It be like that sometimes

I've had a rough morning that started with sleeping through my alarm and missing Phoebe's bus.

Fortunately, we have a functioning car and her hair was fine enough from being braided the night before that I didn't bother with fixing it today and she got to school in time for breakfast.

Then I had a fight with Iris about whether or not she had to go to school. This is a complex problem involving forms and school officials and stuff and sometimes results in lots of emotional words between us.

This was all before coffee.

Fortunately, both the nurse and the attendance office at THIS school are super awesome, understanding, patient, and helpful. They were not at the other school. Iris is home and sleeping, which is honestly the best thing for her right now.

It's fine. It's all fine.

And I don't mean that in an "everything around me is literally on fire" sort of way, it really is fine. It was rough, but everything got handled and ended up okay.

Ultimately, this is my mental health goal right here: To be able to handle it when things go awry and to not ugly cry in the car at what a terrible parent/wife/person/friend I am. I'm not. I'm fine at these things, I just am a fallible human person and heck things up sometimes. For someone with OCD, that's a big statement.

This week, I replaced the side mirrors on our old car because literally all the mirrors fell off the car. I found a tutorial video, found the parts, bought the parts, installed the mirrors, and was able to run the errand I'd meant to run earlier in the week and get some fleece on mega sale.

I did not angrily sell the car for scrap and cry at our savings account. I handled it.

If this ain't a metaphor...

Being able to handle stuff when it goes awry doesn't come to me naturally. I take an antidepressant and I've practice mindfulness for yyyyeeeeaaarrrrrsssss. It's work. It's constant work. I'm working at it right now in this very second because there's a very big rut in my neural pathways that wants to react in an unhelpful way. There's no one fix and even when you find the best possible combination of things that help, you still have to work at your mental health, but that work has a huge payoff. I'm not as productive today as I'd be if my morning had gone more smoothly, but I'm also a thousand percent more productive than I would be if I were gross crying in a blanket fort, so there you have it.

Today hasn't been great, but it be like that sometimes.

Take care of yourself today. Get good sleep, eat a vegetable, take your meds and vitamins, do a meditate, pet something soft, look at pictures of kittens, do whatever you have to do to prioritize your mental and physical health.

Here are some pictures of Toast and Rufus to get you started:

What Do Plan?

So, last week, my fronds and I talked about why we spend time, money, and energy on planners and planning. A lot of the answer involved a deep love of stickers, but certainly not all of it. This week is about what, exactly, we plan for and about:

What are the actual things you want planners/planning and journals for and to keep up with?

Central to my planning efforts is the To Do: list. This is absolutely necessary if I'm going to remember any dang thing I want or need to do in a day. This week, I'm also doing a "Ta Da!" list to give myself space to write down the things I've done. A Ta Da! list is 100% valid as a motivational tool and I highly encourage its use.

The list stays VERY SHORT, much like myself, because too long of a list is not only not doable, but can be overwhelming in such a way that gets nothing done. As you can see, today's theme is tidying up, which is a typical Monday thing for me to do. There are things on the list that aren't tidying up, but that's also fine. I want to focus on having a clean space to work, but I also need to do some of that work in between sweeping up half a dog and a quarter of a cat and recycling approximately five tons of paper.

I also like to keep track of my current projects and various classes and things I'm doing. Each project gets a little sticker next to it if I work on it and seeing everything all lined up helps me focus on what I've already started. I like finishing stuff and though some things are on this list for months and months and months without being worked on (peach jam, quilt blocks), this helps me see how many metaphorical tabs I have open in my brain.

I do put errands in the bottom left corner there, but I don't have anything out in the world to do right this minute. I like having a place for those, though.

A list of things I need to remember to get at the store is necessary if anyone wants to eat a decent meal. Last week, wet cat food didn't make it on the list, but cereal, eggs, honey, an air filter, and marshmallows did. Poor Toast is just going to have to do with just dry food until next week, but wet food already on this week's list.

Additionally, some parts of my day are blocked out as a reminder to get some stuff done before Bu gets home, when dinner needs to be every day, and when to pick Iris up from whatever it is she's doing. These things happen more or less at the same time each day every week and I have alarms set for some of it, but it does help to have the visual reminder as well. I use the "Good Things That Happened" box because joy and gratitude are important and good for your brain and sometimes, when I feel like it, I write a couple sentences about my day.

I'd like to do more tracking for things like water and other healthy habits, but I've not been very consistent with that in the past. My guess is that it's an issue with the "You're not my real dad!" part of my brain that resists authority more than any kind of sticker or section in my planner that is or isn't there.

