Too Much?

How close to the end of a project will you stop? An hour of work left? Half an hour?

Of course, it's hard to know how long something's actually going to take. I have rounded (by about a centimetre) the last corner on the binding. I started it in the middle so there's probably less than 50cm to go, but I'm not sure how long it would actually take. And I'm ready for bed, so it can wait. It's not like I can't do it anywhere, right? Wasn't that the whole point?

Admittedly, I did kinda want to have washed it before I took it to Stonies, not just to (hopefully) crinkle it nicely, but mainly to get rid of the glue residue. When Casey and Jess got here tonight, the first thing they did was whinge that the room smelled a bit funny. I had meant to leave the window open today while I went shopping, but I forgot.

Nice little segue there: Shopping! Today I did a whole lotta op-shops, and thank god for my GPS. Yesterday I got from Parafield (mid north east) to Marion (mid south west) with no GPS, just to prove to myself that I could, but today I happily went wherever it told me too. I had to start in Port Adelaide since Dad needed me to get something for him from there, and I'd worked out a route that got me most of the stores down the west side of the city, all about 10 minutes or less apart. There was one I couldn't find, but I also found two surprise bonus St Vinnies stores and a Red Cross one too.

After 5pm I went to Rundle Mall because late night shopping in the city is on a Friday. And I bought some more stuff. A whole lot of it is basics - a half dozen each of bras, singlets and tees, to go with the four coats I've bought op-shopping, two ballgowns to stash (in January, for a friend's 18th, we're all wearing ballgowns to Dirty Shads, and these were $3 each, so the fact that they're to big for me was irrelevant) two kids rugby jumpers on end of season clearance, two long sleeve tops,  six printed tees, a checked shirt and a white jacket.

And the same shirt dress three times in two colours, because I really like it and it was only $10, and two handbags, and some DVDs, a few fat quarters, and a bit more booze too.

Because, like singlets, socks and fabric, you can never have too much booze.

Sticking with my story

I'm finding it quite hard lately to conceptualise how prints will look in my designs once I've done them in solids.

And that, obviously, is why I had to buy all these - I don't know which four of them I'd like to use, but I want to be ready for the magical moment when I do.

How dull.

Today, because it was on special, and there was only one there, and I am a sucker for either of those and both was making my nearly wet myself, I bought a new keyboard and mouse combo.

The new ones are the untethered ones.

No-one in the house knows though, and Casey has expressed a preference toward the corded kind (they're harder to lose) so naturally, I'm gunna wait till she's on the computer next and start moving the mouse counter to what she is. I'm mean like that sometimes.

I really only mention it because, despite a couple of hours hard work, this is all I have to show tonight.

One day, hopefully soon, it will become 8 satchel bags. The flaps are, for the most part, quilting fabrics, and I've already picked the one that I will either be keeping for myself or re-making. The body of the bag is cotton ripstop, which was $3 a metre at spotlight, and I still have to decide whether or not to add a zip - I want to, since I like zips, and they aren't even that much extra effort really, but I'm torn between the idea of having them be library bags (which is what they're really meant to be, for little kids who might not be able to handle a zip) or actual grown-up satchel bags (except that, even though they're fully lined, they don't have any interfacing, so the shape and stability of a proper bag just isn't there)

I think that instead of doing every step of all of them in unison, I might have to make one in it's entirety tomorrow night to get a better idea of the finished weight of one before I decide to add a zip.

I'm also using belts that I bought at op-shops around town as the straps on half of them, so we'll need to see how that turns out too.

Segues

So today I asked Meagan what she thought about making another baby quilt. She didn't think I should, and I'm inclined to agree with, well, all of you. I don't feel that I'm being invited for the right reasons, so I'm going to do the dignified thing, and run away. She hasn't set a date yet, but she offered to organise it around my weekends off (suspicious much?) and I'm quite happy to run away on any of them.

Speaking of, I'm already planning to run away the weekend after easter. It's my soonest available chance, and 3 weeks before Meagan's due, so probably my latest for a while. If Shay wants to catch up, I am willing to share my zippy knowledge.

