Slack Bloggers

I'm reassured as I catch up on the updates from Mads and Erica that I'm not the only slack blogger around. In fact, perhaps there was something in the apartment we shared in Kingston that causes slack blogging? If only C had a blog, we could confirm it ^_^

Yesterday, as I was rushing to finish a quilt for the Christmas Tea and Bazaar, I suffered my first major quilting injury. Now, over the years, I have been pricked by many a needle/pin, but I have never done anything that required more than a bandage. But yesterday, somehow (and I can't really remember how I did it, I think I was in shock) I managed to stab right through my left index finger with a machine needle and break the needle off in my finger.

Yeah, I'll let you think about that for a minute.

There I was, all alone, in my pyjamas, with half a needle impaling my finger. My first thought was, "Okay, better move my hand away from the quilt so I don' get any blood on it." My second thought was, "Is that the pointy end of the needle? My tweezers are too far away for me to deal with this." So I wound up using my embroidering scissors as tweezers to remove the offending piece of shrapnel.

Then I had to use many bandages to secure my finger, prevent bloodstains, and keep from freaking out every time I looked at it. I may require a tetanus shot.

Needless to say, the binding on the quilt didn't get finished. I brought it to the bazaar anyway, though, just so people could see what kind of stuff I can make.

I sold three items at the bazaar, which was pretty good for my first time. One of the items was the wallhanging that was a miniature version of Mark and Beth's wedding quilt. It hurt to part with it, but I think I will be allowed to go and visit it if I get really sad.

Now that the throbbing in my finger is down to a dull ache, perhaps today I will finish the binding on the Quilt o' Doom and start sketching new things to make with my stash ^_^

Back

I took a mini-vacation last week.

It was my birthday on Thursday (there is a post I started about birthdays, but I never finished it, and feel the moment is gone), and I knew that my boss and my coworker would both be starting their vacations this week. My other coworker will be on vacation in October and November. I'm not planning a trip to Ontario this Christmas, so if I wanted to take any time, last week was the best.

Three days off, plus the weekend, meant five glorious days of hanging out in the Fortress of Solitude, quilting, thinking about quilting, and picking raspberries in the yard. (There was also tiramisu on Thursday and cake on Friday at the office, to celebrate my birthday and my coworker's birthday - even on vacation, I can't seem to stay away.)

Of course those five days felt like an eternity when I finally rolled out of bed on Wednesday morning (almost afternoon), but by Saturday night I was cursing the speed at which they had passed. I was tempted to call in sick this morning, but guilt prevented me. Guilt and the certainty that my coworkers would know that I wasn't sick, I was just lazy.

I have one quilt-top that is waiting for a border and backing fabric - it's a new pattern for me, in a new palette. I'm thinking of calling it something ridiculous like "Spicy Salsa" or "Caliente Cubes." (Yeah, I need some help.)



I also made another quilt-top that has yet to be photographed. After I made it, I realized that I had used up part of the fabric I intended for the back, leaving me unable to baste the sucker together and quilt it. I spent most of Sunday trying to figure out how I could fix the problem.

Luckily, I woke up this morning with an idea, the kind of idea that makes you want to leave work at lunch and not come back for the rest of the day. The same guilt that forced me to go to work in the morning compelled me to return after lunch, sadly, but it made the afternoon go by pretty quickly.

Long story short, I have pieced a wicked back for the quilt, so it's practically reversable. Tomorrow I will cut out the batting, baste it together, and start stippling. Wooo!

Okay, so you know I'm alive, I've accounted for my whereabouts, and now I'm headed to bed. Perhaps I'll wake tomorrow with another idea that makes me want to play hooky ^_^

Quiltrospection

Sometimes I wish that I had never started reading quilting blogs.

I don't mean that in a bad way. There are so many things I've learned from quilty folks on the internet, so many ideas I have had after reading a particularly interesting tutorial or introspective post - I wouldn't take those back.

But the downside is that I start to think that my own work is...well...amateurish. I have my own tastes, which maybe don't mesh with the tastes of people whose work I admire. I worry that I am not hand-quilting "properly" - as if the QUILT POLICE are going to take me away for impersonating a Real Quilter.

I've mentioned before that I have issues, right?

