hey look!

 i made this quilt for the newest baby in our family, eugene.  eugene!  i love his name, it reminds me of many great eugene's, like eugene hutz, of gogol bordello fame, and eugene mirman, who is funnier than shit.  let us not also forget eugene, oregon, home to hippies.  dear diary, i don't know why, but i fucking love hippies.  i married one, i love nutritional yeast, and just this week i made my own eczema cream out of organic shea butter.  the baby, by the way, looks amazing in tie-dye.  so we were meant to be!

this was a project i really wanted to be secret, so not mentioning this thing anywhere was torturous.  especially because i was just so fond of it.  i'm glad i worked on all the quilts i did before this one; the pinwheels, clowns and finished asian quilt top got me back in fighting shape, so to speak.  i'm still not great at bindings, which i consider to be a necessary evil, but the rest of this came out so beautifully.  i loved the fabric, i loved just cutting things out and winging it, and the whole time i was thinking of a cute baby boy in illinois with chubby cheeks.  i'm proud of how this turned out, and it made me so happy to think of the new family getting it.  i know, that's mushy, but oh well.  i can't be a nihilist all the time, i guess. 

today i signed the girlchild and i up for a continuing education class at the local community college.  it's a month long, monday night class, basic drawing and sketching.  i needed a refresher, and she's never taken a community ed class.  when i was her age, i was taking a ton of them.  nerdy amanda liked to take classes about short story writing, and subjected a host of patient grown-ups to a lot of anguished prose about my latest crush.  i'm sure i was insufferable.  in any case, she's excited to take a class at college, and hearing her excited! about! a! class! was worth the money it cost.  i'm also looking forward to brushing up my skills. 

horrifying

i came home last night to find this hanging up in my living room.  i was sharing my glass of water with my plants, when i caught a glimpse of it, and it both scared the shit out of me and delighted me.  we all know i'm kind of afraid of clowns, but the last few years have seen my turn this fear into a morbid obsession.  my sister and i make up clown names for everyone, we look up creepy clown dolls on ebay and then send each other the links, i even made our sweet baby boy a clown-y quilt. yet...they still scare me a bit.  in that watching-a-scary-movie sort of way. a slight frisson of fear in my spine when i encounter one i wasn't ready for.  the boychik and a friend of his snuck it into the house while i was out, and then just waited for me to find it.  i love them.  

yesterday i got exactly nothing done.  the day before, i totally finished an awesome project that i will show you after i get it in the mail and it gets to where it is going.  i'm proud of it, but i do honestly want it to be a surprise.

today i plan on the following,

• taking my sewing machine in for a tune up.  it hasn't had a proper tune up in years, has been moved across states and sat in storage once for a long time.  it needs some TLC.
• going through all my in-progress projects and figuring out which ones will be finished, which ones will be frogged, and which ones are WTF worthy.
• laundry.  i think i used up my last pair of comfortable clean underpants yesterday.  meaning today is bound to be slightly uncomfortable.
• grocery shopping.  condiments are great, but they are even better with food to put them on.

i got through a whole week at my new desk, and there was no crying or gnashing of teeth. i totally had some deer-in-the-headlights moments, though, and i hope i'm smart enough to keep up.  i also worked on power point for the first time in my life on friday, and that thing sucks.  it seems so terribly redundant! i missed that phase of microsoft office in college, and never had to learn it since.  i wish it could have stayed that way!  otherwise, i have no complaints.  i'm so happy to be in a new place, learning new things, and going to the bathroom whenever i please.  whoo!

*also, this is post 1500! crazy talk.

two days in

i now have two days of my new position at work under my belt. i realize it's entirely too early to make any grand, sweeping STATEMENTS or DECLARATIONS, but i can tell you this: so far it's going really well.

there are a few reasons for this, one of them being that the new group of people i work with are honestly nice.  there's one woman doing my "on-boarding," which is just the way they describe training.  she's gone over some of the new tools i'll be using (hello microsoft one note!), and the very basics of what i'll be doing.  i spent all day with her yesterday, and a big chunk of today with her, but i also had some alone time practice.  when i have questions, there's two or three people willing and happy to help, every time.  my new boss checks in often, but doesn't hover.  (i miss my old boss, i have to say.  she really is the sweetest woman on earth, and without her i don't think i would have been so prepared and motivated to apply for this job.)  i have a bit of that old-fashioned deer-in-the-headlights feeling often, but i feel good about what i'm bringing to the job.  i've mentioned this before, but this new position puts me in contact with a billion other departments, and it is truly fascinating to see the behind the scene stuff.

and!  i finished this blanket for my nephew calvin.  it's not a real quilt, more of a panel and a quilted backside.  even then, i didn't quilt the whole thing.  my machine really isn't big enough to do much quilting (the fabric and batting gets all smooshed under the "arm" of my machine), and i'm not very good at that part.  the piecing, the putting it all together, i'm good at, but i can only master free-form quilting, and more than anything with calvin's quilt i just wanted to stabilize the batting.   

my sister and i were going through a clown phase when we bought this fabric; we were busy giving everyone clown names (mine is always Mumbles the Clown), and i was doing a lot of clown drawings, and so when we found this fabric it seemed appropriate.  she was 6 months pregnant, and the little dude is almost 9 months, so it only took me a year.  oops!  bad sister.  although in my defense, my nook wasn't really set up for sewing for a while. 