And while I'm on zippy knowledge, (I'm getting good at segueing) I bought some more peeled cows (actually, I believe one of them is a peeled sheep) on ebay and etsy, so I'm gunna get a go at making the angst bag as it originally arrived in my brain, complete with raw edged zip sewing. It's the one kind of zipper I've never done before, but I figure that the leather won't stretch in the same way as cotton does. so it should sit nice and straight, and be thick enough to not catch in the teeth if it is accidentally too far over. I spent most of last night on etsy actually, with the initial intent of looking for a good gender neutral fabric to use for the quilt I'm not even going to make any more, but it didn't take me long to start looking at rainbow vintage flannels and embossed leather.

Not all segues are good ones. Well, that's not fair - these were good, but also quite expensive.

No, Sara.

Since I had to go back to Spotlight today for more hobbyfill, I figured I may as well get some fabrics too. And since everyone's been saying how nice the blue and grey is, well, I figure I'd do it again. But betterer.

I've taken out the prints with other colours in them, taken out the solid blues, added a lighter grey and some more DS blues. Apart from the solids, there's three non-DS fabrics in there - the black, grey and white hashed fabric, and the two greys with dots, which are actually the same fabric. I used the wrong side on the original, and I'm going to use both the wrong and right sides on this one. There really aren't that many grey fabrics to choose from, but I'd like to do this one bigger again, so I'll keep an eye out.

I also went to Lincraft and Stitch & Knit today to get some more monster fabrics.

The purple spot is a flannelette, and it and the two batiks came from Stitch and Knit, the blue hashed one was from Spotlight and the other two dots were from a mixed Lincraft bundle, which was half price.

Meagan and I had a bitch sesh after work so I don't get home till 1.30, and then it seemed like a good time to change the background on my phone. I like to use photos of fabrics, and have decided to go with the plaid from the Teddys Garden range.

Dammit, now I want to buy more.

First, I wasted 3 hours on etsy...

Due to sudden-onset-extreme-anxiety over the previous bundle not being gender-neutral-y enough, tonight I went back to fabric shack and ordered another 9 yards of solids - 4 1/2 yards of bright oranges, blues and greens as an alternative, 4 yards of very (really very) dark colours* for a quilt for me and a couple of quarter yards to add to the not quite gender-neutral-y enough bundle, because just because I'm worried that those dusky purples and reddish-browns are too girly, doesn't mean I'm not a girl, and would just maybe like the quilt for me. And that isn't the reason I'm doing this - If it was I'd instead be buying all the same fabrics as last time and making me and Meagan's baby have matchies. We'd be toats cute.

I'd suggest someone needs to take my credit card off me, but I didn't even have to get it out tonight - I know my numbers off by heart...


*angst = emo, emo = dark colours. Stop judging me. If I ever actually get around to making it it will be gorgeous, trust me.

Meh.

I must admit, I'm not good with makeup. Actually, that's an understatement. It's something I barely do at all. I have, apart from my collection of lip smackers, pretty much just two bits of makeup - some very pale foundation powder that I use to cover up blotchy days, and which is pretty much exactly the same as my skin tone in sunlight but which makes me look like a scary ghost in photos, and some mineral makeup powder that is a bit darker that I put on over the top of the pale stuff just in case someone whips out a camera, but which in the mirror looks kindof orange, so I usually take half of it off with a swispers before going out in public with it. Make up is, for me, in the too hard basket, along with sewing with stretch fabrics and fre motion quilting. And because I can't be bothered, it's not something I really spend money on - both those cost less than $10. If it's something I'm going to do maybe 30 days a year, it's not something I'm gunna invest a whole lot of money into. Not when there's fabric that needs buying.

Because of this, it's both a surprise and not surprising at all that all I bought today, boxing day, big sales day, was 3 mascaras. $10, from Woolies. Some kind of special Christmas pack, I dunno. I considered it when it was $15, but that seemed excessive. I wouldn't pay $5 for one, but apparently I would pay $3.33. I tried one tonight, and it seemed a tad underwhelming. Maybe I've been watching too many ads on telly. I though they should be poking someone else's eyes out they'd be so long. Instead, they were a bit darker, and quite stiff.

It all seems a bit of a faff to be honest. The $4 spent on chocolate cake seemed much more enjoyable. I might go eat some more of it.

In the red

So tonight I started work at six, but I had to be in town before the post office closed at five. That was okay, cause I needed to go to Cheap as Chips to get an audio cable, but it's right next door to the post office, so that took me all of 5 minutes.

