The good, the bad and the shiny...

The good: New episodes of True Blood drop on Mondays in Australia (since we're a day ahead of America) and drunk Sookie was brilliant but, even more importantly, this is the week when I get a new episode of White Collar! The only way this could get better is if someone could put Magic Mike on the internets for me.


The bad: Tonight, in the car, on the way home, The Dance* by Garth Brooks came on. And though those who know about all the ex-boyfriend weirdness that's been going on might think that my having a little cry to myself was to do with that, it wasn't. You only get one Garth song, and he got Friends in Low Places*. The Dance was how I felt about Honeycat, and tonight I found myself missing her. I guess the fact that I spend more time hanging out with the yabby than the dog means I need a pet of my own.

The shiny: On Thursday I went to Target to get a couple of things, and while I was there I saw a little boy, maybe 5 years old, and his RM Williams belt buckle was bigger and shinier than my RM Williams belt buckle (admittedly, mine is also a kids one) and when I was a bit tipsy on Thursday night I was thinking to myself "well, that just will not do". So I went on the internets and found this one. And it is big and very very shiny. Admittedly, I need to find a belt to go with it, but that shouldn't be too hard. Probably quite expensive, but not actually difficult.

*...for a moment all the world was right, how could I have known, that you'd ever say goodbye? And now, I'm glad I didn't know, the way it all would end, the way it all would go... Our lives are better left to chance; I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance...


**...well, I guess I was wrong, I just don't belong, but then, I've been there before; Everything's all right, I'll just say goodnight and I'll show myself to the door... Hey, I didn't mean, to cause a big scene, just give me an hour and then, well I'll be as high as that ivory tower, that you're livin' in...

Ahem. Excuse me...

Still no sign of Honeycat. Tomorrow I'll do the rounds of the vets and the pound, and if there's still no sign, I do what I did last time a cat vanished into the midsts of time, and quilt with a fervor not seen since... I dunno. Someone did something fervently, I suppose.

Sorry, my brain has appeared to turn into mush. Actually, although the human brain does appear quite mushy, even at the best of times, it is actually a fragile and delicate thing. That's why we have skulls, to protect it when we need to go around headbutting people. Which is thankfully not often. But sometimes. So thankyou skull.

Fortunately there's only tomorrow at work before I have a (clearly) much needed day off. I think I might use it to do the super easy quilt top in the black, red and white Mingle bundle. Or I could quilt Bob's quilt, like I've been saying I will. That should bring Honeycat home, she loves to sit on whatever it is I'm trying to wrangle through the machine.

Dunno. But no matter what I'm doing, I will be wearing my totally awesome Lower South East Ladettes shirt.

Casey doesn't want me to because she doesn't have hers yet, but as I've repeatedly pointed out, that is not my fault. She, like the rest of you, simply has to pick a hot pink* polo to her liking, take it to Jagga Jagga and give the man $20ish. My work is done.

*I've even offered to dye a white or differently-pink top if it helps.

Worried.

Honeycat has gone walkies. I last saw her yesterday when we had a big ol' snuggle at about 3 before I went to work, and last night Casey said "Hello Pookie" to something* while I was in the loo having a read while I waited for Casey to get off my laptop and give me my bedroom back, but noone's seen her since.

And I know cats have a tendency to disappear and reappear, but Babycat went walkies and never came home, so I'll be over here, doing my worried thing.

Even though Terry Pratchett's The Unadulterated Cat is very funny and often scarily true,  contained therein is the knowledge that cats can travel through time, and that makes going out in the yard to find her a damn sight more difficult. The sound of a shaken box of food obviously travels, but through time? Even though I clearly have a Schrodinger cat, I don't think I have Schrodinger catfood.


*one of our friends has a cat called Pookie. I'm convinced Honeycat will end up with serious psychological issues from having two names, but they can't seem to help themselves.

Progress Report - Monsters.

It's a bit later than usual so tonight wont be a long post - I've cut and faced 7 monsters, two of which have been finished but for the hand sewing. Honeycat however takes offense at my being up so late, and refuses to let me sew, alternately sitting around the machine, standing on my fabric, clawing at my fabric and clawing at me. So it's bedtime. 