i bought two of the front panels in case i royally messed up the front, and i ended up fucking up the first back i made instead!  of course.  so when i re-did it, and knew it was good, i cut one of the clowns out of the other panel and put him on the back.  he's the bonus clown!  ha. i hope calvin doesn't end up with weird clown phobias like me.  for years i couldn't stand the sight of them. now my interest in them is kind of morbid.  like a kid who learns to love scary movies, you know?  i still won't let one touch me, or be in the same room as one if i can help it (or within a hundred yard), but i can appreciate their weirdness. 

done-zo!

 the quilt is done!  i used a fold-over binding, thanks to this handy tool, which was easier than doing a traditional binding.  however, on a quilt this size, it probably didn't matter.  working with a piece this large in any machine, for any reason, is a pain in the ass.  true story. 

it's big enough to nap under, and nice and long.  i'm happy with the way it came out, and think it's a very solid, functional quilt.  i haven't made a quilt in so long that more than anything, this was a fun project to work on color, piecing, cutting, and basic quilting skills.  it was a super low pressure project too, and i don't know if i just got more patient and/or better at sewing, but i feel like it went together quickly.  the whole time i worked on it i looked forward to coming home from work and pulling it out.

i'm trying hard not to wish the week away, because we all know i really want to be in my new job NOW.  three more days, and then i'll probably be here complaining about how hard and overwhelming everything is.  i'm trying to just relax and go with the flow.  i'm just excited! 

five more days!

then i move to my new cubicle.  whoo!

i had my first meeting with my new team yesterday.  of course my bladder did not cooperate and i had to sneak out at one point to use the restroom.  by "sneak out" i mean, i had to cross in front of the projector so everyone could see me, which was embarrassing.  my bladder, she does not wait, though, and i had entirely too much coffee and tea yesterday.  totally my fault.  i felt sheepish, but my new boss was totally cool about it.

today i'm going to try to finish a quilt.  or two.  it's rainy and awful out, and i have been listening to a lot of pandora lately, which i am loving.  although they think i like the strokes a lot more than i actually do. 

and this is the silly sheet that's going to back the pinwheel quilt.  i remember when i bought these sheets in college, they were a little out of my price range (they were like 25 dollars) but when they went on sale, i snatched them up.  they were so cheerful and ridiculous!  i'm excited that it's going to get a new life as a quilt backing. 

progress report

 check out these cute birdie ornaments!  they are wooden and i love them and maybe some will go on the tree next winter, but for now they are cheering up my nook. 

 not that the nook needs cheering.  man, i love that little room. i love to sit and listen to music and podcasts and make stuff.  also, i'm loving this old school thread holder.  i had a plastic one, one of those giant square boxes that the lid never quite fits right on, and finally i was like, "i hate this thing. i'm going to buy a new one." genius!

this quilt is almost done!  i have some brown i need to sew along the sides to tie it all together, and it might actually be one strip too long.  i'm not sure.  i have a great old sheet to back it with, and after i get the sides on, i'm going to tie it so mom can lend me her fancy binding tool and i can finish it this weekend.  i don't know if i'm just getting more patient or better at sewing, but i have never in my life made progress like this.  these projects feel like they are flying by, and happily so.  this might not be the most modern or stylish quilt, but it makes me so happy to see the little bits of fabric with history.  the triangles of skull fabric anne bought me, the bits from the bunting we made for the wedding, the funny red "wood" fabric i made my first pair of pajama pants out of, it's all there! 

it's so rare

for me to think to myself, "i need to clean this thing."  i mean, i'll do laundry, and my fridge is better than it has been ever (in my life), and the toilet gets scrubbed and no one comes over to my house and gets the plague, but still.  tonight i actually hauled the vacuum down to my room and used it in the nook.  when i trim threads off stuff when sewing, i just throw them on the floor.  probably that's one of the least-adorable habits i have, besides nose-picking.  (shut up, i know you pick your nose too!)   i actually do it when i embroider too.  in fact, whenever i trim a piece of thread, or yarn, or embroidery floss, or snip of fabric, i just throw it down.  i only litter threads, though, i swear.

ahem, this story doesn't need to be this long.  i just looked in my nook and thought, "yeah, this needs a hoover-ing."  i also moved some stuff around and threw out some trash and sorted all my bobbins for my sewing machine and hung up some cute birdie ornaments i got for xmas.  they are too cute for a tree, they are now strung on a line and hang above a doorway in a happy row.  now i'm going to try to put things back in place and get my bed ready for sleeping, since it's covered in fabric. 

i had a meeting with my new boss today, because i have only 8 more days on the phones (squeeeeee!) and HOLY SHIT i am excited about this new gig.  the main reason being: everyone who works in this department is excited about working there.  they are full of ideas and ideals, they want to make health insurance better for customers and they love spreadsheets and research.  i was shown something today called a "config" file that was essentially a gorgeous spreadsheet of information, easily searchable and data driven, and i swooned.  it's nerd-vana over there.

(also, thanks so much for reading my long and self-pitying post about the kid's bio-mom.  i try not to be a bummer, but parenting is new to me!)