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Operation Quilt: Day 2
I know you are all sitting on the edges of your seats waiting to hear how it’s going on the quilting front. It’s an exciting raging battle between me and the threads, let me tell you. Today I pretty much just cut. Cutting cutting cutting… It was hard though!
I hate cutting this fabric up. I feel so much pressure to use it wisely. The patterns are so old. Each piece seems like it holds a story, if only I knew what it was. I bought them in a stack at an estate sale years ago for something like 25 cents a piece. I know they are old flour sacks but I don’t know how old they are. I hope I am doing them right putting them into a quilt. It seems like a better thing to do than keep them away in some dark corner of my closet.
So cut away I did, as carefully as I could. I admit I had to take several breaks because some of the flour sacks were wonkey and not square. It’s stressful (for me) to figure out the best way to cut an odd shape to use every scrap possible. Way too much math for my lopsided brain. I even called my mom in a moment of weakness.
Somehow my mom magically figured out a way to get untangled from whatever she was doing and she came to my rescue! I love my mom. Or maybe she just couldn’t resist all the fun I’m having with this silly quilt. She and my nieces drove down to visit me. Which is great because Bug is bored out of her skull rattling around in this great big house full of toys to play with.
What kind of kid gets bored in a house full of somebody eles’s toys? She is so weird that way. She’s never played with toys much. She has a room full of them and she’d rather bug me. She’s always been that way.
It’s nice because I never have to pick up much after her but it’s a pain in the butt because sometimes I’d like to do my own thing, like you know, make a quilt or something. So I’m very happy my nieces are here to entertain my favorite little monster. Not that I don’t like Bug’s company or anything. I just need some space once in a while.
Once they were here I finished cutting pretty quickly. I did sew a few pieces together just to see how’d they’d look. I wasn’t sure about the strip width but I think I’m settled on it now. It’s actually turning out to be a lot easier than I thought. I don’t want to jinx myself but I think I can totally do this, especially now that my mom is here. She’s not doing it for me, that would be cheating, but she is helping me out of those crazy second-guessing circles I seem to spin myself into.
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Kickin’ it at the Actuallys’
We are quite at home here as you can see. Nothing terribly eventful has happened. I have not broken the garbage disposal or the washing machine (yet). Knock on wood. I did lose Katy the cat once, but she turned up outside (where she doesn’t belong) and all was well. I just have to keep a better eye on the sliding glass door. It seems there’s somebody else around here besides the cats who can now open doors by herself. I’m looking at you, Bug.
This morning Bug and I walked downtown and hung out at this really cool coffee shop that has a play area just for kids and a counter just for moms with laptops. While you sit at the counter getting your wifi and caffeine fix, you can watch your kid run around and play dress up with all the other kids. It’s great.
There is an attendant on hand to watch the kids but with all those mothers casually looking over their laptops, there isn’t much that could go wrong. Well, other than all the germ-sharing of course. I fully expect to come down with something three days from now and I won’t even complain. The two hours we spent there were totally worth it.
I really wish we had a coffee shop like this in my neighborhood. It’s such a great concept. Kids playing, moms working, coffee, wifi…what more could you ask for? They did seem a little understaffed and possibly a bit dirty (The cream cheese on my bagel had mold on it! Ew!) but there was a lot going on. I don’t know who the owner is but I have a feeling she is a multi-tasking mom and she’s tearing her hair out.
They had classes going on in the back room and bulletin boards everywhere announced other classes to be held at other times. Dance party night, craft day, Hannah Montana night, baby massage, toddler tango—it was lot. Everywhere there were notes scrawled too, just like your mom would leave for you. “Don’t throw your liquids in the trash,” “Be sure to lock the bathroom door,” “Save the Earth and use cloth diapers”… etc. etc. If I didn’t know better I’d say they could use with a little less mothering and a little more bleach but I guess I just have high standards. If Starbucks were running the place it probably wouldn’t exist.
Anyway we had a lot of fun and I got a ton of work done. Maybe we’ll go back tomorrow.