Hoka hey, it's the very first block of my very first quilt! Actually these are block one and block two. Or more like block one and block five. I have six now. (Six of twenty five. Phew. Eyes on the prize.) Also I made a doll quilt before. I am full of lies, and secrets.
It's the Heather Ross/Patchwork Style joint I mentioned, and I love it. Love love love.
I realized that in order to get projects like this done I have to live in a shithole. I just cannot keep the house tidy and do crafty things and feed the family well and the whole nine yards. Straight up can't do it. And if something has to fall by the wayside, I'd rather apologize to guests for the mess than not do the things I actually want to do.
Women's liberation, yo! I'ma wear an apron and still not clean shit!
(I wonder if Betty Friedan was a neat freak? Something tells me she probably was.)
When I can't be bent over at the kitchen table like Quasimodo trundling away at the machine* I've been knitting and watching True Blood**. I finally embarked on a sweater for myself, which is exciting! And kind of horrifying! I'm not a small woman!
Every picture I take of this makes it look hot pink, and I assure you it is not. It's just bright red. And massive. There are 262 stitches per row in this cardigan, with wide panels of 1x1 twisted rib, which means I will finish the sweater just in time for next summer's heat wave, and it will take every ball of yarn in the greater Puget Sound area. Honestly, the thought of needing to buy less yarn and spending less time knitting may be a strong enough inducement in and of itself to lose some weight. I don't give a shit about bathing suits, but I do care a very great deal about good yarn. It's not cheap.
Finally, because I can't just yank one of the many, many skeins of yarn out of my stash and knit something with it, I bought this to make Big Kid a hat:
It actually looks like candy. Love love love.
*Note: this method of quilting is NOT easier than traditional piecing. At all. The quilting is very extensive; I'm using about 100 meters of thread for each square. It just produces a much more free form block, and allows you to do a less elaborate final quilting between the top and the backing than you otherwise might.
**There is so much sex and violence in this show. I love it, even though I'm not a huge fan of violence, and I really, really hate watching actors pretend to have sex onscreen (I'm not a fan of them actually having sex onscreen either. Barf.) It's not prudishness on my part, but a general difficulty with suspension of disbelief. Any time I see people doing it in movies or on television I can't not think of the silly penis socks and lady patches that actors apparently wear, and how awkward it must be to simulate an act of sex with someone you aren't actually intimate with for multiple shots in front of a camera crew. I love period romances in some small part because they are refreshingly chaste. No penis sock required, Mr. Darcy.