the chicks have legs!

The chicks for the baby quilt finally ALL have legs!

I laid these out first thing this morning to spritz the blue lines out from behind the legs.  The cats promptly ran through them.  They're fairly straight again, but since they need to be pressed anyways, I'm not too worried.

My plan is that these are first on the list today - assuming they are dry and the blue is gone.

(If they're not dry, I will make more cat toy labels and work on that mountain - also on the list, but I want to get this moved forward, too.)

Other than making a list of all the projects I have going and a checklist for each (I have so much, it's overwhelming, and somehow making the list made it easier - bonus, I get to check things off!) and gathering fabrics for the Ho quilt and hanging the quilts my evil fur-kids pulled off the wall, I haven't spent much time in my sewing room this week.

Speaking of the Ho quilt.  I went through my stash and found reds and greens for the letters.  I'm still struggling with the "grey" listed in the pattern for trees.  I did find a holly print that might work.  I'll worry about that later.  And I promise photos of fabrics soon.

Other happenings - FOMO (fear of missing out) finally got the better of me, and with making more money being full-time, I could afford the Cat Lady Box subscription.  Though I didn't take a photo of the first (black cat theme!) box, I did get a photo of Freddie, one of my resident black cats, acting like a derp while playing with a wand toy that came in the box...

The box can come with cat toys or not.  You know I chose the toys, right?  I mean, even before seeing this, you knew.  The little stuffed cat at his feet is also a toy, but I let him choose which toy and he loves string toys, so he chose that one.  (It's got a little paw with feathers on the end, but he went for the string first...I found the feathers laying around the room later.)

And then there's the books.

I finished on Monday, this:

In short, this is an epic adventure of Chinese mythic creature Monkey.  It contains his origin story, a long life-changing journey, and finally his becoming a Buddha.  It is considered a classic, and I do like to sprinkle classics into my reading, but this...well...apparently epic classics are not my thing.  (Don't hurt me, but I read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy and felt the same about them.)  Basically, you spend 300 pages getting there, 5 getting home and maybe 1 reaping the rewards.

I did, however, learn some about Chinese culture and beliefs, so I'll consider it a win there.  And the story itself wasn't bad, just long.

Next up, I stayed up late last night to finish this one for you!

Set in 1845, this is the story of a widowed "old" woman (she eventually reveals she is in her early 30's) who finds herself at the scene of a murder and, through a convoluted turn of events, decides to solve it.  And, spoiler alert, does.  Or at least seems to - the book leaves us with the policeman and coroner heading off to make sure her conclusions are correct.

Though the book wasn't bad, it just didn't...I don't know.  Her relationship with her servants seems off, her constant referral to herself as old (and I'm picturing someone in their 60's or older until she told me otherwise), and a side story about her need to remarry just...I don't know.  I felt like the characters had no past or future, they just were.  There was no why she was widowed, no why her housekeeper was cranky, no why the guy she maybe would marry was so awful.

And then, without any parsing of details to let us in on things, BAM, we had a murderer.

It wasn't bad.  It wasn't good.  Not an author I'll seek out again.

Here's to hoping the new book is better...

Time to go sew some chicks together!

Happy quilting!

Katie

yet another week of not much sewing

I feel like every week I think I'll figure out this working full time and getting sewing done better, but it never seems to go that way!  I did get a little in, but don't have much to show for it.

I sewed a lot of the cat toys - they get a little tag inserted in them, but I ran out of tags, so I had to make more.  And then I ran out again, so I'm going to have to make yet more.  I cut a LOT of toy pieces.  I don't have any photos, but here's an old one of some finished toys...

I think I cut about 400 zillion, so it's gonna be a long process.  Eventually, once they're sewn, it will be a good project to work on while watching movies or whatever.

I've been waiting for Christmas fabrics to go on sale because of the annual pillowcase gifts for the three nieces (and one husband-of-niece).  That happened this week, so part of one of my full days off was spent running that errand...and getting dinner...

I got a photo at the store before they were cut so I could remember what went with what.  Those dinosaurs crack me up - I hope the recipient agrees!  I've gotten them washed, but the construction will commence at a later date.  These go fast, so I'm not worried.  I just try to get the fabrics early before the best stuff is taken.

While I was perusing the Christmas fabrics, I found this:

Those of you who read my blog post last week KNOW where this is going.

I was giggling quite a lot in the store about this.  Because I could not have found something better if I had imagined it.

(rotary cutter for scale - the chickens aren't large)

The baby quilt saw no work and, like the Christmas quilt, I really need to make time for it.  This coming weekend I don't work, so I'll have four days in a row off.  I'm hopeful to get a lot done then.

And finally, another errand on one of my days off this week brought home this:

The local library does their annual book sale, usually a bit later in October, but every year and I visit.  It's a lot smaller than the one from where I grew up, but I snagged 14 new books - one I wanted to read, a couple from authors I've enjoyed in the past and the rest were just impulse buys, but at $1 per book, why not?

