Favourite Things 5am Saturday

And so, It's a quarter to 5 Saturday morning again. I really need to start going to bed earlier.

Oh well, tonight at least I didn't waste, because I made a backing for a forgotten quilt top.

It's very bright. I wasn't planning on doing something this bright, but it was bulk stash, and it doesn't matter as long as I'm finishing things and using up stash. Also, loving the warm fuzzy feeling of achievement. But that might just be indigestion. I'd forgotten too how much everyone liked the pink pavement quilt top.

Also, loving the $10 spotlight vouchers, especially the fact that you can use them 4 times over the 4 days. Today, I bought 10 fat quarters, already reduced to $2 each, so with the voucher it came to $1 each. Then, I doubled the size of the bundle with stash stuff.

I think I'll use this to make another of those random-rectangles-arranged-into-squares-done-up-in-a-basket-weave-type-design-and-set-on-point quilts. And maybe think up a better name for it.

Also this week I've been loving nuts and dried apricot, but when I say dried I mean really dried. Dried apricots on their own are nowhere near dry enough, and I have to come up with a way to make them as dry as the little bits of apricot in the mini snack boxes.

Kellogs mini-wheats are now only available in blackcurrant, but they're still quite delish too. Strawberry was better though.

Magnets of course, remain awesome. They always, always will.

But really, my absolute favourite thing this week (and last week too actually) would probably be bacon. Bacon is delicious, and quick, and easy, and I particularly like it in the middle of the night when I get home from work.

The reason I got nothing done tonight:

New magnets came in the mail.

And that cube layout is fiendishly difficult. And then I lost one.

 But it's okay, I found it again. Yay!

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.

Help...

I'm in a bit of a conundrum. One of the girls from work is pregnant and, like Meagan, she doesn't want to know what the baby's going to be. I'm not super close to her but her boyfriend has been friends with Meagan since highschool. I have been invited to her babyshower.

Question: do you think she's expecting a quilt?

If she knew what she was having, I would probably do her one. Girl quilts are easy. Boy quilts aren't that hard. But gender neutral quilts shit me. Green is my favourite colour, but I don't like the fact that is the gender neutral colour of choice. Orange is very in right now, what with tangerine being the colour of the year, but that hasn't filtered down to our Spotlight, who only got half the oranges in the new DS range (and none of the greens - boo), and oranges are especially hard to compare on a computer screen. What's more, soooo many fabrics, even ones that aren't girly, have flowers on them.

I'm not a big advocate of if I could do it all again-ing, but in this case, if I could do it all again, I'd buy a dozen bundles of the aqua, orange and brown mingle bundles, back when I could get them for $15 each. And then not only would I have the perfect go-to bundle whenever I needed a quick gender neutral baby quilt, I wouldn't be so worried about the fact that I haven't seen what is still my favourite quilt I've ever made in almost a year.

Cause I could just make it again.

I think I'd rather just find that one though.

Wholecloth Stubby Holder

It took a depressingly long time, but I finally worked out a way to get a nice finish on a stubby holder with the cross stitch cottons.

The trick it seems is to do it with one piece of insulbrite twice the length, and to just quilt with the fancy thread through the half that will become the outside, and then do plain quilting through the other half - quilting through two layers makes it incredibly boofy, and boof both feels odd in your hand, and means there are flat bits that the cold will penetrate through.

Tragically, I used all my velcro on my 4 goes at doing this. Will need to get some more, I guess.

Nothing, and Something.

Tonight I have done nothing, and, actually, not felt too bad about it. I went to Spotlight in my lunch break this afternoon and bought some stuff to make stubby holders.

But that was a whole eight dollars. If I'd spent a fortune on stuff especially to start it tonight, and then not started it, I would have been cross at myself. But since after leaving Spotlight I went to McDonalds and spent $8 on my actual lunch, it's okay.

Tonight though I did go a little bit shopping crazy - I found a website with some nice bag bits fairly cheap, and more importantly, fixed $3 postage worldwide, so I spent $40 on rectangle loops and sliders and a couple of swivel things and some magnet clasps that looked prettier than mine and were still cheaper than buying them individually, though not cheaper than buying the bulk packs of the slightly shoddy ones they have at lincraft.

Oh, and I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but I've finally ordered a Kona colour card! Hancocks sent me an email a few days ago saying they had them in, and that if I spent just $70 more they'd give me free postage.

And I love that kind of challenge. According to the email I got, it's on it's way.

A Zen bit of Angst.

In a strange sort of way, I feel incredibly zen about the Angst Bag. Maybe the clue is in the name - the fact that there was angst before I'd even designed it meant that by the time it came to make it* I was pretty chill about everything.

