ooh, i forgot! i have cute pictures of the cat (who is pretty freaking awesome when he stays away from the yarn and stops meowing in the morning) from halloween. the dog got locked in the sewing room with me all night, barking her face off, and the cat spent all night here:





because he was afraid of the barking. poor little monkey!

sharing the yarn love

i've been knitting a lot lately, and have been able to share the yarn love a LOT--we've got a knitting group at work, i've got great ladies to knit with at home, i dragged a few people to a recent fibrefest, and i'm even getting the cat and the boy into it. it turns out that in another life, the cat and i would have been fast friends, what with our mutual love of yarn. sadly, in this life: the cat is a complete a-hole who rips my yarn apart if i leave it anywhere lower than the top of the bookshelf. SIGH. i'm figuring it out, but not without frustration, sadly.

BUT, i've been getting all kinds of things finished, and even more started. the girl at the yarn store has started making fun of me for turning up so often! i've uploaded some photos, but don't really have anything interesting, since i just remembered that i forgot to photgraph the two baby quilts that i just finished.

more soon!

oh blogging...how i have missed you. same old same old, with an added whinge about my computer giving out again a bit. managed to miss blogtoberfest, which makes me a bit sad. i've also been missing writing.

but, i've been crafting up a storm, and will have tons of pics soon. :) baby things galore, and i've started christmas knitting, and i just found out that almost everyone at work is crafty too, so we might start a lunch-time knitting club, which i think would be simply divine!

all for now, mostly a post for myself to assuage some of the guilt and get myself back here.

i am up to date on all of my committments, and am ahead on the baby gear that i've been knitting. have a ton of bibs to make, but they're easy to whip up. and i've got a whole weekend to ease up and do not much. and by "not much", i mean "a whole lot of crafting". it's going to be great.

ho.ly.hell.

that's how i'm feeling. i've been traveling a lot for my new job (as if a new job wasn't busy enough, but i've been on three trips in the last month and a half, and have another one coming up in june), and i'm tired. not to mention unkepmt and not-at-all crafty.

PLUS, it's wedding central here, and frankly, that's tiring me out too. i don't feel like i've had any time to just be at home. and we got a new kitten (who is freaking ADORABLE, even when i want to kill him at 5.30 this morning when he was trying to play with my hand. with his claws.), and he didn't want to come say hello when i got home last night, and he's gotten bigger, and the dog is all freaked out that i've been gone so much (maybe this time she won't come home...? every time i leave the front door), and i haven't been seeing the boy, and the sewing machine is WAY at the bottom of the list, which makes me sad.

but, not to be too whiny: i've seen some amazing stuff, and my job is challenging and great, and i'm thinking that i might even like owning a cat. once he learns to sleep through the night, and i train the boy to not get mad at me when i tell the cat to shut up in the middle of the night.

i think that i might have some pictures to post tomorrow. because i will have time tomorrow to craft a bit (YAY!) and also to FINALLY upload pictures from my camera. :)

thanks for listening to my whining, internets.

kind of quilting bee fail recovery...

SO, i'm not quite so behind on my bee blocks. although EVERY block that i tried today was some kind of fail. possibly something to do with being home sick for the last FIVE days, and still not being 100%. at least, that's the story i'm telling. i finally, FINALLY had some energy back, and thought that it would be good to catch up on some sewing. not catch up on laundry or house cleaning, no, no. the sewing machine. :)

first up was what i thought would be the easiest, a monkey wrench and a shoo-fly block:



if you notice, there's just one block there. yep. i managed to run out of fabric. and i swear that i followed the directions *exactly*! :( off to an excellent start.

on to an epic block fail. my genius...cut the fabric for paper piecing and THEN realised that i couldn't just mirror everything, because fabric has a right side and a wrong side. enter S,M,S and some more fabric, and the block FINALLY came together, althoguh not without some seam picking because i sewed the blocks together backwards. BUT, i REALLY like the block, and the fabrics Catherine picked were just gorgeous.



then on to what should not have been a block fail since all it consisted of was sewing scraps on a pre-cut template. but there was seam-picking here as well, and i'm not sure that i love the end result. i think that i didn't do a super job on the fabrics, but she wanted it to be scrappy, and no matter what i did, it won't match what everyone else did, and that's the point, right? or something. but i *do* love the spiderweb blocks, SO cute! i will definitely be doing this block for something. something small-ish, i think...



and then, since i was on a roll, i started cutting for some pillowcases for our throw pillows to go with our new couch. didn't get very far since i only had so much of our fabric pre-washed (since i wanted to test washing the upholstery fabric, and only wanted to possibly ruin some of it, not all of it). they're going to be cute!

and now for the best news: i think that i'm feeling well enough and sounding well enough that i can re-integrate with society tomorrow! :D my shadow will be sad, since she's spent the last 5 days napping with me and insisting that we dog park RIGHTNOW...hard life.

spring to finish...?

jacquie's hosting another "blank-to-finish", and i'm usually pretty enthusiastic. but i'm not today. i should be, but i'm sick, and i haven't been sewing much, and i'm behind in my bees, and yeah. i have one top that needs to be sandwiched and quilted, one wedding quilt that needs to be start-to-finished, a baby blanket ditto, and now two sets of quilting bee blocks from my lovely bee'ers that need to have something done with them. i'm not sure why i'm not just independently wealthy so that i can spend all day at my sewing machine, srsly.

plus, my little blog is terribly neglected.