Old Age and Forgetfulness

Do you ever have moments when you realize that you forgot something? I do all the time.

It seems the older I get the more forgetful I am. I mean, for instance, things that I would never have second guessed myself on just a few years ago suddenly require a quick glance at the original to make sure I’m doing it right. This goes for recipes or cleaning or whatever. Okay, so maybe only the foods I don’t make all that often require me to look at the original recipe every now and then, but still, I used to be able to look at a recipe once, make it, and continue making it over and over without needing to refer back. Not so much anymore.

I also have apparently gotten into the habit of forgetting my stuff at work. Yesterday as I walked through the house door and realized I only had my work bag (or my murse as my coworkers call it, but really it is just a market bag to keep my keys, phone, wallet and paperwork in… oh gawd, it is a murse!) in my hand and not the bag I had my Fall Quilt in, I screamed out an expletive. Then threw out another. And then decided what the hell, I wasn’t really going to work on it most of the weekend anyway since we are taking down our Christmas tree and North Pole Village today. At most I will have tomorrow after church, and since our church is the next street down from where I work, I’ll just pick it up after service. That is, assuming of course, I remember to do so.

Hand Quilting

I just started hand quilting the Fall Quilt. Oh boy, what am I getting myself into

Figuring that I’d be in for a long project, I decided to use a simple quilting pattern. Nothing fancy and straight from the book I took the pattern from, Material Obsession. However, what I did not anticipate was just how difficult it would be to quilt a large, full-sized, uh, quilt. This is so confusing to me. It’s like QUILT in the quilting world is like SMURF in the Smurf world; you just use it in place of any other word, or for when there is no other word to describe what you are trying to convey. Quiltity quilt quilt quilt!

Anyway, so, I’m using a cotton thread because the perle cotton I wanted to use I couldn’t find a color that would go with the quilt very well. Instead of single stranding it, I doubled it up. I don’t know why, but this is something I’ve done forever and continue to do when hand-appliquéing as well. Perhaps it is because if I’m going to be obvious about my stitching, I want it to be really obvious. Or perhaps it is simply a habit I never grew out of. Either way, I’m quilting with two strands of thread which, honestly, is a pain in the ass when it bunches up which inevitably it does… often.

At this point I’m thinking of ripping it all out and starting over, which if I did it now would save me a lot of heartache if I decided to do this later, especially since I’m only about a quarter of the way through my first pattern. Okay, I have to be honest, the pattern is an eight and a half inch square with a six and a half inch square inside which will be repeated all over the quilt in random places and usually overlapping. It’s quite modern, but then again, so is the fabric and pattern itself. I debated for a while over whether to do circles instead of squares to mimic the circles in the fabric, but in the end decided to keep them squares for ease of quilting. Now, if only I could make sure that when I’m quilting I’m actually going through the backside and not just the front.

Foolish Filmmaking

Yesterday I decided to film most of my day. Okay, actually just a small part of it.

In an effort to keep my interest in documenting the everyday, I decided to employ the powers of the video feature on my camera. I started off the morning in my usual way, making coffee and feeding the animals and blogging. And once I was done with that, it was time to get started on this unscripted documentary filmmaking experiment.

The first episode is me giving our dog Lucy a bath. Exciting, yes. Actually, not really. But then again, rarely is life. However, I also filmed my first endeavor to use my 1963 Singer Touch & Sew Deluxe Zig-Zag Model 600 Sewing Machine to do free-motion quilting. That two-part video will be ready next week. Eek!

Bath Time

It’s time to give our dog Lucy a bath. I’m telling you, she’d might difficult.

We have a Great Dane, and while by Great Dane standards she’s quite small, she is still one-hundred-twenty-five pounds of pure muscle and stubbornness. When it is time to give her a bath it can take ten minutes just to get her into the tub. She also needs her nails cut and ears cleaned, so this should pose to be a fantastic morning. Please allow me to continue drinking my coffee.

Having a dog who has chronic yeast infections due to both environmental and food allergies and on top of that has developed an allergy to the yeast itself is beyond frustrating. Sure, we feed her food that doesn’t have any grains since her allergy tests showed that, well, she’s allergic to practically all of them, but her environmental allergies include a wide variety of trees, grasses, mold and mildew, all of which are prominently featured here in the Pacific Northwest. One good thing to come from moving out of the old house is that this one does not have a mold or mildew problem, which has cut down tremendously on her major outbreaks.

