proof of sewing!

It hasn't been a perfect week.  It hasn't been an awful week.  It's been kind of just a "meh" week, but I did sew!

Last week we had chicks with legs.  After blogging, I went up to the design floor and figured out a layout.

I had full intentions of continuing from here, but my stomach was unhappy and I ended up picking it all up and taking a 2-hour nap in the sewing room chair.  With Lily and Toby.  Time well spent, but not quilty productive.

I'm scheduled this weekend, which means my "weekend" happens Thursday and Friday.  Between chores and life those two days, I didn't get as much sewing in as I wanted, but I did get the chicks back on the floor, decided where the squares that would be lost corner triangles would go and sew the whole top together - without taking any photos!

I did have to purchase some pink for the border (the pattern has it wide and scrappy, I'm choosing narrow and one print), but managed to forget to wash it when doing laundry on Friday, so the border will wait until next week.  The hardest part is definitely done.

(Please pardon the sunshine there on the left - I'm not one to complain about fall sunshine, as winter will have little to none - enjoying what we have while it's here!)

With this waiting, it was time to start the Ho quilt.

I cut all the (boring, light grey) background pieces and then went to bed.  The next day, I started on the (funner, brighter) prints.

This was a little overwhelming, as the pattern has you cutting three different prints for Hs, three different prints for Os, two different reds for trees...and then about the same for greens.  (I might have said "cut all these parts for one H block" and "cut all these for one O block" and then "repeat for x H and x O blocks," but I suppose no pattern is perfect for everyone and this made sense to the designer...who probably wasn't trying to cobble together her (his?) scraps to make an entire letter at times!)

Looking much more productive here - you can kinda see greens peeking out from under some of the reds, too.  I promise, they're there.

And then I got to start sewing!

The pattern starts with the smallest pieces and works up - which makes sense, but it doesn't allow for much progress in the first few hours of sewing.

The presents (most of them, at least) have "bows" on top and those quarter square triangles - finishing at 1" - took a lot of drawing lines and sewing and cutting and pressing and repeating for not much to show.  And then the lost corners for the O insides again, lots of little bits and not much to show.

But I DID sew.  And I DID make progress.  And it feels GOOD!

I think maybe I'm starting to settle into the new schedule.  Working every other weekend, and not knowing which of the feed-the-dogs shifts I'll have until Saturday morning, is throwing some wrenches into things, but it's better than it was.

I've also been squeezing in reading, but that also seems to be going slower.  This week I finished this book:

Knowing that this author wrote "A Wrinkle In Time" which is wildly popular for the younger readers, I thought this could be a good bet.  But I discovered that it's non-fiction, written from her journals in the early 70's.  That could make things go horribly wrong.

It did not.

When she wrote this, she was just a few years older than myself, so her perspective on life seemed closer to mine than I anticipated.  Particularly since it was written before I was born.  It struck me many times over how the things she wrote about have relevance today, just as they did then.  I'm not sure she intended it that way, but this book is not only one I really enjoyed, but one of the select few that will make it onto my bookshelf and not back into the donation bin.  (I can't keep them all, so the best of the best are all that get a forever home with me.)

I know I usually say more about books, but this one I'm just struggling to find the right words for.  I'm not sure someone younger or older than me by a stretch would feel the same about it.  I'm not sure someone my age would feel the same about it.  It was just the right book at the right time for me.

And now I'm reading "A Wrinkle In Time" - I thought again, but it is not familiar - because I wanted to experience the book as an adult, particularly after having read this one where she does discuss a little about her writing of the book.  I'll, of course, report on that next week when I'm through.

Time to go get some sewing done before the dogs at work need dinner!

Happy quilting!

Katie