But I digress

September 17, 2008 at 7:16 pm · Filed under Books, Everyday Things

I don’t know what is wrong with me here in the early fall. My quilting mojo hasn’t left me, but my get-to-work switch seems to be busted. I can’t face the sewing room. Maybe it is the errand-y nature of the early weeks of school. Gone all morning doing this, signing people up for that, getting home in the afternoon without much worthwhile time left to unclog the sewing room. Mind you, I did unclog the sewing room recently so it wouldn’t be as hard to do the day to day unclogging.

I don’t know what is wrong with me. Malaise and a certain lowness of spirit. Maybe the economy is catching up to me. Maybe local goings-on are leaving me cranky. There have been gun incidents in our local schools twice over the course of seven days. One was with a first grader. The other happened at the alternative school just near our house (and where the elementary school bus stop is) (I would also like to mention that this building would have been our neighborhood school until the population dropped causing building consolidation).

In any event, I’m trying to shake this off and just get to work. Beginning the work is half the battle; staying at the work is easier after that.

I have, ahem, been knitting a little bit more. I swear this will not become a knitting blog. Not that there is anything wrong with knitting blogs. I guess there is something easy about making the knit stitches and the purl stitches that does not involve all of our lovely quilt-y equipment. My spirits need some repetition. I also have hopes of supplanting some of the knitting with some fun hand applique…but when I applique lately, it has been far easier (and more accurate for me) to use starch and heat resistant template plastic (PANIC IN THE SEWING ROOM–I am OUT of big pieces of my favorite plastic and just have tiny snippets left–something must be done). By the time I prep the shapes, it is just as quick to sit down and applique them by machine.

Today, I started a knitting project that uses self-striping yarn:

All of these pretty self-striping yarns made me think about the equivalent in quilting. Self-striping yarns always make a knitting project more interesting because a person wants to know how the thing will look when that next color comes along. Is the quilter’s equivalent gradated fabric?? Something tells me the answer is no–there are lovely gradated fabrics out there, but it seems like it’s a little harder to figure out what to do with them. I am obsessed with the dotty blanket on the left in the picture of multi-blankets (which picture is actually on the right-hand page…forgive me).

Anyhoo, this blanket is from a hot off the presses book:

This book is HILARIOUS. It is the funniest thing–almost funnier than David Sedaris (and I don’t write that lightly).

Someone at the publisher was also kind enough to match the book jacket to my coffee mug.

OK, that is all I have for today. Here’s to uplifted spirits and nose to the grindstone!

I will leave you with a piece of advice. Go buy some of these immediately. Buy four bags. You will need them. We have been discussing potential uses: dropped in hot coffee! Plopped on top of hot oatmeal cookies. They are, as we say around here, num-licious!

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