Then there are days like today where I look around at my work and say, "You know what? I don't care if So-and-so doesn't like my colour/pattern choices. I don't care if the Quilt Police crack down on my hand-quilting technique. I'm happy with what I'm making."

(I just basted a quilt together last night, does it show?)

When I lived in Japan, I ate with chopsticks. I handled them pretty well, but I was always nervous that some well-meaning person was going to give me the "oh, you use chopsticks very well for a foreigner" compliment (which was the equivalent of patting me on the head like I was a child). After a couple of years, I mentioned that fear to my friend Mitsue. She told me, "It doesn't really matter how you hold your chopsticks, as long as the food gets from the bowl to your mouth."

That's my take on quilting now - "It doesn't matter how you piece/baste/quilt it, as long as the end result is that the top-batting-and-backing wind up stuck together."


Yeah, I'm not going to be an Internet Famous Quilter with lines like that...but I'll be making stuff I like, and that's pretty good ^_^

It's a good thing I'm not an internet-famous quilter...

I don't get the big deal about Sherbet Pips.

I'm not saying I hate them or anything...but I'm pretty indifferent to them.

I'll go back to working and lurking now.

Success!

My presentation went very well, nerves notwithstanding. It was suggested by the teacher and my fellow students that I present it to my bosses and see what they think. w00t w00t!

I visited Bear's Paw Quilts, and walked away with a bag of swag that fills my shrivelled heart with glee - new stencils, a permanent marker for making labels, and the last 2.9m of that fabulous black batik with the moose and bears, which I will use to make some fantastic quilts for sale. I also bought the Sudoku quilt pattern and a pre-cut selection of fabrics with which to make it. Whee!

I'm just waiting for my dinner to arrive (I had to order Chinese, because when else am I going to get the chance?) and after dinner I'm heading over to Walmart to pick up the vast majority of my non-perishable goods. Kidney beans, I am looking in your direction ^_^

All in all, I think we can call this week-long trip a success.

Work, Veg, Sleep

I haven't really done much in Whitehorse, other than attend my course.

I come back to the hotel, do my homework, watch TV, and sleep. By the time I'm finished the course, it's all I can do to get the homework done. School is exhausting - now I remember why I slept so hard for four years.

All the homework assignments are building up to Saturday's presentation of a business plan for the CRIC. It's not necessarily the actual plan the CRIC will be following, since I'm the only one with input, but for the purposes of the course, it's the real deal.

Ugh, I will have to stand up in front of the class and present it...double ugh.

My goal is to have the presentation finished Friday before class ends, and then I am heading over to Bear's Paw Quilts for a little fabric therapy. I'm on the lookout for cheap flannel, northern batiks, and anything else that catches my eye. Oooh, maybe even some thread!*

Saturday evening will be shopping for non-perishables, and Sunday morning is perishable consumables. Then I'm on the road and back to Faro...and I probably won't be back to WH for another two months. I may have hit my WH limit for the year already ^_^


*Thread nerd ^_^

Where have I been?

Quilting.

I spent the last week rushing through a project with a very tight deadline. Self-imposed project/deadline, for sure, but still...

You see, the Youth Group here in Faro is going to Ottawa over March Break to attend a conference (either TYPS or BYTE, I can't remember - too many acronyms!), and they have been doing a lot of fundraising. They had a pancake breakfast on Saturday, and a skate-a-thon that same morning. Based on the donations they had received from around town, they collectively had to skate 1,157 laps. I'm not sure if they made it, as I was only there for a fifteen minute cram pancakes down gullet break in my quilting.

At the community potluck that night, there was going to be a silent auction. A week before this, I had the brilliant idea to throw together a small lap-quilt/wall-hanging to offer as a donation. It was a fantastic idea...but it meant that I spent every waking hour working. Barely time to sleep, barely time to eat - I was a quilting machine.*

I finished the quilting portion of the project about an hour before the potluck, but I still had to attach the binding. I had to try the new-to-me technique of machine-binding both sides of the binding strip. Luckily, I did not mess it up the way I half expected I would. I finished binding it ten minutes before the potluck.

But I still had to wash it! And dry it! If I brought it in as it was, it would have looked awful, all covered with white marker and cat hair. So I wound up half an hour late to dinner, and not as many people got the chance to look at it. And I completely forgot to take any photos.