Over here is Bekah's answer to this question. She takes a more philosophical approach to the question, I think, and also has an actual paid job out in the world to contend with, so what she plans is going to be different.

Plannering

Why is it that some of us spend lots of money, time, and energy on the act of planning, on planning for planning, and on planners themselves?  

The short answer is that I've got a lot going on and I need to keep track of who is doing what when and for how many pennies.

The real answer involves something between "I really like stickers," and "It's a manifestation of cognitive labor that women are constantly asked to do and I might as well have nice pens to do it with."

I really do like stickers, though. While my sticker collection is nowhere near as voluminous or organized as it was when I was in grade school, I have enough to be going on with and a place to put them. I'm not going to psychoanalyze why I like stickers. I just do. Stickers are great. Some of them are shiny.

For me, a sometimes helpful side effect of having OCD is that I'm super good at organizing things and physically writing stuff down in my own hand helps me visualize where all the pieces go. Usually, there's a daily to do list, a running list of projects I've got going on, a list of this week's errands, and a list of things I need to remember to go out and buy. Fortunately, my planner is a place where OCD has taught me to organize information, but not a place where OCD brain takes over and tries to organize things within an inch of my life. Often, my planner is a place to doodle and take notes about how my day or week went. Today I'll be writing "Sick Day" over most of the morning chunk and not worry about it. Some days are just like that. Yesterday, I did a "Ta Da!" list instead of to do list and wrote down all the things I'd done instead of all the things I intended to do. I'm inconsistent, is what I'm saying, but I know I have a framework upon which to build tomorrow or next week or next month. I write myself motivational notes, I draw pictures, sketch out diagrams of quilt blocks, keep track of which Delphic Maxims I've already done, and so on. I have approximately a bazillion things in my head and having them on paper helps me deal with them all.

I could do this with a spiral notebook, sure, but my Passion Planner has a structure and layout that I like as well as questions to help me be a better me and excellent motivational quotes that get me thinking. Ultimately, that's what I want: to be a better me. A planner isn't a magic bullet that will launch me to success and awesomeness, but it can be a good tool to help me keep from forgetting that I need soy milk and dog food or that this one has practice and that one has an appointment and I really want to finish that thing I'm working on. I'm the one who has to remember the things, sdo if I'm going to do the cognitive labor, I'm gonna do it in shiny marker and unicorn stickers.

We also have Star Wars sheets on our bed because what the &$#% is the point of being a grownup if you have to give up something that brings you some joy. If I have a shiny rainbow unicorn sticker to help me remember to pay my mortgage, my mortgage still gets paid.

Check out here and here for answers to this same question from my two best buds.

I'm not dead yet

It me.

The start of school is usually a lot of a lot and I'm moving from just observation to some actual teaching. I taught my first class yesterday and sort of did a mediocre job of it. I don't think I failed outright, but I wasn't 100% happy with it. I sort of know where I need to improve, which is what practice is all about. My main concern is whether I messed up the kids and I don't think I did, but I'm not sure I was terribly helpful to them either. I'll get better at it. 

This was a fun lesson, though. We did a murder mystery themed activity, so I got to be the dead body and make some fake vomit. 

We put chunks in it.

Setting up the lab was a blast. 

There's also a bunny. His name is Biscuit and he's a cute little bun-bun. My favorite thing so far is when a student comes to ask me a question and I know the things and how to tell them the things. Lectures are hard and it's hard when a student is struggling and just doesn't get it, but the good moments more than make up for it. 

Also, I made a thing. Bu wanted a "toy holder" out of plarn, so I made her a toy holder out of plarn using one of those little pot holder looms. I've got some bread bags awaiting similar treatment, but I'm going to try to catch up on Husband's Crackerjack scarf first. I'm up to about the middle of April right now, so I'm fairly far behind as far as the baseball season goes. On the other hand, it's my kitchen table knitting now, which will hopefully translate to regular progress. 

The news is awful just now and there are a lot of people being horrible on the internet about the things that are already awful. Don't be that guy. Be nice, be helpful, be courteous and compassionate. 

Kindness is not weakness. 

Review: Nature's Recipe Grain-Free dog food

This is Rufus.

