A new quilt and too much other information.

Once again, it's been a while between posts. But the combination of "ergh, I'm so much ache right now I could die, I'd better say my farewells" and "OMG OMG OMG I actually made a quilt" have come together to inspire a post.

Second things first; that's right, quilt! A whole one, pieced top, quilted, bound, everything. Admittedly, it was a fold over the back binding, but whatever, I was rushed. It was for a birthday last Tuesday, though fair's fair she really only wanted to show it off Saturday night, and I made it Friday night so all's well.

It's for Casey, obviously, and tells the gripping tale of a man and his tractors. I'm not sure where he gets these tractors to try and fail to pull up a tree, but maybe there's a prequel panel somewhere out there. It's about 1.3x1.6, and the backing is butcher's twill. Never in the whole of human history has there been a quilt so perfect for someone.

And last night, quilt showing-off night, was Harrow BnS. My first in over 6 months, what with missing Longy with laryngitis and Paruna getting cancelled. We took two virgins (by that I mean people who'd never been to a ball before) and a 5L keg of strawberry cider and about 100 jelly shots. And we drank and danced and ended up funny colours and found boys and new exciting ways to inadvertently injure ourselves.

As a result, I suspect this will be my last ever post*, what with the culmative aches acquired on the weekend all banding together and leaving me convinced I won't survive to the morning. A nasty bruise 3/4 of the way down my spine. Don't know how I got it. Another quite large one on my left leg. A painful, odd looking friction-burn-and-bruise combo on my right elbow that I got by miss-executing a decent down the chain ladder on the playground. And a friction burn on my knee that I got becasue I managed to pick up the only guy there with a swag smaller than mine. But I guess that's what I get for picking up floppy haired emo boys at BnS balls. "But I love them... They're my favourite" I say when anyone warns me against it. Of course, they're not quite as specific as, "Don't do it Sara, he'll have a tiny swag and very long gentleman parts and it will be quite awkward trying to reconcile the two in a sexy sexy manner without injuring either yourself or him" and I kinda think they're worse friends becasue of it.

Real friends will violate the laws of space and time and find this shit out for you and travel back and let you know to hook up with Dreamboat instead, in order to avoid the kinds of aches that follow an evening with a boy still in his teens. But it's okay, I am, for another 48 or so hours at least, still in my early twenties, and can therefore still choose the 19 year olds instead of the 30 year olds.

Even if it's a terrible decision. No matter, I'll be dead soon. Remember me fondly, and raid my stash fairly...

*I am of course, being over-dramatic for comedic effect. When I don't post for another month, it'll be because I'm too busy being an alcoholic and watching sitcoms to post, not because I died from the assorted aches of a debauched last-big-weekend-before-entering-the-mid-twenties booze-and-boys-fest.

So, this happened...

Tonight I went looking for stripey fabric, found a really old demo Kindle and pulled it apart with a butter knife. I found it very interesting, but I realise that such antics are not particularly good blog fodder. Also, I cut my finger. Not like, bad, but it hurts. Kinda like a paper cut, but on the inside of a Kindle.

That's only fair, I guess, since I was prising out it's innards with a kitchen utensil.

/startsulk

I am a sucker. More to the point, I am a sick sucker. Last night I spent 8 hours at work in horrible pain every time I tried to swallow, only to come home, have a shower, mumble something about dragons at my mother and pass out on the floor in front of the fire with the towel still wrapped around my wet hair. Then today (I wasn't supposed to be working, but they appear to have fucked up my roster this week) I worked 6 hours, coughing and spluttering and feeling pretty miserable. Tomorrow, also when I'm not supposed to be working, I've been rostered 10-3, which contravenes both my don't-work-fridays and my don't-work-before-lunchtime rules.

And, even though I have over 200 hours of sick leave accumulated, I go to work, I suffer through it, I share my germs with customers and I devote at least 40% of my concentration to mentally telling myself not to throw up over and over again. Because whenever I try to call in sick they get all passive aggressive; "but we don't have anyone else, wah wah" on me. And meanwhile, the department manager randomly takes a day off a month out of sickleave to "help keep the budget down"

Oh, and the best part? If I quit, I lose all that sick leave. Nearly four grand worth.

/endsulk.

In actual good news, the first issue of GenQ magazine arrived today with my bonus 8 kickstarter bribe fat quarters. Especially loving the brown and pink zigzag one.

Sometimes.

