January 2010

I’ve been good. Despite my friends handing me fabric, I’d managed to decimate my fabric stash this year.  Mind you, my stash wasn’t that big, especially in comparison to what I’ve seen mentioned by a few quilt bloggers I read.  Me, I’m cranky; if my stash starts building up, it means I’m not using what I’m purchasing, and that doesn’t seem like a good use of money.

However, i can give you a taste of what’s to come in 2010.  You can blame Jacob and Alice.  Well, and me.

Jacob, for one, doesn’t know how to do things by halves. In the summer of 2009, I mentioned to him that fat quarters made excellent and cheap gifts for quilters. He was seeking gift ideas, and I thought, What could be the harm in telling him this?  I expected a padded envelope with a few fat quarters tucked in.  Instead, over the course of the summer, I received these.

When we were over at Hallie and Remy’s a few months back, she asked if she could show me something. When we went to the back bedroom, she pulled out two sets of quilt squares.  One was hexagons** and the other squares.  There were 29 squares in all, not enough for a full adult-sized quilt, and she wondered if anything could be done with them. I said yes.

A few months later, she announced she was pregnant with her first child.  (A girl, or so the ultrasounds say so far.)  I don’t remember who suggested the idea of turning these unfinished squares into a quilt for her baby, but it seemed right and perfect. I took the squares but wasn’t sure what to do.  The fabrics are old, but I don’t know how old, and they have that aged cream-and-tan patina that only comes with aged cotton.  Modern prints would look out of place and jarring, and white would only make the fabrics look even more aged than they already were.

Saturday lunch is a long-standing favorite of ours. It’s a chance for Jeff and me to talk without the artificial constraint of a lunch hour, or the tiredness that comes after a work day. Most are unmemorable quick outings; today’s will stick in my mind for a while, but not in a good way.

Our last experience at Spice of India was a little odd at times, but the dinner showed some promise. Enough to give it a second try, anyway. Everything I’ve heard and read indicated that it was better visited at lunch.  That’s what we did this time, except this time it was on a Saturday. Thirty minutes after opening we were the first customers in the door; the satellite broadcast of a Bombay radio station was switched on as we walked in the door.

So, if you’d asked me the question even up until a few days ago, I would have said the answer was yes! Over the past year or so, I’ve been trying to find a few quilt blogs to read, quilt blogs of people whose sense of color and design interested and challenged me, and let me tell you — these blogs were killing my spirit.

Not just killing my spirit, but resurrecting it and smacking it around again just to really get the point across.  These women — for, let’s be honest, I’ve picked the only hobby more female-dominated than my current employer** — were cranking out quilts like nobody’s business.  Yes, they’re machine quilting, but I kid you not, every few days it was

O HAI I HAVE FINISHED ANOTHER QUILTZOR SEE I HAZ PHOTOS!

Do you know what I love about the First Amendment?

I’m starting to lay groundwork for a quilt that I’m making — get this! — for myself. I promised Jacob that I would use at least part of his fabric presents to me to actually create a quilt that I would keep for myself. It’s taken on a life of its own, though: it’s actually going to be my first two-sided quilt.

The catch is that it’s about me. Both sides of me. In our friendship we’ve created shorthand terms for those sides:  the ‘white librarian’ and the ‘red librarian.’ The side that’s publicly presentable, and the other side that’s only seen by people I’m close to. The good side and the naughty side. I love the idea of having a quilt that was pretty and filled with all the things I love — and then on the reverse, also pretty and filled with other things I love.

I’m pretty sure there’s a place in geek hell for people like me.  So @webchick posts something (private) about Drupal’s form API and arrays, and my response?

$formAPI = array( array( array( array(‘value’ => ‘SUNSHINE!’) ) ) ); // too nerdy?

Window seat, please.

Sunday afternoon. I've done almost no sewing this week; I've been mentally drained out of proportion to my actual physical tiredness. Jeff and I took our first stab at geocaching yesterday with mixed results, but we intend to try again; today we caught a morning matinee of 'Sherlock Holmes' and then made a quick grocery run before heading home.

Jeff sleeps right now, having stayed up a good chunk of the night while the storms were rolling through. The cats, fed, are hunting for warm places to nap. A good Sunday, overall.

I am nearing the time of final assembly on Lost in Translation, which is now definitely Tim's quilt. I've decided to make a great, grand usage of the last of the fabric I've been using for the square centers; I'll post photos when I have them.