If I finish what I've started I'll have 5 flatbears, 8 monsters and a crab, which is some little things.

I'd rather people buy the quilts though. I've run out of room to put them all.

I had a pretty good day. I got the Modern Grace quilt bound, partook in a spontaneous mini crafternoon, scored a half dozen 8 cent fuel discount vouchers, which is a bit unnecessary considering that my new car has excellent fuel consumption, and I'm onto my fourth episode of Bones.

Tomorrow is for progress. Tonight is for some overdue bumming about. And cat cuddles. And chocolate.

And now episode 5 of Bones.

Good Day.

Photo post.

I went to bed around 8.30 last night, because Casey said I had to wait until it was dark. I still didn't get up till lunchtime today though, so i think it will be going down in history as a curious experiment that proved nothing.

Anyway, the weather yesterday was lovely, so I took photos of the quilts I got finished on marathon night. They're not very good, but oh well. I was tired.

The log prevents creases, which is good, but doesn't fit in the cute little briefcase.

My helper.

The double wonk quilt.

The teenie quilt. Short side is about 65cm.

Blue and green seems to be a popular pairing for me, with 3 quilts already.

Even though this had always been referred to as the purple and green quilt, I think we should go with purple and teal as a more accurate title.

No Luck thus far...

Babycat still hasn't, shown up, but I'm not really sure what I should be doing about it. I have checked the highway a hundred metres of so in each direction from our house. I have asked the neighbours if they have seen her. I have checked all the sheds and cars, and up the trees. What should I do next? I'm under the impression that I should call all the vets and the pound, but it seemed a bit premature to be doing it today, and I don't know which (if any) of them are open over the weekend.

I can't tell if Honeycat is worried or not. Sometimes it seems like she is, but other times it's like she cant be bothered, and I think she's more worried at times when I'm actively looking, so maybe she's only worried at my worry.

Cats are more difficult to fathom than dogs. And everyone seems quite insistent that they do this - go off for a bit and then come back. But does that mean I shouldn't worry?

I have spent the afternoon piecing a quilt top out of 5 fabrics I bought from Stitch and Knit. I've no idea what they are, but they're blue and brown, with a little bit of green, yellow and cream. It should end up about 120cm square, and I'm thinking of quilting it on the diagonal. Not that I have any fabrics picked for a back.

I have a lot of bundles at the moment that I've only really sorted out a top for. I might be stockpiling them for a while.

Gratuitous Cat Photo Post.

Is it just my cats that are completely incapable of sleeping in a way that you or I would perceive as normal?

There's a gap in there, in case you can't really see it. I've no idea how it could be comfortable, but hey, what would I know.

This seems similarly uncomfortable. Also not that this wasn't just her stretching - I have this photo from about 4 different angles (that make my room look even messier)

Babycat's favourite place to sleep however remains my laptop. Specifically the keyboard, but we will settle for a closed lid if that's all that's on offer.

Given that she's also quite happy to sit on it while awake too, I'd be guessing she's motivated by about 49% warmth and 49% attention seeking. The other 2% is that she actually wants to use the internets.

When did my adorable little Babycat turn into GlamazonTeenagerCat? She's probably on some cat-dating website looking for a boyfriend when I'm not around.

A Good Day... Except for the Lawnmowing...

Now that I've gone back to facebook, and finished there, I am back, for real this time. I really need to discourage Babycat from sitting on the keyboard, but at the moment it seems more important to stop her annoying her mother.

Speaking of:

I don't know that there's still any milk in there, though I'm assuming there is since she stayed on the boob a while, which was annoying, and not only because I was getting shit done. Janelle from work was telling me about a cat that's 18 months old now and still on the boob so I am a bit worried, but Babycat is not even 11 weeks yet, and she drinks from a bowl and eats real food, so I'm sure she'll get over it/cope fine if the well runs dry.

As you can kinda see, I made progress on the mini quilt. Actually, around mowing the lawn, washing my hair and the cats sitting on it as I tried to put it through the machine, I actually finished it.