"Hmm," I thought to myself, "I'm running low on bright white prima, and I don't want my mojo to come back and for me to feel like finishing the sashing on this new quilt only for me to not have enough of the right white. I'd better get some more, and maybe something cheap for a lining for Casey's bag, and perhaps some more of the rainbow seersucker that makes me so very happy every time I look at it all made up into my gym bag."

So I did. And even though I wasn't particularly impressed by the new catalogue when it came out yesterday, I also still accidentally came out with these.

Helen's been telling me for a while that I should make a red and white quilt, and there's quite a lot of christmas fabrics this year that aren't christmassy at all. Of this pile, only the gingham at the bottom (for the backing) and the one third from the top aren't christmas fabrics, meaning they were the only ones that weren't half price. I got fat quarters, for the most part, and a metre of the one second from the bottom because they didn't have any fat quarters left and it was the minimum cut. Oh well, I suppose I have to bind it with something. 

I'm gunna do it as big pinwheels, about 41cm (3 each way) and it will be my first go at trying to use value to make the design visible. If it doesn't work, random HSTs are nice too, and it should be very very quick - once the pairs are sewn it's basically just really big (20+cm) squares.

All nine front fabrics are made by Sugar and Spice Textiles, and I don't know if they're a Spotlight exclusive fabric, but they feel very different to all the other quilting fabrics. Not bad different -  though I can find the texture change a little off-putting when I'm playing with them in amoungst a bundle of other fabrics, but almost brushed, vaguely even like a chamois cloth. I'm very glad they had that some other red fabrics than just the christmas one, since nine's my lazy number and I could only find eight on the half price table that didn't have Santas or trees or candy canes on them, because it means they'll be nice and consistent in texture right across. 

It's the little things...

The Sound of White...

I've been starting to think lately that I should be buying white quilting cotton by the bolt - first there was the pinwheels, then the pavement quilts, and then today I realised that you can sash a disappearing nine patch so it looks like one of those stained glass quilts, except white. And I had a bundle of fabrics that I've had for longer than I've been quilting, but they're all fat quarters which does limit your options a bit - I'd considered seeing if I could shoehorn them into a pavement quilt but I just didn't think it would look right with the two big squares being different prints. Still, disappearing nine patch quilt, that can be done with fat quarters. 

Most of the fabrics in question came form a Fabric Traditions bundle I got at Spotlight a couple of years back. In case you didn't know, Fabric Traditions is a company that ONLY does pre-cuts. You can't get yardage. Which is a shame, since the brown fabric in this quilt is probably my favourite print EVER. There was no yellow in the bundle, but that was okay because the one from Eden by Lila Tueller fits in very nicely, and they stock it at Stitch and Knit, so I went to get some. While I was there I decided that the blue I had was too wishy-washy so I swapped it out for some from the Spirit range, another Lila Tueller one. I bought some pink repro on-point-check to trade in for the pink that was in the bundle, but when I went to Spotlight I changed my mind AGAIN and got some of the pink and orange on point check from the new DS range instead. And I swapped one of the greens for the blue and green check from the previous DS range.

Even though NOvemeber didn't really stop me buying anything, it would appear that I needed to get over it by having a December 1st blow out. Still, they came together very nicely, as shown in this unfinished progress piccie.

It needs the sashing between the blocks themselves done. But it's later than I though - My watch needs a new battery and it turns out it's not still only 1.30 and I'm not making the amazing time I thought I was.

Oh, and if you don't know the song in the title, it's by Missy Higgins. Get amongst it.

BREAKING NEWS

Spotlight have 50% off all their $16.95 and $19.95 p/m quilt fabrics, including the new DS fabrics that came out this week. NOvember could not overcome this.

Aww.

Today Spotlight was having a 30% off day and I forgot it was NOvember.

Black, grey, white and yellow fabrics to make another pavement quilt.

I had been looking at these the other day but I could only find one of the bike prints, and I wanted both.

It's an odd fabric though, a dark unseeded cotton that I found pretty much impossible to match. I bought some of the unseeded prima solid for binding it but it's not close enough to be a border like I put in the pink pavement quilt, so I'm just gunna do squares. The fabric is pretty enough that I can get away with not actually designing for it.

That, and 5 metres of batting (they finally got cozy cotton in... just in time too cause wool's been shitting me) kinda blew NOvember out of the water.

Oops.

Yes.

I know it's NOvember and all...

But I just couldn't.

He was only $2. Zoom in and read the tag if you want proof. And nobody mention the fabric I bought.

