Flower quilt

blast from the recent past: Flowery throw quilt I made for a girl that DS1 used to be in school with (and whose birthday party we have been to for 4 years running and her mom and I are friendly, etc etc).

The photos ended up pixelated, so I might ask her mom to bring it in to the school again and I'll take better pictures. Or not. It's not quite like I planned it, though just fine for a rank amateur.

OK, now onto the goals I set a bit ago. Sigh.

Holiday quilt

Hey ho, forget the goals for today. I have instead figured out how to download pics from my new digital camera and I will now attempt to put a couple on here.

Drumroll, please....

Oh phoooooooo! I uploaded all my pics and there is only one - the one I was testing first - in the file I thought I put them in.

Right, here goes:


Christmas/holiday throw quilt I made for a friend of mine - Christmas/Chanukah/Solstice family, plus there are fruits (from thre trees in her yard), and breast cancer fabric (2 1/2 year survivor! You go girl!) and various bright colors.




Detail: It was my first biggish applique project and an idea of the fabrics. Hand of a four-year-old who had to "help".

Goal setting

Oh right. No one has the link to this blog yet, so does it matter if I update it? Tree falling in the forest, etc.

My resolve to find a new job grows. I have developed tennis elbow from lifting, carrying, yanking on, and otherwise manipulating heavy bolts of fabric. It needs rest, but how can I rest it, even at 20-ish hours a week? Interesting conversation with a fellow supervisor at work, in which we talked about low pay for ever-increasing workload and fewer payroll hours to do it all in - not even enough next week to have full staffing in the store at all times, apparently. If it weren't for the fact that we don't have anyone waiting in the wings to be promoted to my job and I don't want to screw over my co-supoervisors and especially not my manager, I might quit.

Extra day of rest for me and my belbow today, though, as DS2's cold has gained a low fever along with his horrendous quantities of mucus and gurgly coughing, so is watching the Wiggles dance around instead of going to school. He has probably already infected everyone there with it, since I sent him on Monday when he was just coughing and snotting a little bit. Since I'm gurgling and coughing too, I'm not exactly sad about staying home.

My sewing machine is still not working, though. The timing is so far off now that I'm going to have to shell out some more cash to get it fixed by a professional. I am going to have to plug in my old one and see if I can make it work, because I have several projects I want to get started on. Heck, just finishing a few repairs would be great.

I have some gorgeous blue and white fabric, some from work some not, that I want to make into a quilt. I haven't decided on the pattern yet, but it will involve squares, since triangles usually whip my buttocks and end up lumpy. I saw a really cool pattern in a book and need to find the book again. It had 4 different fabrics each in lights and darks and ended up looking about like a diagonal stripe. I might go with a 4 patch that fades from light to dark across the quilt, but big squares might not give the effect the way I dream it, and I just won't work with little tiny things, sorry.

I have written about 40 pages of the book I am working on, the longest I have ever held an idea in my head. I am about 1/3 of the way through the main plot and I think I know where I am going, but have bogged down and have been doing little tweaks and corrections instead of getting the rest down on paper. Up on the screen. Whatever. I like what I have so far, but know there's a lot left to be said. I haven't been able to get into the male protagonist's head as much as I want and I'm not even sure how the female protagonist is going to grow and change and face her life with new resolve and gusto. I guess I'll find out as I write, but she's too much like me and I don't know what I am going to be when I grow up, either.

I dreamt up another idea, literally, though it's more back story for something else, I would guess. Once she gets shipped off to a psychiatric hospital in my dream, I don't know where she can go after that unless I jump in time to after she's recovered and is grown up and facing her demons and her past. I have pretty weird dreams...

So my goal for today is to write a new scene and to decide on a pattern to follow for this quilt - and how big I want it to be. For the rest of the week is to work out the general direction of my story and to get it cut out and start sewing.

And oh, yeah, fix up my resume!

Phyllis

First test blog post

Yes, I've finally done it.

Now, I will probably forget to ever update it.

I'm in my mid to late 30's, I have a husband, DH, and 2 kids, hereafter known as DS1 and DS2, because I'll think of funny names for them later, probably. My family is great. My DH and I have our quarrels, but we're both fairly non-confrontational, at least until I get PMS-y and explode. My kids are bundles of energy and smart and sweet, when they're not trying to break each others' head with whatever is handiest. They're 4 1/2 and 7 right now. Sweet boys.

I work part time in a fabric store. I have a lot of fabric. I sew a little bit, quilt a little bit but am no genius at it, besides which my machines always seem to break down. Yes, I now have 3 machines, but one hasn't worked or even been used since last summer, the newest one's timing is off, so any zig-zag is a b*tch, and the 3rd one works perfectly... for a Sew Mini Janome. It goes straight, it zig-zags, it is infinitely slow, infinitely weak, politely dependable.

I read a lot of books. My all time favorite is Pride and Prejudice, but my favorite modern author is Jennifer Crusie. Her first books are romance with great characters, her latest have a lot more suspense and action, but are still romance and still have great characters. Favs are Faking It, Don't Look Down (written with Bob Meyer, who writes books with lots of guns), and Bet Me (which doesn't have a mystery plot, and which is gloriously written). I didn't "discover" her until last summer, when I picked up Don't Look Down off the new release shelf at the library, in the middle of my reading spree while I "discovered" romance novels. Yeah, I hadn't read many before, but had been depressed for a while and happy endings are great. There are a lot of schlocky ones, a lot of porn-with-a-happy-ending, a lot of more-or-less historical, and quite a few gems. Like Crusie, who really can write.

I want to learn to write better. If I can sustain a story for more than 20 pages, I know my writing is better than some of the stuff I have read. Even if my plot is weak, it's better than some of the plots I've read. So I'm not the most self-assured person in the world, but hey, I've never written a whole book before. I'm working on one now, but it's very early on and it might stink.

Please excuse typos. I can spell, I just can't type. I'll run spellcheck, I promise, but DS2 was just on my lap pulling my turtleneck up over my eyes, so there might be some interesting stuff that I haven't fixed. My fault for wearing an ancient cowl-neck sweater that I knitted in the late 80's (but I haven't knit anything since DS1 was born, though I have accumulated some really nice yarn in the last couple of years).

Um, I'll have to use another computer to post pictures, because this one is incapable of downloading from our digital camera.

I guess that's it. My little piece of Internet history.