But Tina was the one who won it in the auction, and she is bringing it back to me so I can add a hanging sleeve to the back, so there will be photos in the near future. And hopefully this means a vacation from quilting until midnight every night ^_^


*Lord, I wish I had a quilting machine.

In Which Our Heroine Lets Down the Internet

Hello, Internet.

It's been a while. I know, I know, I haven't exactly been keeping up my end of our bargain - namely, that you provide me with trivia about background extras on TV shows, information about funding services, and M*A*S*H quotes, and in return I give you more than a crummy little update saying that I'm not frozen. Sorry, Internet.

It's just that I don't think you want to hear about my struggle with the cycle of dirty/clean dishes (How do I create so many dishes when Kara cooks dinner for me 5 nights a week?), why I let my laundry pile up until I am wearing heavy wool socks with a tweed skirt, or how I haven't had anyone in to fix the upstairs toilet even though I've been in my current house since September. I want to be interesting, Internet. I know you understand.

Be honest, Internet - would you still respect me if I told you that I watched 2.5 seasons of NCIS in one weekend while quilting? That the only times I got off the couch were to feed the woodstove or get another cup of tea? Because I've done that. (Sometimes the DVDs are different, but you get the drift.)

I did do one interesting thing in the last little while, though. I did an interview for Sharing Travel Experiences. Poor Andy - he sent me the questions in December, and it took me just short of forever to get them back to him. You know how I get, with the need for everything to be just so. The questions were easily answered, but I got hung up on the photos, and the longer I debated about the photos, the more embarrassed I was at how long it was taking. It was like a shame spiral.

But it's done, it's up, and I've had a number of people tell me they liked it, so I'm happy. And I was ordered by someone who is in the office frequently to get busy and update my blog, so this one's for you, Harold ^_^

Oh, hey, I do have news

I'm going to be in WH for a few days next week!

There's a Gas Tax workshop on the 27th, and because Faro is so far away, they're springing for a hotel for two nights instead of one. I'll be driving in on Wednesday and coming home on Friday. I've already been assigned a number of work-related errands (office supplies, etc.) and I've arranged to drop my truck off at the dealership for servicing.

I'm pretty excited about the workshop, to be honest. My job involves more funding applications than I was prepared for, and Gas Tax is a big one. Anything I can do to advance my knowledge so that I'm not constantly bugging our Community Advisor is a good thing. And I figure that some of that knowledge will translate to other proposals, right?

Okay, you got me. I'm super excited to go to the quilt store, too ^_^

And so I'm back...from outer cyber-space

So, I took a little vacation from the internets. It wasn't really planned, but it was refreshing nonetheless. I went back to Ontario for almost three weeks, and some good times were had.

But now I'm back in Faro, and it's time to get 2011 rolling. Obviously, the past two days didn't count (I spent the majority of both of them in bed, watching Fringe). They were like a warm-up ^_^

I don't have a big list of goals for the coming year or a list of resolutions. I have ideas for the future, but nothing concrete. The only thing I am sure of is that I am going to conquer Candida Albicans this year and start feeling better. I ate a lot of stuff that I shouldn't have eaten over Christmas, and the new year is going to be a lot cleaner.

Of course, having said that, I am waiting until next week to start on the cleanse that Kara ordered for me, because the Wents are going out of town for a week and I have to make my own dinners. Me + making dinner = recipe for disaster. (This is not to put any guilt on you, Kara - I promise, there will be no pizza this week ^_^)

Today will include a lot of cleaning, possibly assembling my new bookshelf, and hopefully sitting down in the afternoon with a movie and Hunter's quilt. I'd like to get that finished before I settle in to work on the Crazy Cowboy quilt for my sister.

w00t w00t1

Wordy Wednesday

I got all riled up about how I was going to do a Wordy Wednesday (all words, no photos) post to counter all the Wordless Wednesday (all photos, no words) posts out there, on account of me not having any photos to share.

Then I realized I don't have a lot of words to share, either.

I'm working as hard as I can, and that's stressing me out a little. I can't seem to get in front of my eating problems, and that is definitely stressing me out. My house is still not unpacked, because I don't have furniture to unpack things to, which isn't as stressful as you'd think.