Drawing a blank.

So ebay have returned a list of your purchased items to the main myebay page. That's good. While I like having the increased-to 3 years of purchase history in the sidebar, I like having the last month or so's worth there on the main page to remind me of the things that haven't arrived yet. There are actually ones I'd forgotten about. Maybe the post office is holding out on me?

For those of you who don't use ebay, myebay is the page that has your watch list and your saved searches and info on what you're bidding on and, although it disappeared for a month or so there, a list of what you have recently bought. Very very handy when you buy so much you can't remember all of it.

That's all got to stop now, cause it's NOvember now, and also I have no money left after tje weekend. And it's the first Tuesday in November*, AKA, Melbourne cup day.

Something's been bugging me. See, I remember this song about the Melbourne cup from when I was little. But noone at work had heard of it, and neither it seems, has the internet.

Oh the Melbourne Cup,

Brings Australia to a stop,

From Darwin down to Hobart, 

From Perth up to Ayers Rock,

The nation's in a fever, 

You're bound to be caught up,

First Tuesday in November,

They run the Melbourne Cup.

I'll have to ask Mum and Dad tomorrow. It's not the one by Slim Dusty and it's not the one by Mike Brady. And if I google those lyrics, I get... this blog. Cause I posted it last year on the first Tuesday in November. And I didn't know any info on it then, either. Bummer.


*Well, an hour into it. Thus why I don't yet know who will win.

NOvember is approaching.

So, since I've got a BnS ball this weekend, have decided to buy an industrial fairy floss machine with my family* and have concluded that I need a spare bank account with $1000 in it by the end of the year**, I've decided to invent NOvember, a month of saying "no" to stuff I don't really need to be spending money on.

This is not really a concept I've ever been that good at. I'm more of the "well, what the hell else is the point of it" mentality when it comes to money. But, sometimes, when I'm considering buying my 24th pair of jeans, I manage to think to myself "Really, Sara? Really?" and I'll sometimes come to realise that mind-me is correct, I don't actually need it, and I'm being a crazy hoarding lady. Just because I'm down to eight bras now doesn't mean I need to get more . And none of the fabric on my shelf is getting lonely, not with the 100+ other metres of fabric keeping it company.

So I'm calling it NOvember, because that's a bit more catchy that what it actually is - "really, Sara? Reallyvember." That's what I'm gunna try to ask myself for 30 days. In the most condescending type of mind voice I can muster.

I don't know how well it will work. I'm not putting any rules with it, I'm just going to force myself to come up with a better justification than cause it's nice/pretty/useful/I want it as a reason for actually spending money on it.

Christmas shopping season is coming up too. Need to start giving that some thought. Mum and Casey are pretty much sorted, but I can't say what cause Mum snoops around here sometimes. Hi Mum!

*We spent about $50 on fairly floss at the show, and 3/4 of it is already et. We have one of those pissy little table top ones, but there's 50cm industrial ones on ebay for around the $400 mark. Mum and Dad like the idea of going to the local small shows around the place, Casey and I like the idea of taking it to a BnS ball.

**Dad has this old Datsun ute that he's chopping into little bits and welding back together so that it's very, very low, 75% blind spot and bound to get him arrested at some point, so it's been decided that we really need to all have some spare bail money at hand ready for when it's finished.

I am very easily distracted.

Case in point 1 - Today, I went to Spotlight to get some ribbon. I got 3 types, and, well, some other stuff too.

Case in point 2 - Tonight, I was gunna come home and start sewing, but I got on the internet for a bit. For about an hour.

Case in point 3 - There's new episodes of Psych and QI on the internet tonight. But I accidentally watched 4 episodes of Angel instead.

Case in point 4 - I started writing this post two hours ago.

Case in point 5 - I switched to a new tab thinking I'd pressed publish. That was 20 minutes ago.

Cuts and new fabrics

I like fat quarters. I've designed quite a few very easy fat quarter quilts. But I've also designed a lot of quilts that use a standard quarter. Or ones that only use 10cm of each fabric.

I tend to stash small amounts for the most part. Actually, I tend to come up with a project, buy for that and then get distracted with another project and end up with exactly the amount of fabric for a project that I'm now bored with*

When I'm going crazy stockpiling, I usually go for half a metre, unless there's only two fabrics that go together. If that's the case I'll get a metre of each, that way when I inevitably never ever find another fabric to go with them, I can just make my Two Tyred quilt again.