Despite the shoddyness of the second photo, there is some consensus in my house (well, Casey and Becky) that the back is nicer than the front. I will agree to a certain extent that the back is less for the brain to try and appreciate, and that the first retro quilt taught me the value of a simplified design with a solid colour to tie it all together, but I'm not keen on the layout of the back. They were the 8 blocks I had left, I shuffled them about for at least half of The View (it was the one with Obama on, that they have aired at least 4 times now) but I never came to a balance I was satisfied with, with regards to the spacing between the designs and the positioning of the browns, which appear quite high contrast on the back.

Final size is 80cm by 106cm, which is too small really for me to use, and the cotton batting seems much stiffer than the bamboo I have gotten used to. But it hasn't been washed yet, and that might make a difference.

I did my machine's wavy line quilting which I'm so fond of, and it ended up being even tighter than the BlueGreen quilt, about three rows to two, at 7 rows per block and one on the seam. But on flat batting I feel the more quilting the better, since the batting doesn't push out on the piecing and hold the seams flat, and I worry that it will all fall apart if the seams havent been sewn over or at least near to.

I would have done an over the seams quilt were it not for the fact that I couldn't match up the panels at the back, and I thought it would look a bit daft on that side if the quilting was a centimetre or so off the seam on half the blocks, and following some random line on the others. I tried my best to get the vertical seams at least to match up, devoting an entire episode of The Mentalist to it, but they're still a little bit off. There's so many lines though and it's the best thing about the wavy stitch, that it doesn't really matter like a straight int the ditch does.

Anyway, next up should be either finishing the boat quilt cover or the purple quilt, which is under a pile of stuff at the moment, and also Mama Jan's quilt which is due in 3 weeks, as well as a bag for one of the girls at work, which I am going to have to remember how to do. I've bought some foam a bit thinner that what I used for mine, so it shouldn't be as hard, but I suspect it will still take me a bit to get back in the swing of it.

Or I could have a go at another mini quilt, I'm liking them; they're quicker and easier than big ones, and you can try out more exciting stuff for them. But I haven't got a cohesive bundle of fabrics I'm willing to use right now, so it might have to wait.

Also coming us is Christmas quilting night at Spotlight on Thursday, which I may or may not do something for - on the one hand, I do like to get involved, on the other, I really dislike the idea of making a quilt to use for less than a month per year. But I bought some nice Christmas paisleys last year, that were just not-Christmassy enough to catch my fancy, so I might whip up a little something with them tomorrow after work, if I can remember where I put them.

This is not a blog from the bog...

I must say, I'm loving The Mentalist right now.

I'd hired it a few months ago and put it on the laptop (shifty I know, but I did technically pay for a weeks viewing of it, and at no point did they say when that week of watching was) but hadn't gotten around to watching it because of shiny new episodes and DVDs of Psych and a whole host of other to-watch shows. But since the plot and synopsis for the two is the same (except that Psych is a comedy and The Mentalist is a drama) and yesterday my brain was all mushy but I thought it would be daft to fall asleep when it was only 5.30, so instead of putting on old Psych, which I can fall asleep during because I've seen it all already, I loaded the mentalist into Daemon tools and watched the first 8 episodes.

A few points - Simon Baker looks better with brown hair, so I've no idea why he's blond in this. Their big boss guy is played by the guy who was the dodgy president in 24, so even though he seems to be a good guy, I still find him shifty. They don't give enough time to the supporting characters. But that's a comparison to Psych, and therefore quite unfair. Apart from the lack of hilarity, it's pretty good.

Other things that are good include Jelly Tots, Kinder bars and Peppermint Dairy Milk rolls, but not the blocks, because the green-goo to chocolate ratio is wrong. Other things that are not good include my complete lack of motivation, my indecision about the backing for the mini quilt and the fact that the labels on the tubes of mini m&ms don't peel off cleanly.

Anyway.

Didn't get the boat quilt finished but Dad's have long been known to be distracted by the shiny wrappers of Turkish Delights and Crunchie bars. Spent the afternoon wandering around town looking for a very basic mp3 player, but the only basic (non ipod shuffle) one I found was $50 at Harvey Norman, and I'm not paying that much. Then it was an evening playing with (well, feeding) Ester, who is ludicrously gorgeous, and flicking through old quilt magazines with Helen. And now I'm home, and Honeycat is cross with me cause I wont feed her cause she's going to the vet tomorrow.