Speaking of books, I have not finished the latest book yet, so nothing to report.  This one is a little harder to read - it's a classic, which often means the prose takes more time to get into, but I think it also has a denser font, so though it's just over 300 pages, there's a lot in there.

And that's it for my week.  I have a pile of projects swirling in my head, but not as much time to work on them as I'd like.  Today I'm going to a football game (because of the concessions, of course) and then have to stop in to work for a short bit.  But I think I'm going to go relax and snuggle kitties and maybe finish that book I was just talking about until it's time to leave.

Happy quilting!

Katie

crazy weeks

As you may have guessed by my lack of blog post last week, the new job is keeping me busy.  I worked three of the four shifts over last weekend where one just has to go in and let dogs out to go potty and feed them.  Short and sweet, but still gotta be done.  Being the new person, and being in training, it made sense.

But I also caught the cold that the whole clinic seems to be sharing, so I was napping a lot when I wasn't at work.  I'm feeling mostly better, but this one is holding on.  It's not the plague that is always in the news (by comparison this cold is cake), but it just doesn't want to quit and boy am I tired of not feeling quite right.

So the news from here is minimal, but before the sore throat started, I managed to get the chicks for the baby quilt put together:

There's 20 little babies in there - and you can see the blue lines where their legs will be embroidered.

Then I went on to embroider some legs - the last task before I feel truly ill.

Lily was keeping track of my efforts and I was pleased that she wasn't chasing my threads very much.  She must have worn herself out earlier in the day being a spaz elsewhere.

I got 15 of the 20 done and ran out of time that day.  The remaining five are still waiting for me to have time and energy to work on them.  I also need to figure out what to do for an eye.  The pattern suggests an "X", but that makes me think they're dead, so maybe just a French knot, or maybe some sort of eyelashes?  I'll have to do some doodling.

I also went through the two boxes of fun prints borrowed from my mom and cut more cat toy pieces.  Salem helped organize the box...

I upended the box and put the fabrics back in neatly as I went.

Lily, on the other hand, had other ideas how to help...

I tried to stop her from jumping in the trash about five times before she managed to do it before I caught her.  She is such a ding dong.  I sent this photo to my hubby with the caption "this cat has no survival instincts" yet she is quite smart.  (This week she realized she can, in fact, get on the kitchen counters, so that surface has been a playland of things that can be pushed to the floor...I'll be glad when THAT becomes less entertaining.)

I plan to start another quilt - this one to be a Christmas present for my sister-in-law.  There is a running joke that my hubby started that I am a chicken.  And that my sis-in-law (hubby's sis) is a ho.  Yes, the rude kind.  She's not, but it's a sibling thing.  So a few weeks back, we were at their house and her youngest son (nearly 13) had a moped helmet that looked like a Santa Claus head.  And our great-niece (2 years old) was terrified of it.  I'm not sure if it was called "ho-ho" before we got there or not, but that's what my sis-in-law was calling it, telling her not to be afraid of "ho-ho."  So I called her "aunt ho-ho."  And she called me "aunt cluck-cluck."  For my birthday, she got me a cake with a chicken on it.

Well.

She's getting this quilt for Christmas.  Hubby says it needs a darker background (she is the lone female in a house of boys, plus a big dog, so that makes sense), but he's all in.  I guess I'd better get busy with the chicken quilt (not a joke for anyone there, just a cute farm theme) and the cat toys (I cut about 4 million I think) so I can get this one done too?  (I haven't even bought the pattern yet, but I'll get there, probably today.)

Though the new job and cold are sucking a lot out of me, reading has been an easy thing to do while relaxing and recovering, so I've finished two books in the last two weeks.

First up:

Everyone knows Charles Lindbergh, but his wife is not so famous.  This is her story.  Or at least the authors imagining of it.  Anne Lindbergh was also a pilot - taught by her husband - who flew with her hubby on a lot of trips, acting as navigator and copilot and all the sorts of things needed.  She also had a number of children - many are familiar with the story of the kidnapping and death of their eldest, but she had three more a few years after that tragedy occurred.

The book, though it seems as though it should be about her, really mostly tells his story through her eyes.  I knew little of the man, but in this book, he seemed cold and calculating, only acting compassionate when he wanted something, and then stubborn until he got it accomplished.  He assumed that whatever he thought or wanted, she also wanted - a behavior I think was more typical of their time, but it could not have been an easy marriage.

I gave it 4 stars because I did learn a lot about both of them and it was fairly enjoyable though I felt like I didn't learn as much about her as I anticipated.

And last week:

In short - witch trials in northern Norway (Finnmark).  But more.  Most of the book develops the characters in a small town where a giant wave took almost every single man while they were out fishing.  The women learn to deal with their absence (though less of this is discussed than I anticipated), but mostly focuses on two women - one local woman, and one who is married and then travels there with her husband, who is a sort of policeman for the town - one with a specialty in witch trials.