I find the minimum cut thing quite interesting. Fair enough for proper quilt shops to have a minimum 20cm cut. They're a little store, trying their best, and a 1cm leeway on a 10cm cut is 10% of the profit gone. But Lincraft are the same, and their profits don't really come very much from quilt fabrics. Worse are their half price specials, with 1m minimum cut. Apart from backings, who does spontaneous stockpiling of 1m cuts? Especially when they're still $10 a metre when they're half price.

Spotlight have always been very good. 10cm minimum, 5cm increments, 50cm minimum on clearance fabrics. But now they've changed to 1m minimum cuts on their clearance stuff, and today, when there was a metre and 30cm left on the roll, the lady went "ergh, do you want that bit too?" I said not really but I would take it, and so I was charged for that, and when the second fabric came to the same I said "no, not really" and she seemed very miffed. If I'm already having to buy 50cm of fabric I didn't really want, why would I want to by 80cm of fabric I don't want? You're still charging me $6 a metre for it. And you didn't even have any of the black I wanted in the first place, which means I'll ahve to have a hunt through the shed. It would be much easier for me to just bring in the tubs and start putting it all on the shelves I bought for that very purpose, but they are heavy, and I am lazy, and here are many many old episodes of Angel to watch instead.

Anyway, new fabrics.

The start of yet another blue and green quilt. Not that I have a usual quilt or anything.

I absolutely cannot justify these. Except that I like them.

The only DS fabric that I liked that we didn't have at the local spotlight. None of the other yellow ones were very nice.

Two batiks and a Michael Miller I would now have about 4 metres of, except, well, I can't find any of it.

Some stripey fat quarters. I don't have much stripe. And the orange is really pretty.

*This is why fat quarters are good. Lots of patterns use a fat quarter.

Time Travel

Today I had a day off work, and with no BnS balls to attend or plan for, I instead ended up traveling through time.

Now time travel isn't something you can do in the morning. Well, I can't really do anything in the morning, except sleep, and once I was up and about in the barely afternoon, it just sort of happened. The weather was right, an actually chilly but seemingly balmy (after our recent weather) day, with a blue sky and fluffy clouds. The car started playing music I loved half a decade ago, so I decided to go with it, and live my afternoon as if I were 18 again, only with nicer shoes.

Obviously, no longer having a school to attend or a boyfriend to annoy, I decided to to the other thing I did a lot of, on Thursdays of old - spending all my money. Back then I was earning about $180 a week, and with no real expenses, save a bit of petrol and the occasional phone recharge, most of it was spent within a day or two. I had a decent list of things to get - the shampoo that GoLo didn't have yesterday, some bras, another towel for the gym (I only take pretty coloured ones, and all of mums are white) and I needed to go to Spotlight to see what the composition of the fabrics that Meagan had picked were, because for some reason, she ended up with the docket, and I didn't want to wreck them all by putting the iron on too hot.

Buuuut... shopping to a list is not what being a teenager is all about. So I bought shampoo and bras, but I also got some trackies and a jumper and a polo shirt and some hairbrushes and some jeans and a book and some foundation too, which was an odd choice because I've never really been into the whole buying makeup thing, but hey, I was feeling the time travel magic. Then I went to Spotlight, read some tags and realised that despite not really knowing much about fabric, Meagan had managed to pick 100% natural fabrics, for my interfacing pleasure. Gotta love the girl. Also gotta love 30% off precut fabric, which lead to me buying 20 fat quarters, which I didn't really need, but in fairness, I haven't really bought much fabric lately. I feel like I'm on enough of a treasure hunt when I go to the shed, since my boockcases still aren't screwed back.

Approaching the $130 mark, I decided to have what would have been an after school snack (KFC), and went and bought the towels and some silicone chocolate molds, which I thought would make some toats cute cupcakes. Realising I had nearly hit my old $180 budget, I gave myself my last $20 at kmart, and bought two shirts and two more pairs of trackies for $15. It must have been right about when I was in the checkout line that the sun set, because I felt the time travel magic drift away. I took the last of my stuff out to the car, changed the CD, and drove home at 5kph under the speed limit, like a grown up.

