! :D

I heart her.

***

Also this weekend I booked a couple of flights, which I absolutely loathe doing. they were getting filled up as I was booking them, so I would have to keep picking new flights. Ron and I will be going to Austin Texas for part of South By SouthWest. We have to go to parties held by our employer, and this year it’s on a house boat.

It’s a rough life.

***

Most of my decorations are down and put away and the tree is finally bare too. Note the decorations themselves, while in boxes, are not put away yet.

***

Work was not totally crazy. I even had time to work on some backlog of stuff.

Sunday, January 1, 2012 in I Forgot To Pick A Category

Sunday afternoons

Sure it’s the new year and all but I need to get back in the saddle, so plowing thru we are.

I started taking the tree down and packing away decorations. I want to write a post about how I choose decorations and how many you need for a tree. I wanted to do this last year too and even took pics but never wrote the post.

I tried to remember what I did this year and can’t even dig around my blog to check. So serves me right not blogging. :P

For my new job, we can make our own hours essentially. This is awesome. On Sundays, the two other people in charge have church and family time, so Sundays I tend to keep a firm eye on things.

(I still can’t believe the things I’m in charge of some days. Just try not to think about it and get the work done.)

Aside from that, I clean up the house, do laundry and try and get in some quilt time. I fond a pattern for some super fast baby quilts and so I worked on those today with the fabrics I got on Friday when our quilt shop had a huge 50% of sale. I also had a gift certificate from my mom, so I used it up too.

Here’s the fabrics and the pattern -

stash of baby quilts in a hurry

Super nine patch baby quilts

I’ll put these up in my etsy shop (SIX! BABY! QUILTS!) and if I need a quilt for a baby present, well I have one.

***

We have eggnog to use up. I only bought 1 litre and hardly anyone drank any. I like it but I just cannot drink a huge glass of milk any more. Not if I want my insides to keep on liking me.

Eggnog pancakes for dinner tonight.

***

I’m still in my jammies. We try not to get dressed on Sunday unless we really need to go out.