Not that there were any huge dramas - one of the cross stitch cottons ran out half way through a quilting line but I just magically joined the next bit up and kept going. I made the lining 5cm too big, so I just trimmed it down. I stabbed myself with a pin, but hey, that's what sewing's all about.

It's not perfect. It has it's faults. Some slightly messy lines, the stitching going completely mental when I just sewed on the tab at the end of the zipper.

Whatevs. It's nice. I like it. I think it's going to be liked. I can't wait to make myself a mini version in black with rainbow stiching.


*admittedly, it was about a 5 day turnaround, but I like my emotional rollercoasters like I like my real rolercoasters - fast.

Lost: Linky Leader and Bloggy Friend. If found, please call...

Has anyone heard from Shay lately? I was all set to write tonight about how much I love a bitch session, but I just looked for something to link up to and there wasn't anything there.

I did read something the other day about a lady from Adelaide finally claiming a $900,000 jackpot that she apparently got as a christmas present but never got around to checking, so maybe that was Shay, and she's bumped up her Hawaii trip without telling anyone.

It's a shame, that would make a fantastic favourite things friday post.

Anyway, yeah, I love a bitch session. I know it's a bit mean at times, and it amuses he how some bitch sessions are about how bitchy certain other people are, but on the other hand, it's a handy way of reminding ourselves that the human experience is pretty much universal, and we really are all in it together, even when we're not. So yay for having a whinge to an agreeable ear.

We got the custom batch of monsters finished tonight, and yay for that too, and also a resolute "If I say I'm going to do monsters in the next 6 months, slap me."

And the fantastically named "Angst Bag" (thanks Thea) is coming along nicely: the outside's all done, the inside's nearly done and then it just needs a zipper to join it all together.

Actual sewing!

There is a problem in watching a new show (or even a quite old show) while doing the fiddly bits on monsters that are hella boring to do without some kind of distraction, and that problem is this: a movie goes for about 2 hours. A TV show goes for about 20, even if it was only moderately successful.

Anyway, I'm watching Life again, because I have no idea how it ended. Actually, that's a lie. Despite not containing the words "Spoiler Alert" anywhere in the page, the Wikipedia article on the show gives it all away. But I'm cool with that.

So yeah, monsters are all pinned ready to sew tomorrow, at which point I can turn them right way out, stuff them and they can start making their way to their new homes.

Before I got started though I made a bag. Not a very good bag, since it was really only a mock up version of the bag that I spent a goodly portion of last night working out as I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep, but still.

It has a very pretty embroidered top which I like a lot a lot.

Which is made by winding half a skein of variegated cross stitch cotton onto the bobbin and sewing it from the underneath. I felt that it would work in theory, but I really wanted to try it out. You've only got 4m of sewing distance though before you have to put in a new bobbin.

Unfortunately, I made the flap too short anyway. But it's nice to know that it all works in theory, and that most of my maths was right (though I cut it a lining twice and got it wrong both times, so I gave up on lining it, zigzagged over the inside seams and used the fabric to set the zip instead)

But I realise that my problem with the lining was the confusion inherent in using a 30cm long see-through ruler and measuring 17.5cm as 13.5cm. Usually, my ability to read backward, upside down or mirrored words quite easily is a handy talent, not so in this case.

Still, the most important thing is that it should scale up nicely to make the bag I was angsting about the other night. I guess that's why I couldn't start it then; a better design was waiting to be thought up.

I'm glad I'm not an actual parent.

At what age should someone stop believing in the tooth fairy? Maddy is nine now, and even though I don't know at what age I stopped believing*, I'm fairly sure it was younger than that. Along with money, we have sometimes written notes, so maybe it's our fault

Is fault the right word to use? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that she believes in the tooth fairy? I believe that stories such as the tooth fairy are important, since it primes us as children to accept things that don't exist (like santa or the easter bunny) in preparation for the grown up things that don't really exist that we nonetheless have to believe in to be functioning members of human society, (like truth and justice)

But then that's a theory I got from the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, along with a belief that the most logical set up for tooth fairies would be some kind of franchise operation.


The internet seems to think about 10. But I think my internet either has some kind of separation anxiety going on, or either it thinks I'm fat, because whenever I go out to the kitchen, it stops working. It's fine if I go to the bathroom, or to work, but if I go to the kitchen, dropout. So clearly it's deranged, and not to be trusted.

Anyway, I guess my point is that I'm worried that my otherwise very smart little sister is going to be derailed into a life of Nigerian bank scams and fake European lottery wins because I fabricated some quite flimsy evidence that the tooth fairy exists, based solely on the fact that once upon a time I used to do all my as like the computer does instead of like a circle with a stick on the side, which is how Maddy thinks I write. If she falls for that, how will she be able to tell if that email from paypal is real, or a nasty phishing scam?


Ooh, hey, new justification for not giving them the good desktop. Yay!


*I have to think very, very hard about what I did last week.