This one's for Ed

Ed, I don't know who you are, but you seem to care about my quilt, and that makes me care about you. As for the rest of you, well, you're just gonna have to wait. I'm talking to Ed right now.

Ed, my quilt is going along swimmingly, thanksferaskin'. The teacher assigned 52, yes, Fifty-Two little checkerboard pieces for the corners of each pieced ...piece. That means 104 little squares in each of the two colors, and five hundred attemps at getting their seams right. It's a good thing I bought wayyy more fabric than I needed, because I sure needed it. (?)

I think I musta made about 97 little checkerboard squares to get 52 usable ones. Notice I said "usable," and not "perfect." It's a good thing I'm not going for a grade in this class, because there's just NO CHANCE I'd get an A. I'm hoping that the rest of the squares will be easier, and they'll bring my grade, if I got one, up to somewhere around a B minus.
That's that I'm aiming for.
The goal I'm aspiring to.
Not what I'll accept, on the way to perfection, but what I'll consider my own personal high point. On my personal wheel of fortune, a B- would by my Big Money. Pat and Vanna would have to wait for me to finish doing my victory dance before they could spin a letter, if I were lucky enough to get a B minus on this.
Perhaps I should bring this tangent to a close.

Yes.
Quilt's going well.
52 squares complete. Class again tomorrow night, where I will be shamed by the advanced seamstresses in the group, and will seem (seam?) like the brown-nosing suckup to the others.


B minus here I come.

I'm gonna be a quilter!

Yep. You read that right. I'm even taking classes. Yep, you read that right too.
There's a series of classes here at the university called Lifelong Learning. And the lovely lady who's teaching the class invited me to join. She's an amazing quilter - she even has a fiber art show at a local gallery going up soon. Don't believe me? Take a gander at this:


Yes, it's a quilt! For more of her portfolio, and closeups of this quilt, go here.

For our class, I'll not be doing anything like this complicated. But for me, it will be plenty complicated enough. Last week was the second class, but my first. I was surprised at how detailed she was being, and at how much of a stickler she was for precision. I was thinking to myself, "it's a quilt, for cryin' out loud, not brain surgery!" I mean, we were taking into account the diameter of the thread! HOW is that enough to make a difference?? But then she explained that yes, being ever-so-slightly off by 1/16th of an inch might not mean much now, but if that square repeats even just 7 more times, by the end you'll be off by half an inch, and that'll drive you crazy trying to compensate. So a little bit of time spent getting it right on the front end will save a lot of seam-ripping and frustration towards the end.
Also, she covered things like:
-which side to press your seams to. This would not seem like a big deal, and it really isn't, but if it's all the same, then pressing everything towards the darker square will prevent the excess showing through the lighter squares once your quilt is finished. makes sense, dunnit?
-on some machines, the first stitch or two bunches. Again, it's not a huge deal, but there are ways around it, and just realizing that it is something that could throw your squares off by as much as an eighth of an inch or that it could make the squares pucker in places can make a difference.
-If you cut all of the pieces of one section at once, and then sew them all at once, you'll get into a rhythm, and things will move faster and with more precision than if you cut and sewed one square at a time before cutting and sewing the next one.

There were tons of little tips like that, none of them particularly earth-shattering, but the combined effect of them might just possibly keep my from ripping my hair out, and who knows - it just might result in a quilt that I'm actually proud of!



I know the curiosity is killing you, so I'll show you my computer-generated mock-up of the quilt I'm making. I made this so that I could see how all of the colors would work together once I was finished.

won't my mommy be so proud o' me?

Homecoming

I was never very interested in watching sports that other people were playing. I enjoyed playing them myself - I was a member of the track, swimming, and cheerleading teams in high school. I only mention this to illustrate that I am not against sports in general. I just don' t like to sit and watch other people play them. So when I was in college, it seemed rather convenient that when everybody else was watching the big game, I and all of my theatre classmates were busy building sets, rehearsing, or playing silly theatre games. Usually some time around ten o'clock at night, all official sporting and theatrical activities had eneded, and we all reconvened at the dorm to do the general socializing that college life is famous for.
So, being, as I am, not all that crazy about spectator sports, I have not been all that crazy about going back to my alma mater for Homecoming, either. It always seems to be scheduled around some big football game, that quite honestly, I couldn't care less about.
BUT.
The day after Heather, Robb, and I went to the Ren. Faire, we stopped by the college that Heather and I went to. It was only about half an hour from her house, and we thought it might be nice to just drive through the campus, see our old haunts, and take a look at the new additions that have been made in the decade (!) since we graduated. Well, a drive-by became a visit, and we were able to talk to Dave, our professor of stagecraft and set design, and Eric, the current costumer. I unfortunately didn't get any pictures, because I was too busy walking around with a big, open-mouthed grin, looking at what's changed and just how much hasn't. For instance, in the costume shop where I learned to sew and spent four years of work-study hours, they still have the big wooden shelves along the walls that hold large boxes of fabric. They're all labeled, and organized by color. The only thing that's different is that instead of cardboard boxes, the fabric is in those large plastic see-through tubs. And the cardboard shoeboxes that held buttons and lace and zippers and "notions" have been replaced with their plastic counterparts as well. The scene shop and costume shop are both still well-organized and clean, and there's storage space! REAL storage space for costumes and props. And the statue of the maiden that was built for a show my freshman year is still there, and in pretty good condition still. Apparently, she gets about as much stage time as most of the students.
By contrast, the theatre company I work with has a storage unit that's packed to the gills with lumber, and a few random props. We have no scene or costume shop - anything that gets built for a show gets built in the performance space, on the loading dock of the theatre, or at someone's house.
Heather and I jogged each other's memory - "do you remember that time that you, me, Val, and Dana..." "OHMYGOSHYES!!!" *fits of giggles*
The ever-patient Robb was there to be a witness to Where I Come From - "see Robb? These are my people. Doesn't a lot of stuff make sense now?"
I wasn't able to see any of my other former professors but, to sum up this rather long and blathery post, it did my soul a world o' good to see my old home.
I wonder if they're hiring?