I don't really know what prompted my afternoon of teenageyness. Maybe it was just that with all the time I'm spending lately with work and two lots of friends, I needed a day to be me by myself. It was fun. You can't really live recklessly in a four hour window of time, but you can spend recklessly, so that's what I did. It was fun, probably even more so because it was just for the afternoon. For all that I'm worried that I'm stretching myself too thin these days, I still feel more settled in me now than I did then.

Oh, and I have nice fabric in the present too.

I have a plan for the top ten but nothing yet for the bottom - I still haven't even decided whether or not I even like them all together :/

And delicious mini cupcakes

These have since been iced and pretty much all et.

And progress on Meagan's bag

The RM tag came off a pair of $5 jeans from the Salvos, and was the great idea we simultaneously had yesterday. Casey and Mum have both threatened to mug Meagan for this bag and it's not even half done yet.

It's okay, people.

As previously mentioned her on this blog, I have an amazing ability to have a thought, get a little too into the brilliance of that thought, and, within a day or two, have transformed the thought into a time and money consuming hobby, a facebook group or a gym membership. And usually, the first step involved clicking on the tab marked eBay.

My brilliant idea tonight is that I really need to get myself some high heels. I have one pair, some quite nice and quite high wedges that I got for $6 at the Salvos and have worn twice, to two work christmas shows. Not because they're uncomfortable, in fact, as far as 4 inch heels go, they're very comfortable, but more because, really, that's pretty much my only occasion for wearing heels -indeed, the only time I wear a dress*, except for BnS balls, to which I wear, as is traditional, my boots. Nonetheless, in the last two days I have watched a lot of Good News Week, where, for reasons unknown, Claire Hooper and the other female guests are all in jealousy inducing, ankle twisting, toweringly gorgeous heels. And I want some. I could wear them with my dresses, to the G or Dirty Shads (or I could if my friends weren't such flakes, and would come with me.)

Unfortunately, a quick search for "heels" on eBay revealed a sad truth: much of what it in fashion at the moment looks like big clumpy hooves. I found one pair on the first page that I liked, and they were $285. Even with an RRP of $900, that's not much of a bargain if my use of them is, so far, only hypothetical. And they don't look comfortable, only quite funky. And really really tall. Like, regularly falling over, tall. Like, just say no, tall.

So I did. It was much easier than with the boots, which are in my watch list. I'm lucky enough to know that hypothetical Sara isn't me, and isn't limited by my bank balance.

Phew. Crisis averted.

For tonight, anyway.

*One might then ask why my closet is full of dresses I have never, or only once at most, worn. One should stop asking so many stupid questions, lest I slap her, cause my slight dress-buying addiction is none of her goddamn business.

It's Baaack...

Blogger! You're Back! I Missed You!

Now I'd appreciate it if you never did that to me again. If facebook pulled a stunt like you just did there would be rioting in the streets.

Anyway, forgive and forget, and all that.

Tonight I worked late, so all the stuff I was gunna get done, isn't. No bindings have been touched*, no dishes or hair washed, no floors swept and no jeans put in the dryer.

I did light the fire again though, with more WD40, cause I forgot to buy firelighters.

And all that (not) done, I put some Joe Nichols into the little box that talks to the TV, and I've spent the night listening to country songs I've never heard before but to which I somehow know most of the words. It could be that the lyrics are a bit predictable, or it could be that I have some kind of otherworldy, magical connection to this music. I've also made a start on quilt #50.

My math was all wrong. Well, not all of it. I got the number 24 (the measurement of the big octagon in the centre of each ring) right**, so that's good, but pretty much all my other numbers were too big. Still, that's better than too small, and the maths is a year old, so I suppose it was due for some polish.

Yesterday I was a bit despondent because I couldn't find the second piece of Falling Leaves that I needed and the only place I could find any was Fabric.com, so I ordered 4 of the 10 yards they allegedly had left. Today I found the other bit, and I thought, hey, it's cool, the other stuff will back it and bind it. But still, it was 35 bucks I could have spent on something else, and then tonight I got an email from them saying they only had 3.5 yards left, and it was in three bits.

So I had to quickly make sure my math was all right, or at least make sure I had enough fabric. It seems like I do, assuming I don't fuck anything up from this point on, so do I tell them to cancel the order or do I just accept what they're offering? 1.5 yards are still fairly big pieces, but still. The email says if I don't reply in 24 hours, they'll send it as it is, which is awfully presumptuous of them.

Dunno.

