short long days

I think our "new normal" has started to include some manipulation of the space-time continuum.  I go to work and it flies by.  We are busy.  So busy.  This is good.  Also, hard.  I leave and feel like I have been gone from home for days.  The clock and calendar say otherwise.  And then, tired as I am, I struggle to sleep.

So, for a quick minute, before I share my quilty adventures, I'm gonna stand on my little soapbox for the two of you who read this and ask a favor: Please do not tell your cashier, if and when you choose to go out, your opinion about the current situation.  We've already heard it all.  And it's stressful to hear so much.  I've filtered social media.  Stopped watching actual live television.  I cannot tune you out, so please?  Talk about the weather.  Heck, complain about the weather!  Tell me you're going to be a grandma again.  Complain about how much your new tires cost.  NOT. THE. VIRUS.

Okay, done now.  Thanks!  I promise to be good now.

So.

In my last post, I was plugging away at the kit I purchased in January.  Today I finished the last of the 20 blocks!  I've been doing two every day I get a chance to sew, but today I dug in and did four!

The colors are in varying shades of not-right, but I've been sewing all hours of the day and the weather is sometimes sunny and sometimes pouring rain.  No snow in the last week, but where I live, anything is possible!

Next up will be sashing and borders and whatnot.  The dreaded long seams are not far off.

I'm also plugging away on the little half square triangle bonus blocks, but failed to photograph them.  Just imagine a bunch of green and now a few purples added in!

Also, since the baby quilt deadline is looming, I decided to suck it up and put it on the longarm last week.  (I don't remember what day - they're all blending together as either "worked" or "didn't work" any more!  See - space-time continuum is going wacky!)  I only took one photo, though, before I was done.  I was just plugging away and generally having a fairly good time, not stressing too much.

I did a lot of cool stuff, so I promise if it ever stops raining and being windy and stuff, I will get good photos.  I did clouds in the sky and clamshells in the roofs and bricks and pebbles in the castle walls and all sorts of fun stuff!  The binding has been sewn down and I expect I will get to the hand-sewing portion of that tonight.

While I was working on this, I was taking breaks every so often, and saw a quilt made of macaroon cookies in my Instagram feed.  It was cute, but I went back to the longarm.  And then I remembered my high school friend, Becky (who I am fairly sure doesn't even know I have a blog), and how she has shared some of her adventures learning to bake macaroons not so long ago.  And she doesn't have a quilt from me.  So maybe I should make her a macaroon quilt?  And then, like bolts of lighting, I remembered she has a pink stand mixer and Lori Holt has designed a stand mixer pattern.  Could the macaroon quilt use a stand mixer?  And wait, while thinking about Lori Holt, she has a kitty pattern.  Becky has two kitties.  Could there be kitties in the quilt, too?  Why not?  They help!

And so, after finishing longarming, I drafted up a pattern of how to put this all together.  Currently it will have 47 macaroons, but if it looks too narrow, it might get more.  I'd share my design, but it's a hot mess...

I WILL share what I've made so far!  Pieces...

...became...

...blocks!

The cats are actually only a few inches shorter than the mixer, but you get the idea.  She has an orange tabby and a grey tuxedo tabby.  I stalked her facebook photos to get the collar colors right even.  Because she is the kind of girl that this will not be lost on her.

They're not quite done, but getting there.

And I pulled fabrics for the cookies:

Some may be exchanged or removed.  The background is white-white, so some of these might not contrast enough.  But it's a start.  I debated ordering a bundle of solids (either online, or asking my local quilt shop owner to create one for me), but decided to try to use what I have.

I also tidied up my cutting mat area, but you can hardly tell.  It's still a bit of a disaster, but I'm getting there.

In other news, one of the recent storms left a stick in my yard...

(it looks like the power lines are holding it up, but I assure you, those are across the street)

This made me laugh way more than it should have.  It fell down later.

Gabby has been helping.  The quilt I shared a tiny peek of that was on the longarm last week, I sat down and bound.  Gabby, of course, helped.  She does not like to snuggle.  Unless you are binding a quilt.  She doesn't give one whit about the thread.  She just wants to be in the middle of things.  So I let her.  Because anything that encourages a housecat behavior over her feral beginnings is good for me.

She looks a bit perturbed, but I think she was interested in what was going on outside the window next to us and I kept trying to distract her.  All those birds and squirrels and leaves moving around!

And finally, Finn.  I found this cardboard cat scratcher "cottage" at the grocery store the other day.  And no, it's not an essential purchase, but I was down that aisle for essential cat food, so, well, if it fell in my cart, who is going to stop me?

I thought the box said it was "infused" with catnip.  That could make sense for those thick scratch pads that go in the bottom.  No.  It said "includes" catnip.  So, about 10 minutes into punching out about 40,000 not-hanging chads so I could push other pieces of cardboard through them, I realized there was a very flimsy, hard-ish plastic bag of very finely ground catnip.  In his mouth.  I now have a hole in my finger, but the catnip is safely stored out of his reach.  Well, okay, he's a cat, so nothing is beyond reach.  But he hasn't sniffed it out yet, either.

He likes the cottage less now that it is fully constructed.

Of course.

This same day he also pulled the dish towel down from the stove and wrestled it on the floor, in a ball, as though it was filled with catnip and must be killed.  This was before the cottage incident.  I have a video, but uploading it is sketchy.  Maybe another day when I'm feeling more adventurous?

Freddie, as always, is being a stubborn teenager.  He wants little to do with me unless it has to do with my sewing chair.  Then he gets mad that I want to share it because I'm sewing.  Ah, cats.  I love them.

So that's been my week.  Not as much as I would like to get done, but it's all good.  I'm not in a race.

Tomorrow I think I'll longarm again.  Weather permitting - I don't like to run it when there is danger of power outages.  Far too expensive of a piece of equipment to sacrifice to a power surge!

Happy quilting!

Wash your hands!

Katie