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.

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! ”

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.

(that joke went over real well on twitter btw)

So, quilts I made:
- Addison’s halloween quilt. Biggest I’ve done so far, forgot one print glowed in the dark.
- Meaghan’s quilt. Still not finished. we have been angsting over the actual quilting.
- Sarah & Emma also got birthday quilts.

And? I totally made (HA!) Kaytlyn a quilt for her birthday too (which is today) but alas it is of course not done. The top is not even finished, but was enough to get a sense oh how it will look when done. Tip: big and bright.

I need to make more baby quilts. Like, a LOT. And have a stash handy.

Christmas was good. Adrian (my father) came up. We also drove down to see my mom. (Not with Adrian tho) Long story, which is why I need to remember to write an actual post.

I even neglected (says certain family) to upload pictures in a timely manner and even (in some cases) neglected to take actual pics. Or took them on the camera Sarah borrowed from her school. The camera is a Nikon and drool-worthy.

I should also write (here) that Ron & I are working full time for people other than ourselves. A steady predictable paycheque is really nice.

There’s also some other random stuff I want to write about and how come I never get around to it. Partly I get stuck on *where* to write it. There’s a million places now. I just need to sort that in my head.

Now my head aches. well, a bit less now, but my brain keeps not working right. How many times have I had surgery-type things now? And finally I’m getting if I have lots o’ pain, the ol’ thinking functions just.. don’t.

This isn’t so terrible if I can shuffle through my day, but I kinda have work to do. At this point, it’s Day 3 of Not Much Being Done. Also? tomorrow I have to drop things off for the quilt show.

Oh yeah. I’m putting stuff in the quilt show. I’m also sending in 2 dozen cookies, 2 quilt frames, whatever vintage aprons I can find, and selling 8 items in the market. Everything has to be labeled and it’s taken a full 30 seconds for me to print my name. Yeah. I am having a great day. (I almost had a meltdown when I could not find my stapler.) And! Friday night I am doing a shift as a greeter / ticket taker.

My husband is awesome, did you know that? He is. He made me supper on Monday (tomato soup) and made me eat it. He’s also had a dentist appointment but he had a filling, so he had a nap on Monday too.

I got to keep my tooth. It’s huge. Also, the dentist was trying to have an interesting conversation with me about twitter, but it;s really hard to do so when someone has his hands in your mouth.

I haven’t even sewed since Sunday either.

It took entirely too long to write this. I forgot was I was going to write in between each paragraph.

Except for one thing.

This time last year, I woudl have been odd one out. Now I am part of the secret club.

“Oh, they called me up the other night to babysit. I was halfway out the door before I got off the phone”

“I have to finish knitting these sweaters before I send them off. And then this quilt for the other ones.”

“Terrible we both don’t have pictures in our purses, isn’t it?”

“I bet yours are adorable.” “Yours too!”

“Aren’t they just precious?”

The knowing smile, the crinkles at the corners of our eyes, and the slight nodding of the head.

Yep. Room full of grandmas.

We made the quilt shop our first stop because they closed at three and we had left the house long past 1pm. Ron was also looking forward to stopping in since we had picked up some Christmas fabric earlier and wanted more of it. It turns out they had some left, so we bought the rest on the bolt (2.5 yards). I also picked up a Kona solid fat quarter in a tangerine sort of yellow-orange. I want to make a Jemseg Dahlia block, just because, and I want a deep yellow/orange on white.

I also got two bags of scraps. They had marked down the biggest ones to 45 each from $15 and $10, respectively. The $10 one was full of juvenile and bright prints, which I what I’m leaning towards, and the other one was scraps in colors my mom likes. So that worked out great.

We hit up Tim Horton’s for Ron’s coffee and my hot chocolate, then while Ron made another stop, I sat in the car and started looking at my “scraps”. There were TWO panels in there, some border print enough to border a small quilt, and a whole stack of co-coordinating fabric. Plus, plenty of bits that were almost fat quarter or at least that much but a different size.

Then we wandered aroudn Kent;s for a while and realized why we don’t shop there much. We were looking for whiteboard paint put there was no sign up anything remotely like it. Melamine paint, maybe. Then we looked for MDF in a 4×4 piece, or that’s what I thought we were looking for, but Ron said masonite would do. So I found it.

Then we hightailed it to the checkout, walked out to the car, I got the trunk open and…

It wouldn’t fit.

that was a fast return though, and we need to order some other big things (drywall, pellets) so we’ll toss that on the delivery. We wanna make our own really big whiteboard for the office.

After we came home, Ron made eggnog pancakes. Yes, we still had some. I took my new fabric “scraps” and managed to cut out all I needed for a simple lap quilt suitable for a tween girl. No idea who for, I’m sure if I make the quilt, the need will show.

FWIW, eggnog pancakes are really sweet. Might not need any syrup at all.

Anyway! Something I can tell you now.

I am co-authoring a book.

Yes, it is about WordPress. Yes, it is from a “real”publisher.

Coming sometime in Spring of 2011 is the WordPress All-In-One Desk Reference, published by Wiley Publishing, who also do the “For Dummies” series. My co-authors include:

- Kevin Palmer – Owner of SocialMediaAnswers.com
- Michale Torbert – Developer of the WordPress All In One SEO plugin and owner of Semperfi Web Design.
- Cory Miller – Owner and founder of iThemes Media, Plugin Buddy and WebDesign.com.
- Lisa Sabin-Wilson – Author of WordPress For Dummies and BuddyPress For Dummies, owner and creative designer at E.Webscapes and co-owner of BA Hosting.

And me. Heh.

