In my last post, I mentioned that I was excited to hopefully have five days in a row off work. Of course, I had to toil away for five days in a row ON at work first, but I made it!
But. Day #4 (of work) my throat was scratchy/dry. Not sore, but also kinda weird. But it's furnace-all-the-time season, so maybe it's just dry air because I haven't set up my humidifier yet? Day #5 was the same. As the day wore on, I was forced to have something to keep my throat soothed some (I ate what feels like a whole bag of peppermints!) to keep from having coughing fits, but still felt fairly okay. Maybe a little tired, but here's to hoping that tomorrow - day one of the five in a row off - would find me healthy.
Oh how poorly that hope manifested.
I spent all of Thursday - day one of five off - in bed. Napping, snuggling kitties, watching some Netflix and generally alternating between anger and pity at myself for getting sick. But I knew staying in bed was my best choice for getting better faster.
The kitties loved it - everyone but Toby got a chance to join me. Toby did not because he is the reason Gabby lives in my bedroom in the first place. (Don't worry, he got snuggles, just not on Thursday.)
(I have this cat bed ON my bed and Finn loves to snuggle in it in the daytime.)
Friday dawned (I didn't sew any of the days between my last post and Friday because I was at work, or, as above, in bed) and I wondered how I would feel. Cats needed to be fed, litterboxes scooped, so I got up, planning to do the minimum, but hoping for better. You know, sometimes when you get up and moving, you do feel better.
Guess what? I did feel better! And by the time I'd done chores and showered, I felt about 75% myself again! Hooray!
Off to the sewing room!
I decided to put the baby quilt on hold, as I won't need it until February, and work on the quilt for my nephew that my hubby would *like* to have done for Christmas. (His contribution is to ignore me while I sew, so...)
I used this pattern as a jumping off point, but in an effort to not have to make 300000 blocks, I made the blocks bigger. (I still have to make about 200000 of them, but don't remind me, okay?) Which lead to some math. Math mistakes. I bought about a yard less than I needed of both the greys.
Okay, but first, let's cut just a few pieces and make sure the NEW math is correct. Before I cut it all. Before I go buy more.
Woo hoo! It works!
I then cut the remainder of the pieces and figured out how much more I would need.
That trip happened yesterday, Saturday. I wore my mask to my local quilt shop because, though I'm feeling better, the hubby has the plague now, and maybe I'm not contagious, but maybe he has something else and I'm brewing that now too? Also, just, you know, being courteous so no one has to miss Thanksgiving because of me.
I got my fabrics (whew - that lighter grey had gone into the clearance room in the week between my purchases, so thankfully it was still around!) and headed home to wash them and sew.
Here's the start. It took HOURS. Literally. I washed and dried the fabrics (in with some other stuff so as to not waste waster) and was STILL sewing after they were done! (Wash and dry take about an hour each around here.)
But, I got half the sky pieces on the geese bodies yesterday. (Thankfully I only ran out of the darker grey - I need the lighter grey for the other parts, so I robbed Peter to pay Paul and then had to go shopping to pay them back!)
And I got them pressed.
And I got the new fabrics pressed.
And I got the remaining dark geese cut and ready to sew today!
These are the "hard" geese. They can't be done using the 4-at-a-time method. The other geese can. Maybe that will go faster, maybe not.
Salem wants you to see how seriously she took her role as supervisor yesterday. I can't believe we brought her home two years ago already. She's such a sweetheart and still has the biggest purr and is so kind and patient. And soft.
I finished just one book this week. Between work and feeling poorly, it wasn't a great reading week. I keep looking at my stash of books and am inspired, but it comes to actually reading them, I get too easily distracted. Maybe acknowledging that will help me be better about it?
Anyways...
I barely started reading the blurb on the back and this went into my bag.
It's the story of Mr. March - the father of the girls in the book Little Women. His life as a young man and rise into wealth, his fall into not-quite-poverty, how he came to be a chaplain in the Civil War, how he met his wife, all in as much of a jumbled order as my list above.
I listened to Little Women on the CraftLit podcast (link here is to website, as it's easier to search and link from there) a few years ago while sewing for the kitties and enjoyed it way more than I anticipated. Which is why this book, written many years later by (obviously) a different author, was so quick to enter my bag of goodies.
I was excited to read this, but it was kinda hard to read. He sees some terrible things in his time with the army - not only slavery bad stuff, but army and humans in general being awful. He is confronted with the reality of the continuation as well as the ending of slavery and how naive he was about it all when he joined the army. In the end, he comes home a changed man and we see clearly why.
It seems like reading this just shortly after reading James was good. They both had a more detailed story of history than the sanitized version I'd been taught in school about the Civil War and slavery all things surrounding it.
I'm glad I read it. Difficult or not, I feel like I understand things a little better now.
And it was a good book. Yes, the topics were difficult, but the book itself was good and I wanted to keep reading.
If you want to read it, I think you'd probably be in the best position if you read Little Women first, though. There are many references to the girls and other characters and situations in the book that are helpful to have a familiarity with it. (And the podcast/audiobook I've linked above is a great one if you want to listen - at the start of each episode, the host does chat about crafty and personal stuff, but she also can delve into vocabulary or period-relevant topics that helps with understanding the book.)
I'll start the next book tonight - it's another that hit the bag with just the authors name on it, so hoping for a good read. I mean, it has another of those permanent award stickers on the cover, so it's supposed to be good, right?!
Happy quilting and reading!
Katie
PS And this morning, as I was elbow deep in the process of swampifying my kitchen in order to clean the fridge (it needed it!), the boss called, asking if I could come in to work. Well...sorry, but I've got this fridge half torn apart and my kitchen now also needs cleaning and I haven't showered yet because who showers before cleaning out a fridge... So, nope. Not this time.
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