Eventually the story winds around to the witch trials - which were occurring around the same time as here in America - though it seemed a little hurried at the end.  (Though who really wants to read the gory details?)

Some of the characters were difficult to keep track of, but the way they are named makes it difficult.  And since they have smaller parts, it might have done me some good to take notes at the start!

It was a quick read, but left me feeling frustrated at, even in a town with almost no men, the women were unable (or unwilling) to band together and fight the accusations of witchcraft.  Of how the women were more likely to unite over accusing another woman than defending her.  Though this was set 400 years ago, women today also often are more likely to unite over dragging someone down than building them up.  And that is sad to me.

But in all, it was a good book.  4.25 stars.

I've read just a few pages in the next book - and there's a used book sale this week!  It's a smaller sale, so not as likely that I'll come home with a lot of books, but I'm excited!

I think my lunch has kicked in and I'm feeling better than I was this morning so I suppose I'd better go sew something before the caffeine (or whatever it is) wears off!

Happy quilting!

Katie

a little quilty sewing

Though I had high hopes for this week being more productive, I also didn't know until I worked at my new job on Monday if they'd add me in any extra shifts later in the week, so it was a limbo sort of week.

I didn't get any additional shifts (though after I made plans for Friday, a new coworker asked me to cover her shift that day - oops, sorry!), but I still didn't get as much done as I thought I could with all that time!

But let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Last week I left you with this small stack of carrier cover fabrics:

That floral on top was maybe four yards, which was a LOT, but it made a couple of large covers, which I haven't been able to make many of, since a lot of this donation were one yard cuts.

I finished the stack on Sunday and contacted my gal to set up a time to meet and turn these over.  I know there's always ongoing projects and needs, so I figured we'd chat about that, too.

I didn't come home with more fabric (!!!!) or the serger sewing machine that had been donated and she offered (maybe someday, but I left it with her in case someone more knowledgeable and more interested could use it), but instead with a request for more catnip toys!  They're finally getting back into the swing of things with adoption events that aren't just at local pet stores and these are great for "free for donation" donations - and they're nearly out!

My sister-in-law, via my mom (who is always game to let me raid her stash), found out I was looking for fabrics to expand my selection of fun prints and sent me home with this yesterday:

Lily is not intentionally in there for scale, but she is about 7 pounds of psychopath, so you can gauge the size of that pile.  It had been in a trash bag, ready to be thrown out, but she felt bad about doing that.  A lot of larger scale prints (she's making aprons for a craft fair) and a lot of batiks and tone-on-tone prints (not so interesting for cat toys - at least to the human eye), so not as much useable as I'd hoped, but it's all sorted by color, what I can use has been cut, and now I can move on to the boxes of fabric I borrowed from my mom.

There's gonna be a lot of cat toys in my future.

Freddie claimed the empty bag.  Wierdo.  (Loveable wierdo.)

There is also another project being researched, but we'll get to that later if it comes to anything.

Speaking of kitties - mine were in need of some new "treats of valor" that are rewarded after braving the vacuum.  I found these at the grocery store this week:

Note the flavor.  The kitties all liked them, so I guess humans are, in fact, tasty.

I sewed a little on the baby quilt, but it seems I couldn't catch a break for time this week to do much of anything other than chores and needed errands and whatnot.

The heart parts are now hearts.  I wanted to continue sewing, but it was time to go have lunch with my brothers and their wives and pick up fabric from my mom.  Maybe today?  (Though those two boxes of fabric are calling to me, too...I should have taken a photo, but they're fairly boring just being boxes.)

I read some this week, but I only finished one book.

This book was good, but I gave it only 3 stars.

Think DaVinci Code (or any Dan Brown book) but with Shakespeare.  So there was a lot of running around, flying to many different countries, driving at breakneck speeds through the Arizona desert, fighting off killers who might not be killers and questioning the guy you trust because he also might be the killer, which kept things interesting and moving fairly quickly.  But there was a lot of Shakespeare conspiracy (which apparently is a thing that I knew nothing about) and, for lack of a better word, trivia (that I also didn't know).

I read some Shakespeare in high school and was not particularly impressed.  Maybe it was the having to read who said everything at the beginning of each line that tripped me up - different "paragraph" structure.  Maybe it was that students were assigned parts and it was read out loud and some students are much better at that than others.  Maybe I had teachers who just didn't bring it to life.  Whatever the case, my lack of knowledge probably made this book less enjoyable because I was constantly trying to untangle the new revelation and how it fit into the rest of the story and that got old, fast.  I felt like I was skimming a good portion of the book when those scenes came along, so I gave it fewer stars than the action-packed drama may actually deserve.

If you like Shakespeare, this one is probably for you.

It's okay.  They can't all be enjoyable, even if they are good, right?  That's the beauty of having paid about 50 cents for this one. 

Time to head into the sewing room and see where the swirling mess up there leads me!

Happy quilting!

Katie

PS I officially start the new job tomorrow, so we'll see how things shake out with the new schedule!