Rufus' favorite activities include:

• Sleeping
• Resting
• Relaxing
• Snurfling/ Snorting
• Digging and nosing around in blankets
• Getting loved on
• Eating dinner

Occasionally, he also likes to stretch out right next to where I'm sitting and have a nice fart. And by "nice," I mean "violates the Geneva Convention's prohibition against chemical weapons." It's not his fault; everybody farts. We received a free sample of Nature's Recipe Easy to Digest Grain-free dog food (small breed version, because he's a little dude) and, as it turns out, the "easy to digest" claim seems to be pretty accurate. His little doggie tum-tum bacteria seem to prefer whatever is (or isn't) in Nature's Recipe. 

It is more expensive than his regular kibble and doesn't come in a weight-loss formula, which are the only drawbacks. He seems to like it at least as well as his regular stuff and dinnertime is still his most favorite time in the whole wide day. 

🌞🌞🌞🌞☼ 4/5 sunshines; would go again

Review: Horizon Organic Good & Go Snack Trays

Author's note:

So, Kroger's sends me free samples and asks that I give an honest review in exchange for more free samples and pretend internet points. A blog post is more internet points than other social media things and one of my hopes is that I can trick myself into blogging more about yarn as well. They sent  me free coffee once and I am easily plied by free coffee. Anyway, I'm going to be 100% honest about my reviews and I'll try not to be obnoxious about it.

Horizon Organic Good & Go Snack Trays
The girls are always asking me for snacks. They're always hungry because growing takes a lot of energy, whether you're 15 or 4. Both were enthusiastic about both the shelf-stable chocolate milk we received and the snack trays. They split the chocolate milk and each had a different flavor of snack tray. Everything was gone in about two seconds, which means they were either very hungry, the snacks were very tasty, or a combination of the two. The littlest said, "Oh boy, pretzels!" and promptly devoured hers. The big kid ate hers on the bus ride home and reported that "Yeah, it was pretty good," which is high praise from a teenager. I have no doubt as to the quality of the products and really like shelf-stable milk as an option to include with lunches.

As with any certified organic product, these tend to be more expensive than the conventional counterpart. While that's the only drawback, it tends to often be a prohibitive one when feeding two kids. They run about $2, more or less, and if I bought enough for five lunches for two kids, that's $20. My budget-minded self is more inclined to go about the pretzels-and-cheese sort of snack in a more economical way, slicing the cheese and measuring out the pretzels myself. You can't beat it for convenience and quality, though. I could see myself buying these more regularly, given a larger grocery budget.

🌞🌞🌞🌞⛅ 4.5/5 sunshines

Love is love is love

I've been running around like the proverbial poultry sans noggin, trying to keep up with the slings and arrows of life with mixed success.

In short, one of the cars died and I'm playing taxi more than usual. It's exhausting.

I did get this done, though, and it was well-received by the eldest child. I feel pretty good about finishing before she actually went to college and I hope it keeps her warm for many, many years. Now it's her little sister's turn and I've only got a few blocks done. I'm hoping that one doesn't take fifteen years, but I don't think it will. I have a pretty good finishing strategy now that mainly involves actually working on it.

Love is love is love...

I couldn't have said it better.

Next up is a short story I'm working on about a boy and his first crush. My plan is to offer it for a buck or two and send the proceeds to PFLAG because I don't have much to give, but I have art to share. It's being tweaked and edited and I have to figure out how to get it to you, but it's nearly done.

*Achem*

After Orlando, I was what you might call "shaken." Even though I'm in a suburban mom place right now, it wasn't all that long ago that it could have been me. There are a number of young people I love and care about whom it also could have been either now or in a few years. I quit blogging for a bit because I couldn't even. This kind of thing makes me want to hug my children and turn my fear and anger into acts of kindness.

And then the rest of 2016 happened. 

It wasn't all bad. The Cubs' World Series win was a bright and shining light in an otherwise very hard year and those of you who know me have heard me wax poetic about it with misty eyes and a big grin. I may do so again when spring training starts up again. 

I want to get back on the blog train again (toot! toot!) and I might not be able to do so every week like I had been, but I have a lot to make and a lot to say and... a lot to say about making. For a goodly portion of it, I'm going to crib steal collaborate with my best bestie, Bekah. There's a reason we get along, you see, and we're on the same page regarding a great many things. 

So, this is me clearing my throat and letting you know I'm here. 

Alright, 2017, let's do this.

FO: Jumper for Joy

Hello, blog.
I miss you.

Right now, I'm avoiding homework to show you this jumper I made for little Bu, which I made while I was avoiding homework.

Man, I get so much done when I'm avoiding homework.

This is McCall's M6983, but instead of doing a facing for the top, I went for a lining.

