Brrrrrr...

I tried. I tried really hard. I tried scribbling some stuff on graph paper. I tried shifting fabric into little piles. I tried doing little lines on the computer. I even crocheted for a bit, resulting in a pointless, pathetic little square. And now its time to face facts. It is ONE DEGREE ZERO DEGREES*outside. My creativity is probably hibernating for the winter.

I'd like to join it. I've had enough of being cold. How do I go about hibernation? I think I just eat lots and lots and then hop in bed for three months? Is that right?

It sounds nice.

*I checked the weather on my phone before I started typing, and then again after I pushed publish; this is an edit. Also, apparently humidity is at 100%. does this mean that if I go outside, I will be swimming?

Quilting

The problem I think with quilting (the bit where you sew the three layers together) is that you can be at it for hours with nothing really to show. And you get sore shoulders.

This is the first time I've done wavy lines in both directions, and apart from a couple of little bunches at the seams (that should pretty much vanish once it's washed and crinkly) it's going okay. I don't think I pulled the back taught enough though, as it's a bit baggier than usual. Still, I did at at 4am, so I'm not entirely surpried - 3am is usually my stop-sewing time.

Hopefully the two-direction quilting will make it super crinkly. It's getting colder now, and since crinkly looks warmer (it doesn't matter whether or not it actually is) I'm thinking the crinky the better.

Pollen.

This morning (well, this afternoon) when I went out to my car, it was faintly yellow. Lots of other stuff happened today too (in fact, today was so long that it feels as if the slightly yellow car was days ago), but most of it is unimportant. What is important though, is that the trees know that spring is coming. It may only be 6°C out there at the moment, but it's only a matter of time till it's nice and warm again. Granted, between then and now there will be plenty more cold nights, lots of snotty tissues and about four bottles of Demazin, but no matter. At some point in the not to distant future, it will be warm again.

Cold.

Sometimes I look at even a partly done quilt lying on the floor, and I have a little think about the evolution of my quilts; where maybe I've taken aspects of that design from and what aspects have evolved into other things in other quilts, and it makes me want to go out and get all my other quilts out of their tub in the new shed and maybe see how many of them I can use all at once, which would work well tonight because it's damn cold.

Tonight I did the in the ditch quilting for the Autumn Nutmeg quilt. I'd been putting it off because it's been nearly a year now since I did any sewing in the ditch - echoing is so much easier because it doesn't need to be anywhere near as precise. It was only 6 lines but I grumbled to myself the whole time. I'm glad I managed to pick a thread that went fairly well with all the fabrics - it'll look fine after a wash.

It's also nearly a year since I started quilting - I only in the ditched my first two before switching to the wave stitch and then echoing. And I'm coming up to post #400 - without any actual planning, if I stick to a post a day they'll coincidentally coincide.

Wow. A whole year of getting big bits of fabric, chopping them into little bits and sewing them back together into a big bit again. Where has the year gone?

My clothes remain very much on... But not for much longer ;)

Last night while I was sewing I came up with a really good post for FTF, but it's okay, I'll change my days quoted from "yesterday" to "last week" and we can pop it forward to next Friday. Unfortunately, that leaves me feeling a wee bit guilty that I don't have any progress to show or any interesting or insightful things to talk about. My major consideration for the day was to do with something called WMWifiRouter, but that's boring even for me, as well as a bit of a disappointment, because I was stretched for time and I took the easy way out and paid for it instead of finding a working keygen. No, don't ask, it's all very very mindnumbing.

And while it's only just gone midnight and I could very well complete my blocks at the very least for the latest mingle quilt, if not the whole quilt top, it's very cold, and I don't feel like it. 

Today I was looking for some plastic egg cases that I bought over two years ago but still haven't gotten around to using. I'm being Maddy's Easter Bunny this year, and since the weather's a bit crappy everything gets it's own little case. I bought some more but these ones that are hiding were larger and I wanted some size variation, unfortunately they will have to wait another easter as I can't find them. What I did find though was a lovely stack of 10cm squares - 20 fabrics of which there is 20 squares of most of them, except that for two of the yellows there's only 10. Possibly that's why it was stashed.