Fabricshack.com also sent me an email, because as well I ordered a heap from them - A couple of binding options for the mingle star quilt and some cute cowboy prints and 15 different shades of blues and greens because I wanna make something like this. Their email said they were out of Kona Cornflower, which I'm totally cool with, since, um, I didn't order any. So yay for that.

And now I have two much anticipated days off. So an even bigger yay for that.


*actually, it got picked up off the cutting mat and moved out of the way, but I don't think that counts.
**though if you go back and look at the picture it says 25, but I realised a month or so ago that that was wrong.

Honestly...

I got too many regrets
I've smoked too many cigarettes
I've had more blondes than brunettes
I'm not expecting your sympathy
But it's all been too much for me...
-Monsoon, Robbie Williams.

Okay, so technically, the lyrics aren't quite accurate. But if I had to pick a song to fit my mood, it's be this one.

The "Do you ever feel, already buried deep, six feet under screams but no-one seems to hear a thing" line from Katy Perry's Firework is kinda accurate too.

Because lately, regularly*, I've been feeling like it's all too much. That it's won, I've lost, and now I'm stuck. It's all become too much for me.

At what point should one consider faking ones own death to escape the clutches of a dozen half-done projects, a trail of sketches for dozens more, and a fabric stash that I'm constantly worried will smother me in my sleep?

I am in too deep. My plans stretch too far forward and I will never be able to catch up, never be able to make all the projects I have thought about, done the maths for, bought fabric for. I have too much fabric, and I'm buying it twice as fast as I'm using it - three times, four times as fast. I suppose this is what if feels like to be caught up in a big lie and realising you can no longer talk your way out of it.

Hell, I was never even gunna be a quilter. I was gunna move to Adelaide, do a fashion design course, and then maybe become a buyer for one of the chain stores, or open a little bridal boutique, depending on how I was feeling about traveling. Never did "Amass over 100 fat quarters" show up on my list of life goals. I don't want "Finish your fourteen half done projects" on my to do list. And while I genuinely am the happy, optimistic person, full of wonder and amazement at everything and anything that I claim to be, underlying this is the knowledge that I'm also a big fat faker, and sometimes that bubbles to the top of my personality, and I wonder how the hell I got myself caught up so deep in all this.

I suppose I feel like I'm somehow indebted to all my half done projects, that I only got partway through creating them and what kind of mother would I be if I left them to waste away their days unfinished and unused? That I promised those fabrics something when I pressed the "proceed to checkout" button, and now they're languishing unloved in a box. That if I don't make all the quilts I can see in my head, they will never get made. But every new quilt I think up, every bit more fabric I buy makes it worse, and once the "hooray, new fabric" feeling has worn off, I remember that this has made me even further behind.

My plan to finish at least half of my part done quilts was probably the best compromise between getting at least some of them done and not driving myself bonkers by banning myself from creating new things. For that reason, I wouldn't ever ban myself from buying fabric, not least because a lot of plans I've made already still have little holes in them that need to be filled, and denying myself the option of filling them, or forcing myself to fill them with something I'm not satisfied with would probably make it worse.

But I feel guilty when I'm not getting on with something. I took a break from the big projects last night and pieced myself a couple of little pillows from the charm squares Shay gave me, and even though I needed it to escape from the pressure of the five big projects I'm actively working on, I still felt guilty about it, and tonight to make up for it I told myself I would quilt two of the basted quilts I had lying about. They're pretty much done, almost, and I probably will get them finished before I go to bed, but somedays I kinda feel like chucking it all in, running away from what I've spent so long amassing, because I worry that I'm not realising it's potential, that someone could do a better job of it than me, that I'm just faking it all and pretty soon you're all gunna realise.

BUT...

I'm not a mind reader, but I'm fairly sure we all feel this way about something or another. That we're all just pretending to know what we're doing. And what I've decided is, that's okay. If we're all pretending, and we all know we're pretending, it's a little white lie that's necessary to allow society to function, no different to the lie that a little bit of plastic or paper is worth as much as a trolley full of food. It only is because we all agree it is, and that's okay.

I've decided it's the ones who actually believe all these lies they tell themselves that you have to watch out for. And that I'm gunna get over my worries now, and go and get on with life.

I've got some quilting to do.

*when I say regularly, I mean for at least one minute every day. Regularly doesn't have to mean often. Hayley's comet comes around regularly too. I wish my self doubt only came by once every 72 years.