Ghillieeeeees!!

I can't remember (and frankly can't be bothered to check the acrhives) if I mentioned that last weekend I went to My Very First Renaissance Faire. I've been wanting to go to one for, oh, about a decade now, and my cool friend Heather happened to mention that the Carolina Renaissance Festival is just a few minutes from her house, and you know how we always talk about visiting each other but rarely do, etc. So, I decided to go. And, since my friend Robb seemed to take a shine to Mizz Heather, I thought it might be cool to ask him along too. Heather agreed that it was a good idea to invite him. *sly grin.*

So, Robb and I headed out for Concord last Friday evening, with Robb driving and me still nursing my stuffed head and coughing like .. um,.. one who coughs a whole lot. We went to the faire on Saturday and had a lovely time. At least I had a lovely time. Robb and Heather were too busy not-quite-wooing to make many comments on how they were enjoying the faire, and to be honest, I was too busy looking at everything with wide, saucer eyes, and a big grin on my face to notice much of anything else. Perhaps one day I'll be used to what the typical Ren faire has to offer, but for this time, I was a pig in sh.. --slop.

AND, I Got Ghillies!!!! I'd been wanting some shoes like this for at least 5 years, and I finally found some that I liked, that fit me, and that weren't a hundred dollars or more. So without further ado, I present to you,....

My Shoes:


Aren't they cute? And they're all soft and suede-ey inside. I luff dem.


Oh, and if you want to see the Carolina Renaissance Festival through my eyes, click here.

much better than a post about snot, don'tcha think?

Sicko

Yes, I've been away for a while. For a while, I was sick. I even took a couple of days off! Yes! Me! But why is it that it takes illness for me to get a day off? Then the day is wasted by my being sick. I slept through a good portion of the daylight hours, and then at night I had trouble sleeping. Wonder why that is. So anyway, after having a fever for a couple of days and more snot in my head than any 5 people should ever have, I have finally returned. I still sound like a frog, and my sinus still has a slow leak, but I'm back. Finally.

Oh, and here's the thing. I got a flu shot on Wednesday. I was working on some snottiness, but no fever or nausea or headache or any of those other flulike symptoms. They let me go ahead and get the shot (for free, 'cuz I'm a state employee. woohoo.). But by the afternoon, I was coughing and dizzy and sneezing and not making sense (more so than usual), so I went home. Then I was sick for a few days. So either I had already started getting sick when I got the shot, or the shot made me sick. Or perhaps I was just a little sick, and the flu shot made me a lot sick.

Aren't you glad you've just spent all this time reading about me being sick?

I promise to have more fun stuff in future posts. Cross my heart.

Another happy weekend

What in the world is that a picture of, you ask? Well, click it and find out!

This past weekend my friend Adam was in town from Connecticut. We didn't do anything big, but we did get to spend some good time with friends, and each other. It was what weekends should be - low-key, but warm and friendly.

I'll write more about the weekend soon, but I'm feeling a little "under the weather" at the moment, so for now you'll have to make do with some pictures from the weekend.

Catnip Frenzy

Catnip Frenzy
Originally uploaded by Epiphany.

My wonderful friend Adam is in town (giving me a backrub as I type, so my concentration is a bit compromised - forgive me if this post is brief), and brought, along with several other lovely gifts, some organic catnip for my cat.

She liked it very much.

Lovely night

Tuesday night, after a long day at work, and then a function across town, and then a board meeting, a friend and I went out to get a bite to eat at a local fondue restaurant. What was originally just going to be a little snack turned out to be wine, salads, cheese fondue, and dessert. "these are a few of my faaaavorite thiiiings..."
And then we were couch potatoes and watched House.

faaabulous.

Meet me at Tiffany's - we'll have breakfast

Halloween1
Originally uploaded by Epiphany.

Well, I ended up doing not much at all for Halloween, sadly. All dressed up...

I wore this costume to work, and was the only one dressed up. But at least it was semi-appropriate for a cultural arts venue. More so than the naughty cop costume, in any event.

I had made big plans to go out, but they got squashed when I realized that the big party had been that thing I didn't go to on Saturday night, and there wasn't much happening last night.

I did get a few cutie trick-or-treaters, but not so many that I ran out of candy (score!!). And I also wanna give a big shout-out to Michael, who despite being in a gloomy mood, stopped in to say hi and let me show off my costume. All was not for naught.