On the up side, I started quilting something for a pretty special guy yesterday, and I think this quilt is going to be amazing.

Where have I been? (again)

Working, working, almost running out of gas on the way in to Whitehorse, having horrible experiences with my tonneau cover at the Superstore with $400 worth of meat in my shopping cart, working, and trying to move things over to my new place. Whew. That's where I've been.

Nothing super exciting to report on the personal life front. I finished the quilting on the red quilt last night, which means binding time! This will be my first quilt started and completed in the Yukon, which is pretty dorky to mention. Hurray dorkiness!

My Friday Night crew are packing up for Ross this week, so I will be all by myself. That's okay, though, because we'll be showing a movie at the Rec Centre as part of the Fireweed Festival, and I'll probably be busy with Festival stuff. And then Sunday is supposed to be the day of moving furniture to the new place. Because I've been forgetting to phone Northwestel, I might not have phone and internet hooked up right away, which is kind of a bummer, but I'll survive.

So, there you are - caught up on the life and times of Erica.

A Severe Geritol Deficiency*

I'm developing a headache as the day progresses. I'm not sure why - the office has been very quiet with my coworkers away and a minimum of citizens coming in to pay bills. I feel it in the back of my neck and behind my eyes, though, and am looking forward to going home.

I've had some inspiration about the blocks I've been piecing for the past few days - they're made from leftover fabric from the quilt I'm making for Hunter. I thought, rather than put those scraps away until some nebulous future date where I might do something with them, I should just jump into another quilt top. I made 40 blocks, and then started wondering what to do with them. ^_^

Everything hinges on how much unbleached muslin I have kicking around in my scrap box. It used to be my sashing of choice, and there might be enough for what I intend. If not, I guess another trip to an online quilt shop may be in order.

Will I go home after work and wind up on the couch, or will I head over to the new place to continue taping corners and spackling the crazy number of holes in the walls? If I do the latter, I could start painting tomorrow. But if I do the former, I get to lie on the couch all night. Decisions, decisions.


*5 Internet Points if you can tell me who said that.**
** Internet Points are non-transferable, and are only good for gloating.

Deliciously Dorky

I have an idea...an idea that melds my love of quilting and my newfound love of Supernatural into a glorious, harmonious whole.

I get the giggles every time I think about it.


And I'm not saying anything more at this time ^_^

I survived!

I am still alive and kicking after my ten days with the parentals (well, kicking is perhaps a bit strong, flailing is a bit closer to what I am doing).

I had Monday off to make up for the Friday I worked during my vacation, and I'm only now beginning to feel like a person again. I've been bonding with the cats, putting the first coat of stain on my new headboard, and working on a new quilt-top made from material I purchased in Juneau. I watched the 6-hour BBC Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth (which is still as amusing and repressed-sexy as it was when I was in high school), and followed that with the first six episodes of Supernatural. And I wonder why I'm single ^_^

Having the parents staying with me was troubling on a certain level. Is it possible for a person to become so fixed in her ways that she becomes incapable of living with other people? I'm afraid I'm heading toward that outcome - I will never be able to live with a guy because I can't live with anyone but my loud and annoying cats.

Whew.

On another level, it was nice to have my mom around to show me different ways to cook chicken. I'll be stopping at the Liquor Store on the way home to pick up a nice white wine for poaching my dinner ^_^ Or maybe I'll just have the bottle of wine for dinner.

Going to Town

I am going to town this afternoon, and it is hard for me to do anything productive.

I'm going in for a meeting about the new health plan all the Yukon Communities are enrolled in, which means there will probably be a lot of note-taking involved. But there will also be a hotel bed, and a chance to go grocery shopping, so I'm all woooo-hoooo. But, you know, in a quiet, refined kind of way.

In other news, I have punctured the middle finger on my left hand through excessive quilting over the weekend. I couldn't find my good thimble, and nothing else seemed to have any effect at all - bandages were punctured within three stitches, and whoever suggested a few layers of nail polish obviously was not familiar with my inability to allow nail polish to dry. Luckily, I did not touch the fabric during that experiment.