And my laptop is running svchost twice, so the coretemp is around 95°C when it should be in the mid-sixties, and I don't know which one to turn off.

Hmmmm...

On my laptop, the touchscreen overrides the touchpad. This is handy when there's a cat sitting on my keyboard, as that seems to stop the touchpad from working. However, there is a problem.

Babycat's paws also work on the touchscreen.

I don't think Honeycat's did/do. That said, since she's so much bigger, she really needs to keep all four paws down to avoid toppling, whereas Babycat is still small enough to paw comfortably at the screen.

I've been casually looking for some kind of program that will stop my keyboard working, or lock it... like, put it to tablet settings while it's still open, so I can just use the touchscreen keyboard and not worry about what the cats are doing on the real one. But if Babycat is activating the screen controls as well that make this a lot less useful.

What I really need is cats that are less interested in sitting on my keyboard.

And while we're at it, it would be nice if they were less interested in my neatly cut fabric pieces, my sewing machine and its foot pedal.

The Story So Far...

It's been a busy few days, thus the lack of posting, but here's a brief catchup.

The future husband didn't come to Jess' party, but I spent the night on a Jelly Tots induced sugar high, so I had a blast.

Babycat is now sleeping IN my bed. Usually with her head on my pillow. Honeycat has reverted to sleeping exactly where I would like to put my knees.

The Blue/Green quilt has been designed, cut and arranged neatly so the first bit of string piecing is ready to be fed through the machine.

The camera from eBay still wont work, and the seller is being useless, telling me to go in to Bing Lee (not in South Australia, love) or David Jones (not in a small town in the middle of nowhere, love) because they sold them. 2 years ago. Instead, I have to wait for mum to get back on Friday so that she can go into camerahouse and get them to look at it, because I'm on record as wanting to firebomb their employees. And that could be awkward.

Finally, the Soiree bundle that I liked on eBay got put down to 10% off, and the dollar is back around 87c on Paypal, so I bought it. $102 all up, so $2.82 per f/q.

Still no sign of either fabric.com's massive delivery to me or the smaller one via shipito, but I'm in no hurry, as I'm back off to work now.

Once I detangle Babycat from the back of my shirt.

Cold, again...

Good day today, no work, 3 parcels at the post office, and a big to do crossed off my list.

Honeycat and Babycat had their first trip to the vet today. $114 later, and Babycat is a girl after all, Honeycat got an injection and a pill down her throat and it turns out that a 3-course of flea killer stuff is fifty freaking bucks...

But its okay cause I love them.

In other news the Make Life Bundle got here, and I picked out 12 of the 23 to make into a quilt that, owing to its genderneutralness (new word) may or may not be suitable for Helen's baby. Depending on how much I like it. Helen, being a fellow maker of stuff, will understand, and I've found that newborns don't really care where their warmth comes from, so long as they get it.


I've also started work on the blue green quilt, cause Casey said to not be in a hurry about Mama Jan's quilt. Possibly a bit of a foolhardy move, but it's on her shoulders, after having only in my wallet thus far.

I added 4 of the Make Life fabrics, because they seem like an okay fit, and that gives me 16 to work with, which is more than enough.

Still at the 21*cm squares stage, and I'm not sure where it's going to go from here; I'm kindof a bit over the stars now, especially when it comes to the annoying around and around quilting, but I'm considering doing the same sort of design with right angles/squares. Dunno yet.


The best bit about doing the 21cm squares is that you get a nice big pile of scrappies and selvages. Helen showed me her tickertape quilt today and it's muchly cute, if a bit small, and I'd quite like to try one, if I can do it without handsewing, or having to use one of my dwindling supply of battings. I'm thinking two layers of flannelet, possibly cut from a discounted sheet set, and I can use little squares of iron-on to hold them in place, and maybe just back and forth scribble sew over them. I'm not sure, but at least I know I wont have to buy any fabric for the little bits.


I literally have bags of these. Even after Helen went through them for hers, I probably enough to do a full size quilt top already.

Tragically, however, as it's freaking cold, I'm calling it a night. I didn't get home till it was dark and noone had lit the fire, so its 17°C in here, which, while compared to say, the north pole, is not that cold, is still cold enough to make my toes go numb, and pretty much prevent me from functioning. So, now that the washing and ironing and first bit of cutting is done, its ziplock bag time.


