sewing

Stick with me here. You'll read the first few paragraphs here and wonder how in the world this is going to have a happy ending, but … it does. I promise.

* * *

I have struggled to name this quilt, as well as to write about it. It goes without saying that 2011, thanks to Jeff's accident, was … hell, let's pick a few adjectives:

Travel looks glamorous for the first thirty seconds, especially when it's work travel. New places! New things! The implication of being skilled enough that you need to take your skills to the people who need them!

Except it isn't really like that. It's looking at your cats and saying, "Shit, honey, I'm so sorry. Please don't bite the cat-sitter. I have to go to the airport again…"

I knew I'd flown one too many times this past week when I walked up to the coffee stand and said, "Oh, when did the coffee machine break? It was working when I was here a few days ago…"

I spent a few days in Washington DC, at Matthew's house. It was an actual vacation, albeit a short one. I felt vaguely ashamed at how I roosted on the couch for the entire weekend, barely moving, but I wasn't ashamed enough to actually get up and do something about it.

My vantage point:

It was a good, and needed, rest. My unnamed pentagonal hand-sewing project, code-named Bow Tie Pasta, got plenty of love. We watched the entirety of the UK version of The Office (♥), the Rifftrax for Inception, and more. It was absolutely what I needed.

After six nights in the dark, my power returned last night. I am immensely grateful that my house escaped the widespread devastation that can be found in my community. I've posted my photos of the devastation and its aftermath to Flickr; I did not seek out damage for photography purposes, but it was everywhere I went. it took a few days to rescue Tenzing from the vet's, thanks to this mess in front of their building:

['Lucky house, lucky vet']

As part of setting up my sewing room, I've discovered that I have a ton of goofy silly fun cat fabric:

I've started cutting … a small portion … of it up to make more of those velcro-closed catnip squares that Heather showed me how to make years ago. They're cheap, they're awesome, they're washable, and they've got to be one of the best cat toys ever: two squares sewn together on three sides, and the fourth side is closed by velcro:

Open toy. Dump out old catnip. Add new. Close velcro. Toss to cat.

Crystal refers to these as "Tenzing's make-out squares" because of how he'll grasp them with his paws, bring them to his face, and rub and … uh, suck … on them. It's simultaneously gross and hilarious.

I changed up the quilts page a bit recently to give some better insight to what's going on in my head over here. Drupal lets me be flexible with my content types, and some time ago I set up a content type for my quilts. If you look at http://domesticat.net/quilts you'll see my current works-in-progress are roughly ordered by state of completion. I thought I'd explain the terms; I get the impression sometimes that my friends think this process is really inscrutable, when it's not.

Designing and researching.

It's in my head. There's a fine line between "I have an idea" and "Designing and researching." D&R implies a level of commitment.