I've since bought another half yard of one of the half-there fabrics, so I can do that one, and the other may just still be at Stitch and Knit. Hopefully, since it means I only need to pay $2 for 10cm, instead of $20 for a yard on etsy, since the only seller I can find doesn't want to post to Australia, and roundabout ways of posting are usually add up to it being just as expensive as buying locally.


So once I fill in my missing 10 squares, doing them in a simple 20x20 diagonal grid is now another one on my list of to-do quilts. I think it's been on the list and off the list and on the list again, which is quite confusing.

Anyway, just cause it's Friday, and apparently a "good" one at that, here's a quick stuff I like.

I like those zippers that have the double pull so you don't have to have it done all the way down to the bottom when you don't want it to be.

I like packet muffin mix.

I like having my very own sniffing nose humans*.

I like hidden caches of chocolate.

I like getting Peppermint Club chocolate, and nibbling the side off of the block and then sucking the peppermint creme out, and not actually eating the rest of the chocolate (which is dark, and a little too rich to eat all of).

I like coming from a family where Easter is an excuse to sit around a fire, have a few drinks and tell rude jokes, and that I don't have to get up early on Sundays (or any day, actually)

I (secretly) like that I thought Mexican night was tonight when it's actually tomorrow, because I'm working tomorrow night and that means I don't have to drink tequila, and thank god for that, since tequila makes your clothes fall off.


*I have no sense of smell and the aforementioned packet mix muffins were just starting to burn when my Mum arrived and told me.

oh, and the ;) in the title is because I'm going to bed now.

The evening after the night before...

I must confess, I came home last night. I hadn't had anything to drink because I had done about 5 trips into town to get more stuff, and I figured there was bound to be more. And then, later in the night, Steph "Boobs" Vine was feeling a bit sick and considering taking her fiancee's ute and driving it the 40km to her house, leaving him with nowhere to sleep, and the wet grass had soaked through my boots, so at about 11 we decided to head home. She pulled the, I'm not tired, lets watch a movie/falling asleep on the couch before the end of the opening credits routine, and I downloaded and watched a couple of new episodes of Mythbusters. It wasn't a bad party, the band was a bit shit, and it was too cold for us skinny girls later in the night, but everyone seemed to be having fun.

Which leads to: Today.

Since most of my friends are farmers, or grew up on farms, they all wake at ungodly hours of the morning. After passing out at 4am, they will be up and about and ready to continue drinking at 6am. I of course, would struggle to find the motivation to get out of bed at 6am even if I'd had an early night the previous one, so I settled for 8.30am.

It was horrible. There was a screeching alarm and it was cold out and I immediately had an asthma attack. Nature's way of saying I should sleep in, I think. And of course, when we got there, everyone was standing around having a beer and psyching themselves up for the drive home (some people had come 300km, as opposed to 3) so I went and got maccas, and bought out the bitchin' chair and ate Jatz biscuits as some people left and some people got drunk all over again. I'm not gunna begrudge them that. It was a lovely day, and they were mainly drinking their own alcohol, with only a slight fortification of Casey's Bundy cans with my Jamesons. I considered getting my drink on, but I had quilting to do. So I came home, ate a big bowl of Milo with a little bit of icecream, and got stuck in.

Quilting, the process of sewing through the three layers of fabric and batting, is really boring. I am not a quilter, in that I don't "quilt" (by the above description) for fun. Quilting is just a means to an end, a way to convert the pretty pieced tops and backs, which are what I enjoy doing, into a nice snuggly quilt. Maybe if I had a longarm machine, I could turn it into an artform, but sewing from one side to the other, turning it around, and doing it again, just following seam lines and hoping it doesn't bunch up too much, feels a bit like a chore. The fun part for me is keeping a running percentage of how far I've done, but then, I am odd like that, and I also like to count the number of sewing lines I have remaining when I'm assembling too. I guess it makes me feel like I am getting somewhere, even though it looks like I've sewn a million lines, but I still have a billion more to go.