The bad part of the day (other than the big-arse vet bill), is than the camera I was bidding on the other night arrived today, and also appears to not be functioning. I've reset all the settings to factory state and checked the lens for dust and everything, but it's still fuzzy. Not just when it takes the photos either, but always; just looking through the viewfinder is fuzzy. I'm gunna have another go tomorrow, though I'm not holding up high hopes, and if I cant get any improvement, I'll email the lady and ask for a refund. The listing said it was working fine, so if she wont agree to a refund then I should be able to reclaim it through paypal.

Bit of a bummer, that, but $115 is a bit much to pay for a small, pointless lump of plastic. That's half of what I paid for my 27 yards from the slightly rude lady at fabric.com. All I asked was if there was a problem with their postage calculator, as it was overcharging me by $35 when I tried to order more than 4 1/2 yards of fabric (I've had ebay sellers fit me 8yards in a flat rate envelope) and I got this in reply...

"Please note that we are a growing company and process about a thousand orders each day. We are unable to pause the workflow of cutting fabrics and preparing orders for shipment to check to see what may or may not go into a priority envelope."

You don't need to check. They can fit 8. I'd settle for 7, that's what most sellers list as their official limit. Even I could write the code for a shipping calculator. I'm not sure what programming language they would be using, but it would go something like this, give or take a bit of formatting:

If [quilting weight fabric] is >7 yards
then
postage = $15.95

There. done. How fucking easy was that? I understand that some other types of fabric weigh more, thus the [quilting weight fabric] bit. They probably have some code that I don't know, that's why it's in brackets. But seriously, if they did that, I would buy a pouch a week. Maybe two.

Maybe I need to get one of those US mailing address forwarding things. Anyone know of a good one?

*this just seems to be the biggest an American fat quarter will cut into 4 of.

Not again...

Honeycat appears to be back on heat.

The bum in the air thing, the rubbing her face on everything (even more than usual) and the rolling onto her back and not getting up when I stop patting her, and mainly, the ignoring her child thing.

I know its just a nature thing, and that its not her fault, but I want to shake her and tell her to look after the child she has, not run around trying to make another.

But there's no point. She doesn't speak people (except for "kisses" and "we go to the laundry and get you some foods," obviously) and I don't speak cat.

A a result, we're off to the vet tomorrow. Will be the first time out of the house for Babycat and the first time in a catbox for Honeycat, who, on her 3 previous trips, sat on my lap, or the passenger seat. Frankly, I'm shitting myself a bit, because it's their first trip to the vet as well, and we don't really know anything about Honeycat's history.

My other task tomorrow is finding something to wear to Jessie's 18th this weekend. My alleged future husband* is going to be there, so that ramps the pressure up a bit. It's at Flannies, so at least I know I wont be freezing my toosh off if I wear a dress, but most of what I own is still geared toward the tastes of the ex (Freudian slip there - I initially typed testes) so it's all a bit to girly-goth for my current liking.

Honey cat is banging at the catdoor. I may have locked it... There's a nasty mean boycat out there somewhere...

But back to the dress, I, personally, am a big fan of mod style dresses, the sort of thigh cut, funky patterned type thing you can wear over tights with your cowboy boots. That's what I'm looking for/going to make tomorrow, so I'll be spending tonight looking up designs on the internets.

*His name is Sam, he lives in Naracoorte, and Casey, Ez and Josh are quite sure, apparently.

In spite of the fact that it's Tuesday and I have no money, I went and got another 8 bundle of retro fats from lincraft, and another metre and a half of the ivory for the background of the retro quilt. It's been washed and is part drying now, but I cant bet to the bench to do my ironing, because Casey was testing the running time of the chocolate fountain, and chocolate has gone everywhere. And the coil that makes it work has broken.

Sigh.

But Honeycat and Babycat seem to have gotten themselves sorted... Babycat wasn't happy with under the sewing cabinet so he's decided to move himself to back under the bed, and Honeycat seems okay with this. If I could just convince them to move back to under the dresser, where I can see them without getting down on the floor, that would be excellent.