So between that, regular client work, writing help text in WP 3.0, writing in the codex, helping in the forums, and managing our own support forums, some days I am out of words.

Even pictures are scanty. Can’t remember the last thing I sewed.

I has deadlines. Here’s hoping you hear from me in August. Meanwhile, there’s always twitter.

I quilt as a break from staring at a computer screen, and Ron has other hobbies he does for his mental break. For both of us, it’s a different part of the brain working, and more involvement with our hands. And I am not alone. But, as I’ve been sewing and quilting lately, I’ve been thinking of the similarities between quilting, specifically, and Open Source.

Open Source usually refers to something like a computer program where the source code is literally open: you can read it, change it, modify it and even contribute to it. I’m going to specifically focus on this aspect:

A main principle and practice of open source software development is peer production by bartering and collaboration, with the end-product (and source-material) available at no cost to the public.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

In our day-to-day work life, Ron and I do exactly this. We work on a piece of software, both front-end and back, and share information and code mostly freely between ourselves and others. In this way, the entire codebase gets better and it eventually benefits everyone using the software, not just ourselves.

In the early days of quilting, women would come together to work on quilts, share patterns, and learn from one another. Well, not just the early days – even now we do it.

Code sharing –
Take this example, while pretty simple and silly: One of the default plugins in WordPress is called Hello Dolly. When activated, it puts one line of the song “Hello Dolly” in the top right of the admin area. On a page refresh, a new line is shown randomly. If you look at the code (and you can, easily) you can see what it does.
I took a copy of this plugin, modified to my heart’s content, and instead of it showing what it did, I made a version that gives advice from Chuck Norris.

Heh.

Yeah okay, you see my point here with the code, but what about the quilt?

Take a very traditional, very old quilt pattern called 9 patch. It has nine squares, hence the name. Usually, you alternate light and dark squares. Over the years, quilters using the design have experimented both with fabrics, color placement and finally cutting to come up with a more modern favorite called Disappearing nine patch.

But it starts with the exact same block. And in both cases, prolific blog posts explaining how to do it, and a pattern (plugin) at the end, freely distributed.

QuiltCamps and WordBees
If I said quilting bee, you’d thing of Ye Olden days, but they still happen, and loads of people (yes, mostly women, but an increasing number of men) show up for quilt-related trade shows, displays, galleries and classes. There’s lots of gorgeous quilts to look at products to buy and new things to learn.

WordPress? Oh yeah, they have these things called WordCamps all over the place, sponsored & organized locally, where fans/users/devs of the software get together and look at cool new sites, explain new features, and show off some how to’s. Oh, and there’s usually swag.

Hunched over a machine
Some nights, I am here at the monitor, a faint glow in front of me, my hands on the keyboard. Occasionally, I use the mouse, clicking here and there, dragging and dropping files. Typing in lines of code, writing words of documentation. The whir of a fan in the background.

Last night, I was at the machine, a forty year old Brother I bought at a yard sale for $5. The light bulb needs replacing, but the light overhead and through the window was enough to finish. My hands guided the fabric, shifting and moving, stopping where needed to run and adjust the pile of fabric. The foot pedal starts and stops.

Quilt to Code
Not to belabor my point here, but a quilt is made of of dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of pieces of fabrics, stitched together to make a whole, chosen carefully based on color and pattern. Then this top is layered with batting and a backing and firmly quilted, the edges bound for wear, maybe a pocket on back for display, before it is set out for use.

This site is made up of thousands of lines of code, carefully selected plugins enabled, a theme & color scheme selected. Each post adds to the overall effect, and the layers of frontend – backend – webserver – internet all flow seamlessly to display my words how I want on your screen.

They can both take a lot of time, or they can both be whipped up in a hurry, using preselected fabric/themes, each a different patchwork of art based on the user/creator.

Quilt/Code

I quilt. I code.

They really aren’t all that different.

Actually, a couple friends of mine were twittering back and forth about how awesome it was, so peer pressure snuck in and yeah, I tried it.

And it felt good.

Well, afterwards anyway.

I did have to sign up for an opt-in newsletter, than wait for the staged video links to come in to my inbox within a short enough time for me to still remember I was actually interested, and THEN had to find the right links to click in the needs-a-redo-for-usability newletters to get redirected to a page with the *actual* video on it, when I remember to scroll way down the page enough.

The office is where I read my mail. I’ve been playing the videos on my desktop and trying to follow along. This is not a big room, and it has office chairs in it. Sometimes, another person is in the other chair. While there is a nice patch of floor, it is not in a good viewing spot of the screen.

I am already about a week behind from when I signed up, sporadically fitting it in when I can remember.

Sometimes Emma helps me.

So, there I am on the floor. One eye is trying to follow the screen, I can barely hear the instructor’s insanely chipper and perky voice, my palms flat, my legs extended in two directions and I am using unknown muscles to try and stay upright.

The perky voice tells me to clear my mind and breathe. I’m still trying to find my elbow with my knee while she’s instructing me to the next step, which involves balancing my weight on my wrists.

While I’m wobbling, Emma pipes up, “Isn’t this relaxing Mommy? Don;t forget to breath! Can I help you move this part? Do you feel better yet?”

So for the past couple of days, I put it up earlier on my schedule, before anyone else is up. Downstairs, with a bigger floor in front of the tv, through the Wii & the Internet channel.

Silence, save for the stove kicking on and off, the birds chirping outside. And a nice comfy couch to watch it from.

Among other things, I got 40 fat quarters from my mom, $40 from my aunt (with instructions to make sure I spent it on ME) and about 40 birthday wishes on twitter.

And, you know, my husband sneaking in my blog on me.

Thank you so much everyone. I did feel loved. I did indulge.