Unfortunately, I realised after 4 pm that I didn't actually have anything to bind it with anyway, so it wasn't gunna get done. But the bloody quilting is out of the way, for that one at least, and now there's only 4 more to quilt* before I've done half my WIPs, and can get to something new.

Still, since the quilting was done I could take it to Helen's and let Bob have a stomp on it, which is the important thing really, and they don't need a binding for that. Then I had an over-tired wonder if the lights were straight (I'm assured they are) and was told to go home, download a show called Wilfred (there's a dog right, who's a man in a dog suit, but he's actually a dog, and everyone thinks he's a dog, and he acts like a dog, but there's this one bloke who knows he's a guy in a dog suit, and talks to him. Seems a bit odd, but Helen assures me it's brilliant) and have an early night. It's downloading, ETA lunchtime tomorrow, and, y'know, I may just go to bed.

How weird.

*and bind. 4 more to quilt and bind, and another two after Helen's that just need their binding done, and then I can get on with making some more WsIP.

Ummm..?

Before I leave for any major drinking/partying/standing in a field type even, I always have a few nasty moments of misgivings. Isn't there better stuff to spend my time on? Don't I have dozens of unfinished projects? Do I realise it's cold outside? Do I realise it's not my house, so I can't sleep in my bed? Shouldn't I just stay at home, in the warm, with a high speed internet connection, and a sewing machine? Because after the second drink, that's no longer an option.*

I know I'm not a particularly social creature. I know I don't like being outside in the cold, and I know I like it even less when I've chosen to do it. I know I pick fights when I'm a bit drunk. I know that if I don't get terrible indigestion then I'll get bored after an hour or two and want to go to bed.

But...

That moment comes after a week or so of looking forward to it. And it tends to get overwhelmed with misgivings I can do something about, such as "Do I have enough drinks, Where is my bitchin chair, Should I take a spare coat, etc?"

I suppose I should go work on those non-metaphorical questions, huh?

See you all tomorrow night! Wish me luck!


*It's about 2km away, this party, but there's a blitz on this weekend and I've seen 6 cars pulled over by the cops in 2 days. I could walk it, I know, but that seems too much like exercise, and that's not something I'm fond of either.

Brrrrr...

I am so ready for summer to come back. I'm sick of feeling cold all the time.

Normally we will have the fire going pretty much constantly through the winter in our house. But at the moment, Mum, Dad and our youngest sister have decided they're sick of the cold too, and they've gone off to Darwin. That leaves 3 of us home, but one has just broken up with her boyfriend and is out living it up, leaving Casey and I here, and unfortunately, the two of us aren't really around enough to keep it going. She works mornings (I sleep mornings) and, since noone's been home at night, she's been having dinner at friends houses, while I'm at work.

Even though the fire is very good at putting out heat (average winter temp without fire - 17C, with fire - 28C) its not very good at staying going for a long time. Even big chunks of wood, with the air supply turned down, tend to be burned through in about 3 hours, so the dream of lighting it before work to come home to a nice warm house never comes to fruition, especially as it's even worse when it's only just been lit. It needs attention every hour for the first 5 or so hours, and so I'll be coming home to a cold house after I finish work. Again.

Tomorrow though, I finish at 8.30, so I've got a good 4 hours of couch sitting time at my disposal, making lighting it totally worthwhile. Well, telling Casey to light it. I've built it all up ready, she just needs to put a lighter in and find some matches, and maybe I'll be nice and warm again.

P.S. Retro quilt got finished yesterday, and is very nice, but camera is on the charger, and can't make it out to the clothesline. Also, I wish it was warmer.