But, first things first, I need to wash all of her bedding in All Free & Clear and cider vinegar to remove any allergens and also not leave any residues that might further irritate her skin. I use about a quarter cup cider vinegar in the wash and another quarter cup for a fabric softener. By bedding I’m also including her sofa quilts I made so she doesn’t stink up the couch too much. It still needs Febreezed because, damn, that dog’s yeasty body odor penetrates EVERYTHING. However, after a bath she smells pleasant… for a day or two anyway.

Projects

Now that all the holiday hustle and bustle is over, it’s time once again to focus on unfinished projects. But with so many of them, it may be hard to figure out just where to pick up again!

Let’s see what I’ve got on my To-Do List… the Desperate Housewife’s Quilt blocks I’m terribly behind on; the Fall Quilt that I need to find a quilt hoop for so I can begin hand quilting; the Uninspired Quilt needs to be sandwiched and quilted (although with a lackluster name like Uninspired, it is no wonder I haven’t!); the Frog and Fairy Quilt that was commissioned months ago desperately needs to be quilted and sent off to the recipient before the baby arrives; my 17^th Birthday Quilt top my mother made me also needs a backing and quilted before the end of the year, especially since I turn 35 in March. These are just the unfinished quilt projects I’ve got that I want to (or need to) finish by year’s end and don’t include the ones I want to get started this year.

I suppose if I made a plan and accounted for when to do everything it would be beneficial. Supposedly. If I were to make a plan today, it would include a trip to Country Manor, my local quilt shop, to find a quilt hoop with the gift certificate my husband got me for Christmas. Maybe I’ll even pick up a couple balls of perle cotton too. Actually, that is my plan. Now I suppose the only way to fulfill said plan would be to get dressed and ready for the day.

Time For a Change

Sadly, it is almost Epiphany, which in our house is when we take down the Christmas decorations. I can’t wait to take down the tree, but the North Pole Village just looks so cute this year!

When we take down the Christmas stuff later this week, I’m thinking it might be a good idea to do a little rearranging. Okay, so maybe I think it is simply time to leave everything in the living room the way it is and bring in another piece of furniture from the garage. I’m leaving my options open, however, in case this plan doesn’t work out so well. Aesthetics are one thing, but honestly, I really like the way it is set up right now. Of course, with the tree out of the way the entire bay window will be void of furniture and I’m thinking the old shelf unit I had on the wall of my craft room at the old house would work well there in front of the window once I put feet on it… or legs. I haven’t decided. I suppose the only way to figure out if it will work will be to actually put it there and find out.

The plan is to have it be our media storage for the Blu-ray discs and DVD sets that aren’t on the hard drive connected to the media box. Well, that’s my plan anyway. I’m not sure what my husband will want to do with it. We may want to use it for board games or photo albums or something else. Methinks the storage possibilities will eventually work themselves out based on whatever we feel like we want to have in it at the time we bring it into the house. Then again, it may not work out at all, in which case I will simply put the living room back the way it was before Christmas.

New Year

Celebrating a bad year wasn’t going to happen for us. Celebrating the prospects of a new one, however, I’m all for.

The year 2011 was a bad year for us, and with that there wasn’t much to celebrate. We lost our home, some friends, our kids, family members and a lot of our pride. Even on years like this I normally would still feel like having a few people over, but neither my husband or myself felt the urge to clean off the dining room table or vacuum. Thus, party for two.

But with a new year comes new resolutions. Personally I feel like I haven’t been capturing life’s moments as well as I have in the past. I used to be a prolific picture taker, snapping up photos of nearly everything. We also haven’t had pictures printed since 2007, not that we necessarily need to, mind you, but we don’t even have a digital photo album created. It would be nice to have the photos accessible to view. I smell a project coming on. Perhaps we should also break down and figure out when our professional photographer friend, Sarah (http://sarahcostaphotography.com) can take pictures of us to put into the frames my husband’s mom got us for Christmas.

So maybe one day I will look back on 2011 and think it wasn’t such a bad year after all. However, at this moment in time, I’m glad it is behind us and look for forward to what 2012 has to offer. Hopefully it isn’t the apocalypse because that would suck.