And there it is. The lining is a copy of the outer dress, making it almost reversible, but not quite. I had to really think about the construction, but I'm really pleased with the lining and think it'll wear better than just facing.

She picked out the polyester gingham to for the lining and I happened to have a pink zipper in exactly the right size. The pockets are faced in gingham, too. 

I'm very proud of this zipper. It zips all the way to the top and looks very tidy. 

It's machine sewn to the seam allowance, but hand finished. 

Remember the time I matched plaids? I managed to match this one up pretty tidily all around. The back seam matches up nicely and the yoke matches up nicely to the skirt. 

Heck yeah, skills!

(I didn't bother matching the lining, which is fine. No one will see it.)

Jump!

She's pretty happy with it, too. I have another one planned in a heavier fabric which I hope is not too heavy and I want to do some cute little shirts for her, too, but haven't got a pattern for one yet. She's grown out of the shirt patterns I have. Next time I'm not doing homework, I'll probably be looking for kids' shirt patterns.

What was June for Again?

Making garments is the answer and I'll be making several little things for Miss Bu this month. I've just finished washing and drying the fabric for a couple little jumpers and some shirts. Baby girl is growing and needs new clothes.

That's a lot of potential sewing right there (not counting the other two pieces of fabric not pictured because my undies are hanging up just to the right as well) and these are some darn ambitious goals, but I thrive on ambitious goals. Even if I fall a bit short of my intentions, I can still manage something awesome. DaVinci Disorder*, FTW. And, in addition to this, I'm planning on doing a shirt for the Outfit-a-long and, at some point later in the year, I want to do up a Suffragette costume.

This is the pattern I'm using for the Outfit-a-Long and I'm strongly considering the V-neck short sleeve for its versatility, though I really like the slash-front 3/4 sleeved one, too. Nothing saying I can't make both, but for the purposes of the OAL, the V-neck is the way to go. I'm considering a couple different yarns to use for the knitted portion of these adventures, namely Alisha Goes Around: Walk of Snipes in a gorgeous blue that would be awesome as a lightweight cardigan of some kind. I've also got some Quince & Co.: Finch that I really want to try and that would look really great as a cowl. I'm leaning cardigan in the blue, but I think I might have to go pet my yarn and find a pattern I like. I'm going to do Vitamin D eventually, but I think that's going to be an intentional project during the Hyperborean (basically winter) months.

Anyhow, between the end of the school year and the beginning of summer, I've been busy and have been neglecting the ol' blog, but lots of knitting and other crafting is still going on in the background. In addition to the usual stuff, I'm working on an alternate teaching certification program and doing my best to help both kids be as awesome as they can be (which is pretty darned awesome). The former involves regular, concentrated work, the latter, well, gifted kids are a particular challenge. We just got the little one's IQ score back and the psychologist who showed us the number was nearly speechless. It was a really big number.

See? I'm knitting!

All that aside, I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things and to start posting regularly again. I miss blogging and I miss how it was helping me focus on my crafting life. I'm pretty regular on Instagram as DelphinianJess, so if you miss me here, I'll be over there with a fair amount of regularity.

*Not a real disorder

FO: Cloth Napkin Hem Repair

 We use cloth napkins at our house because it reduces waste and I don't have to keep buying them. Some of them are starting to get a little worn as you saw from the last FO post and I've been putting off repairing them, but since they're just squares, the repairs are pretty straightforward.

The one on the top had been frayed on the edges, so I trimmed it up and added a new hem.The one on the bottom is what it originally looked like. The repaired napkin is a little smaller than the original, but that's no big deal.

Here's a closeup of the new hem on top of the old hem and not a bad little job of mitering the corner, if I do say so myself.

FO: Darning on a cloth napkin

Not a bad bit of mending, if I do say so myself. The hems might need a little mending later on, but the holes darned up very nicely. I used a single strand of plain cotton embroidery floss in a plain ol' woven darn. 

The back doesn't look too shabby, either, and it should hold up in the wash alright.

It's not very obvious at arm's length, which is a sign of a darn good mend. (Eh? Eh? See what I did there?)

FO: Starstepper Fitbit bracelet

 My Fitbit bracelet broke this morning, so I needed a replacement. I grabbed a scrap of fabric and some wide grosgrain ribbon, stitched them together, and turned the whole thing right side out. There's a slit in the side so I can take the sensor out to charge and one little pearly button. Embroidery keeps the sensor from shifting around. It's simple, comfy, and functional.