The new quilt is coming along pretty well, I think. The part that I thought would be the hardest (freehand-drawing of vines and leaves) is actually proving to be fairly simple. The only difficult part is the darkness of the fabric combined with a regular old pencil makes it tricky to see what I've drawn in order to quilt it. But with any luck, I'll pick up a white pencil at Walmart or the Bear's Paw, and then everything will be aces.

What I've been up to

So, I have mentioned some quilt-stuff I've been doing.







They're all as finished as I can make them for the moment - I need more fabric to do borders and backing. Right now, they're all about 24 inches square, which seems really small in comparison to the quilts I normally make. I don't feel like a 24-inch quilt would be at all helpful for anyone. I don't know if I can convince anyone to buy a 24-inch quilt.

If I can, though, woo-hoo! Now I need to figure out what I could realistically charge for such a piece ^_^

Monday Morning, like a jolt to the system.

Sean has put ideas in my head again, and now I am trapped in a daydream.

Would it be bad if I went back? Could it possibly be as bad as I remember? With the old guard gone, could we change things to create a happy environment? Maybe Baa-chan will shuffle off this mortal coil and stop poisoning the place.

Curse you, Sean-sean. Curse you for making me dream about kaiten-zushi at Kamikitadai, and shopping at Diamond City, and walking down Daigaku-dori in Kunitachi on my way to dance class. I want to go to the Yuzawaya over Bic Camera in Tachikawa and buy lots of scraps of cheerful cotton.

I spent the weekend in bed or on my couch, sipping tea and ginger ale. I couldn't go to Carmacks for a training session, because I was ill, ill, ill. Headache and stomachache and nausea and all manner of foul things. All I could do was lie there, listening to movies and sleeping. Stress is a killer.



Okay. Less with the daydreamin', more with the working on the Festival...I still need to find a speaker.

One is the loneliest number...

Well, my main hang-out crew has departed for Mayo for the week, leaving me blue. I hope they have a great time, though - I will just have to remember how to occupy myself.

I am thinking that a quick round of "Clean House" and some "Spring Decluttering" might be just the ticket. It's amazing how much stuff I have accumulated... particularly when you think of how little storage I have here.

I've also got some new projects on the go, quilt-wise. I haven't bought any new fabric - I'm using mostly scraps from the Rainbow Quilt (and the Mermaid Quilt), a stack of four fat quarters I bought last month when I went to WH with Kara, and a fifth fat quarter that Lucy gave me for looking after Oscar. The projects - baby quilts. I want them to be cute, but I don't want to get emotionally invested in them. Then perhaps I can try selling them.

Because I bought them before the fabric-buying-embargo, I don't need to have any guilt about them. I keep telling myself I am not allowed to buy more fabric until after the Crane & Sheep Festival, but with a new truck and insurance payments to think about, plus the new computer, it's beginning to look more like no fabric until September, which sucks.

On the other hand, the last pieces for the red quilt should be arriving shortly, so I can work on quilting that over the summer months, which should keep me occupied.

Oh dear, I think this is turning into a quilting blog.

To recover - I would like to buy the materials needed to build a coffee table when I go in to WH to pick up my truck. It would be nice to have a table I'm less worried about scratching or setting on fire than the one I am currently borrowing. I'm just concerned I am going to wind up with too much stuff to fit in my hotel room.

Okay, then. Clean House it is!

Important Lessons I Have Learned

In much the same way as my (entire) time in Japan, my first few months in the north have been filled with Learning Experiences^TM.

I've learned that as much as I hate dress pants, I can't wear skirts to work if I am walking from the Upper Bench to the office and the temperature is below -10^o. Also, I've been informed that people are going to look at me funny if I do wear skirts to work.

No matter how expensive food from the hardware store is, I will buy it because I have impulse control issues.

When you buy half a cord of firewood cut to fireplace length, so you can enjoy evening fires in your fireplace, make sure you also have an axe to chop the logs in half, otherwise you've just paid a bunch of money for something you can't really use yet. (Good job!)

Make non-work friends in addition to your work-friends. (This one can be hard if you're socially awkward like me, but try.) Work can suck the life out of you, and it's nice to talk to people who aren't connected to work at all.

Make more quilts. You never know when the temperature, which has been hovering around the 0^o mark for the past few days, will suddenly plummet, leaving you shivering in bed at midnight, unwilling to go make a hot water bottle. Quilts are always handy.