Decisions, Decisions...

Debating whether or not to invite the lovely Simone to read this, making her my first official reader. Although really, if there's anyone else out there, let me know, and I will recognize your title. This little piece of the blogosphere may still not be much, but it's mine, and I'm not only proud of it, but of anyone with the stamina to put up with it.

Also having a bit of an internal debate about dresses. Two actually. I have a masquerade ball 18th birthday party to go to Saturday week that I need to sort out something for, as well as 3 B&S Balls in the next 3 months. With regards to the latter, I've found a very nice looking wedding dress from china for $60 which spreads out to $20 a ball, and that price seems great. But there are two problems, the first being that it is a white wedding dress, the second being that for the most part I'm opposed to cheap made in china stuff, because they lower people's expectations of the cost of goods to way below what any local manufacturer could match, though usually when I make this statement it's more in relation to toys than dresses. But still. Usually, when I want something on the cheap that I could have theoretically made myself, I go to the salvos, or buy secondhand on ebay. But am I silly for letting a moral debate get in the way of a dress that, on screen at least looks gorgeous, and which could be dyed without too much effort? Probably.

As for the masquerade ball dress, I'm not sure what I'll do. The ebay dress, if and when bought, still wont get here for a couple of weeks, so I'll either be going with something I already have or making something, which I'm not sure I can be bothered to do. The dress code just says to wear a mask, not anything about a ballgown, so I'll have to find out what the actual dress code is. It's at Flannigans, which is loosely speaking "our" pub, so I don't think its all-out, Cinderella style formal. Casey says its "formalish", but I'd best check.

Finally, there is Honeycat and Babycat. Honeycat keeps moving Babycat, because my little sister and the dog keep going in and looking at Babycat, picking him up (Maddy) sniffing and licking him (Graham(dog)) and for obvious reasons, Honeycat's not very partial to that. This morning when I woke up she had moved him from under the dresser to back under the bed, pretty much right where he was born, so I shifted the stuff back to the far side so we could look in there easier, but then I got home from work to find it had been shifted again, this time to under my sister's bed. This is a bad idea for two specific reasons. The first is that Casey is allergic to cats. She's gotten used to Honeycat (the internet says it happens eventually) but not to Babycat. Also, she shuts her door at night. I used to, but now I have cats, I understand that I cant.

The big problem is, she refused to move back to either previous spot. Even after I remodeled the under the dresser nest to have big wadding walls and curtains, every return would see Babycat picked up by the scruff of the neck, carried to Casey's closed door, and plopped there so Honeycat could mew indignantly. Eventually I gave up acting concerned and went and did my ironing. The retro quilt is in it's point blocks now, but I'm not sure where to go from here. The blocks I have are 8 red, 8 blue, 4 purple and 4 yellow, which makes out to around 115x150 cm, and I have 2 almost matching green fat quarters that I could use too, but I'm stalled until I work the layout.

Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that the cats are under the sewing cabinet.

Damn.

Nawww...

Babycat is soooo cute.

And even though I worry that Honeycat is spending too much time away from him, she's a good mum, doing good mum things, like teaching him how you wash your face by licking your paw and rubbing your head (she did it, he copied, I nawwwwed), or cleaning him up.

She's licking his bum there, behind the dresser leg...

And sometimes, when she's out of the room, I just sit down by the side of the bed, and watch this tiny little thing, that came about entirely naturally, without us even realising...

I don't believe in a god, or religion, or anything of the ilk. But I have read The Unadulterated Cat by Terry Pratchett, and I'm very partial to the idea of a Schrodinger's Cat that can travel through time, and even before Babycat, I liked to think that a me from the future had sent Honeycat here, to help me get over the breakup. Seeing Babycat just seems to make me feel it even more. I really don't think I would feel as good as I do about things without them*.

I guess we all want to find reason in things, and if we're in denial about that fact, then we say its our own fault.

I'm just doing it positively. So thankyou, me of the future. I couldn't have done it without me.

*And Simone, and my sisters, and my friends, and co-workers, and family, and my gorgeous quilts that I can do all on my own. But Babycat is the cutest thing on this list.

Ugh... So... Tired... Must... Finish...