Me Made May: Stuff Around the House

I've been absent a couple of weeks, as you may have noticed, and for little other reason than because I'm having a bit of trouble getting my act together. The blocks I started when I left off are still sitting on my ironing board, waiting to be assembled. There's nothing for it but to start again as best as I can and see if I can't get back into the swing of things. I've also started an online teaching certification program, which has been taking a good chunk of my time and attention, but it's worth it.

So, officially, Me Made May is a challenge to wear the things you've made every day in May. I am, in fact, wearing a shirt that I'll talk about another week. Here at Lace Maze, I'm totally using it as an excuse to catch up with some of the things I started at the beginning of the year.

This week, I want to show you some of the household things  that get a lot of use around here. To the left is an action shot of Mr. Rippley, my coffee friend. Everyone loves a cuddle on, under, or near this one, and it was totally worth the time and effort. I chose the colors to match the couch and we picked the couch to match the art, which all seems to have worked out very well.

An older, funkier afghan was done up in scraps of Red Heart and lives on the rocking chair. It gets less use, not being on the couch most of the time, but it does lend a bit of homey cheerfulness to the living room.

We also have a large assortment of pot holders, washrags, and towels for kitchen use, as well as a fancypants cozy for my French press. There's a lot of crochet, but there's some knitting, weaving, and quilting in there, too. About half of what you see here was made by someone dear to me, which delights me to no end. There's more than what's pictured here because a lot of it is in the wash. Again, these get daily use and a lot are stained, worn, and/or faded from use-- which is not a bad thing! I'm not going to save these for a special occasion. Washing my dishes or scrubbing my counter is sufficiently special.

There are a few similar items in the bathroom, including a linen hand towel that I love, and one of my goals is to work up some more delicate towels and washcloths in finer cottons and linens. In fact, I've got a collection of such yarns for that purpose. The linen hand towel has gone dingy and has developed holes, but I still love it.

Some may eschew knitting/crochet/etc. for the home, but I like making things that everyone can share and I like seeing handmade things all around the house. It feels more like home when the house is dressed in things we made.

Piecing April: Quarter Square Triangles

So, our dryer broke. We have a clothesline, which is great! And I really enjoy hanging laundry up on the line because I get to be in the sunshine and feel productive at the same time. I like folding and putting away laundry somewhat less than I enjoy hanging it, but it's not a terrible thing. Unfortunately, because Husband is generally the one who takes care of the majority of the laundry duties and those have now fallen to me, that means a serious cut into my blogging and crafting time so that I can make sure everyone has clean shirts.

I did make time for a couple of blocks last week and worked on using the quarter square triangle. Like the HST, you do have to be aware of bias distortion and a walking foot would be very, very useful for avoiding it (alas, I still haven't one). Unlike the HST, the bias is on the right angle and not on the hypotenuse. Confused? Here's a diagram:

I hope that clears up the geometry a bit. This means that the triangles will be right triangles like the HST, but that they will also behave a little differently when you're sewing them.

This week, I did some Ohio Stars:

I'm hoping to do some Isosceles triangles this week, if I don't get buried under the laundry again.

Wish me luck.

Piecing April: Half Square Triangles

Aaaah, the good ol' HST. It's easy to put together into a variety of patterns either by itself or with other shapes. It's a quilting standby and rightly so, being that the right triangle is fine upstanding citizen of the Pythagorean realm. 

I'm doing a quilt for Miss Bu, since her elder sister's is closer to completion and if I don't get started, I won't finish hers before she goes off to college. 

Sure, it seems like I have a lot of time now, but I thought that about Iris' quilt, too. Best get busy on it. 

She's a shining star.

For Iris, I decided on a rainbow quilt. Iris means rainbow, hence rainbow quilt. For Phoebe, which means "bright and shining," I'm doing stars. There's a lot of potential for using different techniques using star-themed blocks and one of the simplest is the HST.

The simplest HST block is the pinwheel, which to me looks like the rays of a sun. It can also be used as a component in other blocks, so I thought I'd get a little practice in on this.

Before I show you the other ones, I feel it's necessary to pause for a public service announcement:

Bias distortion is real. If you or a friend has experienced bias distortion, don't despair. There is a solution. 

When you are cutting HSTs, the sides that form the right angle are often on the grain and the cross-grain. That is to say that those cuts run more or less parallel to the vertical and horizontal threads that compose the fabric. Therefore, the long side will be on the bias. The bias is stretchy and goes all wonky (that's a technical term) when you stitch it, meaning that your squares will go off-square.