Most of the time, I'm kinda glad I didn't move to Adelaide and do fashion design. The fact that, six months or so after I was due to leave, I pretty much stopped sewing clothes and switched to quilts instead, kinda felt like validation. And even though I'll never really know, I think that, for all that I would have gained, I would have also probably missed out on great things like this blog, and all my amazing local friends, and getting to be a proper bogan.

If I had moved to Adelaide, I don't know that I would be able to sing along to that scene in Magic Mike where he dances to Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy. And that would be a pretty big loss.

Sometimes though, I wish I had. Not that my wardrobe isn't quite bitchin' enough, but it'd be nice to just whip up what I really really want off the top of my head, instead of waiting for the pattern to get here, and knowing that even though it's lovely, I'd like it to have one of those shoulder gussets. I really like them. I could be terribly edgy, hanging out in hip city bars. I'd probably have a girlfriend, because I've heard that all the boys you meet at the TAFE SA arts campus are gay, so most of the girls decide to be too. But I'm sure we'd be very hip, and edgy, and I like to think we would share a wardrobe, which we had worked together on. It's all a fun, entirely fictional alternative to my real life which is: tonight, I went to the gym, and then it was cold outside and my thighs cramped up and were hurting so I came home and got in the electric blanket.

On the other hand, things like this are apparently in season. And I sure as hell don't want to work in an industry that feels this way.

Ow.

For some inexplicable reason, I have made myself a snot-green snowflake.

But I've learned that the first stitch of your round is actually the last*, and I feel the better for knowing it.

I've also learned that when you pick up your yellow crochet hook and bit into it quite hard, because you thought it was a breadstick, it hurts.


*I know that that statement doesn't really make sense, but it's hard to explain. I know what I mean.

Der...

Having spent the day feeling a bit crappy, tonight I decided I wouldn't sew after all. I still ache pretty much all over (canoeing=badness) so I didn't want to try and wrangle any actual quilting, and the white I bought yesterday is natural, not white, which is admittedly what I usually use, but didn't in the case of the sashed quilt, so I'll need to get some actual white tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've re-installed windows on my laptop (finally!) and bookmarked about a gazillion to-do projects from the craftzine blog, as well as writing up a list of things I don't know I should have been buying from the salvos to repurpose into awesomeness. Why did I never think to use old belts as straps on messenger bags?

Pathetic. (Me. I'm pathetic. Not the monsters.)

So, with the new sharper pointier scissors that I bought yesterday, I started cutting more eyeholes in monsters this afternoon.

Well, I say started. I pushed the tip through the fabric and straight into my fingertip.

See that tiny, tiny spot on my fingertip? Look closely, it's tiny. It's been 14 hours and it hurts like hell. I'm a little bit of a sook, in case you haven't noticed. But I appear to own the world's sharpest, pointiest scissors, and they only cost me $7, which seems pretty good value...

Anyway, tonight after work I got the rest of the eyes done, I got all the little arms and horns sewed (all 62 of them) and I snipped all the inside curves and turned them all inside out and I've stuffed 30 of them, but I've run out of episodes of Long Way Down to watch and also, it's 3am.

Just to amuse myself, I've strung my little rope of arms across my fabric shelves - if you're going to mass produce 62 tiny arms, leave them in a chain together, because it makes them much easier to turn right way out and stuff. And you can hang them on your wall.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, here's Casey's poem:

The number of this Aristocrat,

Is the answer that you seek,

Don't get hooked on the Enchanted Forest,

We've a wedding this time next week.

Two to go, and about an hour tomorrow to do them in.

Those monstrous eyes...

Before I do monsters again, I think I need to get myself a BabyGo or a Cricut - my poor thumb has been rubbed raw from cutting all the little circles for eyes. The main problem is how thick it is - I fuse together some white quilting cotton with white wool felt and then another layer of webbing to fuse them both to the face. And since if you draw on the fabric or the webbing it bleeds through when you iron it, there's the layer of paper too. A single layer of cotton isn't enough to cover the print and the wool tends to pill, which shits me, so this is pretty much the only way to get the finish I want.

Still, fusing down the faces is the least production-line-y bit of the process, and therefore one of the bits I like better. What were just shapes now have personalities, even though they don't have eyeballs. One of them appears to be a reincarnated BeeGee, and one of them is shrugging without having shoulders. That's quite a talent.

I also seem to have mainly single-eyed monsters - possibly because I went with bigger eyes this time (easier to sew down) and less eyes also means less cutting. Still, I like one-eyed, since it gives the impression of monstery-ness even though most of them are four-limbed creatures same as us.