Quilt # 3 is finished but for tying off my little bits of thread. I'm feeling a bit naff now that I said I was giving it to Kylie's baby, because I really do like it, and, naturally, want to keep it. It looks like a proper quilt, not that the others don't, but it has angles, and wavy stitching, and is very cool.

Have had a shuffle around in the bedroom, got the proper sewing cabinet in here, though the height adjuster still terrifies me - It's been at least 3 months since last time and the little bruise is still under my thumbnail. Damn thing is vicious.

Also realised that I quite much prefer the free arm to a completely flat sewing surface (there's a plastic thing you put in when the arm is level with the bench - so you can free motion I suppose) because it gives you some air space to grip your fabric properly. But that is just my opinion.

And now I have to tie off my little threads (9 lots of them, due to the slightly awkward path I had to sew around to get all the big seams) and wash it before I work out how I'm gunna get it to it's new home. They're giving her the rest of her presents tomorrow morning, but I really want to wash it before it gets passed on, as I've no idea how the bamboo will hold up in a wash. There was no info on the label on how far apart it could be quilted before there would be shifting - each point of the stars is about 8" from point to centre by 5" wide, and the internet said that there were other bamboo battings claiming you could go 8" between, so I'm hoping this one is okay. Nonetheless, I will be testing it, on cold and drying it naturally, just to make sure, since I don't want to give it to them, have them ooh and ahh over it, then have it shit itself on its first wash.

Annoyingly, Honeycat at this moment is sitting on it, probably to get back at me for making her get off the keyboard while I typed this. Babycat has opened his eyes, but I'm getting worried about the size of his belly and the fact that I still haven't seen any babypoop.

New project... Maybe...

Okay, so in and around work, being sick and becoming a grandma, I may have snuck into Stitch and Knit yesterday... mainly to look at the fabric I had just bought on the internet in all its real world glory, and feel smug at the fact that I had got it for half the price, but also because, well, I was down the main street and, frankly, I am weak.

While in there, I had a look at the top being machined and felt good that even though I may have thus far only done squares, it least they all line up. Then, while shamelessly perving on all the gorgeous machine-quilted-and-perfectly-cornered-and-comprised-of-very-expensive-fabric-that-I-really-couldn't-afford-to-buy-from-there quilts, I got inspired.

There was one of those "supposed to be wonky within the perfectly aligned block" ones there, in brown and blue, and, I will admit, maybe a little bit of drool came out. Or maybe it was snot. I do have a cold at the moment, but I'm not sure which would be more embarrassing.

Here's a rough sketch, without colour.


And, today while sitting in my nice warm car before I had to get out and be miserable and fluey and at work, I did a little sketch that was the precursor to this, which I did once I had a nice handy touchscreen laptop to work with, instead of the back of a receipt.



A quick bit of Quilt Math (which definitely deserves the capitals because its sooo much harder than real math) tells me that it can be does as a 160cm quilt, with squares of a finished 20cm and star blocks of a finished 40cm, with 8 half yards of fabric, 4 each of 2 tones.

That's 16 fat quarters.

Most of the ones at spotlight are $2.10 this week.

That's $33.60 for the top.

Or, I could go back to Stitch and Knit, where the fat quarters are $3, even though they've got a pretty limited range, and do it for $48.

I have tomorrow off, if the slightly psycho honeymummycat will let me leave the house...

In other news, I used up all my energy putting my fabric into the washing machine and pushing the 33 million buttons you need to press to get it to work. Hopefully tomorrow it will get dried and ironed. Hopefully.

To sew, or what to sew... that is the question...

It's a weird conundrum, isn't it... I don't want to use my good fabric on a new or experimental design, because if it doesn't work then it's nice fabric wasted, but I dont wanna use crappy fabric, because if it works, then its time and effort wasted, and now I have something I've worked really hard on, but don't like.

What I need is more mid-range fabrics... or nice fabrics that I have a lot of, or didn't pay too much for... actually, I do have quite a few fabrics like that, because I buy a lot of cheap ends of bots at clearance time, but none of them coordinate.

In other news, Honeycat appears to only be having the one kitten, who we have given the honorific "he" and are thus far calling "Babycat." He is grey.

In other other news, my pre-washing remains undone.