What I want to have to solve this problem is a walking foot. I do not have a walking foot. I do, however, have junk mail. A bit of paper under the seam keeps the feed dogs from stretching the fabric out and tears away easily. It's not an ideal solution, but it's better than nothing. Tear-away stabilizer would work fine too, I imagine, but I didn't have any of that, either.

This is the friendship star, which is just a 9-patch using HSTs and plain ol' squares. It has a satisfying star shape and is easy to assemble. The whole square is mean to be 9", finished, so 9 1/2" unfinished. Each of the smaller squares, then, is 3" finished and 3 1/2" unfinished. For the HSTs, make a square that's the desired finished width plus 7/8, and cut it corner to corner to make a triangle the correct size.

You can fancy it up with fabric choice and by changing up what you're doing with the smaller squares. 

I'm fond of the wee little mini-9-patches. This brown one was a practice piece and will become something that is yet to be determined. They might be large potholders or a table runner or something else. The fabrics were a recent gift from a friend (Thanks, Robbie!) and I'm super tickled to start using them with some of my old stash. 

The last one (below) is my favorite of the whole batch and I'm infinitely pleased with how it turned out. 

There are more HST blocks to be had, but for next week, I'm going to do some more difficult geometry. There might even be trapezoids; you don't know what could happen!

Embroidery March: Bonus Wrap-up Post!

March has an extra Thursday in it, so I thought I'd look back on this month and see how some of my attitudes and perceptions have changed about embroidery in general and to show you some progress I've made on the various projects for the month.

Freestyle will be my first love as far as embroidery goes. I'm getting better at satin stitch, which I previously hadn't made much use of, and at doing more with fewer colors and stitches, such as with the snowdrops hanky from earlier this month.

I love the freedom of it and the ability to have all the tools of embroidery at my disposal. A++, would go again.

Blackwork is limiting, not only because it's entirely black, but also because it's a counted-stitch method. It's the opposite of my preferred freestyle embroidery, but limiting my toolbox, as it were, allows me to focus on how the weight of the thread and the density of the pattern affects the look of the design. Where freestyle is more like painting, this is pen and ink.

As an extra added bonus, I get to play with repeating geometric designs, for which I have an unnatural fondness.

A++, would go again.


Previously, I thought cross-stitch to be one of the, er... lower forms of embroidery. I sort of have a bias against the creepy large-eyed children and schmoopy sayings that tend to be done up in cross-stitch. Those and the Thomas Kinkade style pictures have never really been the sort of thing I like to do.

My own design based on illustrations from old books? That I can do. I will admit to liking the design process better than the actual stitching, but I like the stitching much more when it's a design that doesn't make me want to barf.
B+, won't ever be my favorite, but I'm enjoying what I'm doing.

Whitework is seriously hard to photograph, but looks pretty bitchin' in person. There's just something about white-on-white that gives me heart palpitations. Because, like blackwork, my embroidery toolbox is much more limited, I can focus on a different element of the whole embroidery picture. In this case, it's the way texture is affected by the structure of the stitch. I suppose this would be more like relief sculpture than anything else because whitework makes use of light and shadow playing off of the three-dimensional stitches. I've opted to go for something more like Mountmellick embroidery first because cutwork makes me feel woozy. When I can manage it without fainting, I'll be able to make use of negative space, too. I'm not there yet, though.
A++, would go again.

Bonus:

I like seed stitch. You could do a whole piece in seeding and it would be like some kind of embroidery version of pointillism.

This piece is giving me fits, though. These shapes between the flower petals and the petals themselves are very uneven. I still haven't decided if I'm just going to roll with it or take it out in a fit of pique. It's having a cool-off period for now.


And so we have come to the end of the first quarter. I'm going to keep working on these (except for the blue thing, which is in time out), but we're going to look at some new stuff in the second quarter as I continue to try to get the da Vinci Disorder under control.

April will be for Quilt Piecing  and I wish it were more alliterative and clever, but hey, whaddya gonna do? We're going to make some quilt blocks is what. I have quilt-based aspirations that need a good swift kick in the pants.

After that, we'll be participating in Me-Made-May, sort of. Not officially. You can do that here. Mostly, I want to do a retrospective to see what I'm actually using of the things I make. It's also an excellent excuse to get caught up on some of the projects I've started in the first quarter. May also tends to be a little wackadoo for us, so I'll need a breather for sure.

Following Me-Made-May in June is the Outfit-a-long, hosted over here by Ms Lladybird. Again, I won't be officially alonging, but I'm going to sew something to wear that I'm actually going to wear, then I'm going to knit something to go with the something I sewed.

See you at Stitches!