Holiday Humdrum

Ugh.  I can't wait for the holidays to be over.

I know!  I know!  It's not even November.  Heck, it's not even Halloween!

But I can't wait.

You see, I work in retail.  This means that since the beginning of October, I've been working 45 or more hours a week.  Which, if it would stay that way, I might be okay.  But now, we're opening up a satellite location in the mall, and my job duties just keep expanding.  I think I'll be lucky if I work less than 50 hours a week in November, and I won't be surprised by 60 hour work weeks in December.

Ugh.

And people wonder why I get so down about the holidays.  The extra pay is nice, but I don't really get to enjoy it.  It's all going toward getting a little bit ahead on the bills, and then Christmas gifts for those nearest and dearest to me.

I haven't even been in my sewing room since packing for my Stitch 'n' Bitch in early October.  *sighs*  I just want to lock myself in with my stash and get some progress made.  I only have two people left to make blocks for the Birthday Block Swap, and then I'm done with that for the year.  And I would love to quilt my baskets top.

I guess what makes it harder for me, is that Zeb turns three at the end of November, and this is the first year that he's going to really 'get' the holidays.  He's dressing up for Halloween, seeing Grandpa for the first time this year over Thanksgiving (if things work out well), and will finally understand what those pretty packages under the tree are for.

I want to be excited about the holidays, but I can't work up the energy.  Who came up with the bright idea to pack three major holidays into the last quarter of the year?!?

So anyway, obviously blogging has taken a back seat, since I haven't done any sewing.  Maybe I can sneak some in tonight.  We'll see how Zeb is...

Exuberant Winner! (and other stuff)

I am so sorry for the delay in posting this!  My desktop computer has decided to die, a horrible, slow death, and then I lost internet for a few hours today.  And, of course, I got focused on cleaning.  My carpet is steamed, and Zeb's toys are all put away.

Anyway...  The random number generator gave me this:

...which means that the winning comment was:

Congratulations, Brooke!  And to answer your question, this is actually a fairly easy quilt to make.  The curves are very gentle, so it's just a matter of finding your centers (easy with the notches from you GO! die) and taking your time.  Keep your eye on this blog.  Somewhere in the last couple of weeks in January, I'll be starting a Double Wedding Ring Quilt-Along.  

E-mail me at gyrmalcyn [dot] go [dot] pop {at} gmail [dot] com with your shipping information, and I'll get this quilt by the end of the week.  I still have to wash and photograph the final product, but I should be doing that tomorrow evening.

Actually, working on finishing up the binding was part of my Friday Night Sew-in project.  I did a lot of "unsewing" taking the binding off, and then figuring out where I'd gone wrong.  

And, for those of you who are curious, the batik that was used just once:

Now, I'm absolutely psyched to see that I've reached 89 followers (for whatever reason, Blogger keeps showing one more than I actually have)!  So, I plan on celebrating when I reach 100, so spread the word.

When I get to 100, I'll be giving away my Mary's Fan quilt top, and the fabric I'd planned on using for the binding:

This top measures 92" X 92", and contains 384 fabrics in the fan blades.  Yes, that means that each fan blade is unique.  

I had a lot of fun making this top, but I'm not in love with it anymore, and it's so not my style anymore.  My tastes have changed so much in the two or three years since putting the last stitch in.  I'd much rather that this top go to someone who will give it the love it deserves.

Sharing Some Science Geekiness

I'm a total dweeb.  I love science.  I love learning more about the world around us.  I love even more when the scientists doing the research can articulate their own love of learning and science with an eloquence rivaling poets'.

An incredibly talented gentleman by the name of John Boswell is heading up a project called Symphony of Science.  I strongly encourage you to investigate the website and watch the rest of the videos.  And be sure to read the lyrics, especially if, like me, you're a little hard of hearing and the auto-tuned voices make distinguishing individuals words difficult.

However, for now, I'll leave you with a little bit of inspiration:

If you are here for my Fall into Fall Give-away, click here to see the give-away post. I will be locking the post to comments at 12 AM CST, so be sure to get your entries in!  

Speaking of give-aways, be sure to check out Alderwood Quilts for Sue's GO! Giveaway.  Sue is giving folks FOUR chances to enter, and it doesn't end until November 1st.  GO! Enter!!

Think Modern Thursday #7 - The Square Family Reunion.

And I'm finally back with Think Modern Thursday!  And I'm even trying to work ahead and get next week's TMT ready to go.  Oi vey...  I've been working too much.  As I typed TMT, I wanted to type TMNT, which is the acronym for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I typed several times today while updating our inventory system.


But anyway!  I'm caffeinated and ready to go!


This week I bring you The Square Family Reunion by Linda Miller.  Check out her flickr!  Linda is awesomely prolific and has tried several different techniques and styles.  One of her tops, Pure Color, has even warmed my opinion on the whole Stack'N'Whack thing.  But that's a top for another discussion!  For a more in depth look at Linda's body of work, check out her web page.

Linda said, "I always enjoy making the boxes - scrappy ones are really fun! The name came from the fact that the little boxes, which finish at two and a half inches, made me think of a bunch of little kids running around:) For the other boxes, I just made up sizes that would work with the little boxes and also that used the sizes of strips and squares that I have."


I love the way this went together!  It's actually serving as the inspiration for the backing for one of my quilts.  I like that there's a huge variety of prints, and that not all of them are 'modern'.  It's the fearless throwing together of so many prints that really wins this one over for me, since I started my quilting life as a scrap quilter.

And you know what I thought of first when I saw the preview image for this top? 

Klimt.  Gustav Klimt. 

Do you see it?

The incredible, and deceptive, texture Klimt gave to his textiles by using repeated, slightly warped geometric shapes?  

Are you getting the sense of motion?  That the subject could move off the canvas at any moment?

That's what I felt when I saw The Square Family Reunion for the first time.  Like the squares could dance right out of their border, and do so gleefully.  While Linda's squares aren't warped, they have a delightful sense of movement to them.


Tee-hee.  It's a square dance.

WTF Wednesday #4 - WTF Happened to My Sewing Mojo?!?

Disclaimer:
WTF Wednesday is my day to sound off on the various things that irk me.  I try to keep these quilting-related, since this is a quilting blog.  These are my opinions and I don't expect anyone else to share them, or even agree with them.  This is my day to turn my internal censors off, and just vent.  


Having said this, this Wednesday I get to poke fun at myself.


Work life has started to intrude on real life, and my sewing time.

It shows.  Oh, dear god, does it ever show.

Unfortunately, it's not just a general lack of time.  Working between 40 and 50 hours a week means I basically get to come home, make dinner, and keep the kiddo entertained until bedtime.  Normally, I'd spend the hours between 11 P.M. and 2 A.M. (after getting Zebediah to finally pass out somewhere around 10 P.M.) sewing myself to sleep.  Right now, with my work hours so extended, I'm lucky to not just fall asleep with Zeb, so I'm missing out on two to four hours of sewing time.

Anyway, yeah, not just the general lack of time.

Apparently, I'm just doomed to fail right now.

Thank goodness I'm not trying to do anything more complicated than put together some blocks for the birthday block swap.

Or not.  *facepalm*  This was supposed to be a simple Crown of Thorns block, with some differences in color for some variation.

What on earth was I doing??  That photo...  That was after "unsewing" three times and fixing errors in placement.

Not kidding.

I totally thought the block was done, and was getting ready to give it to Sandi to include in a hug quilt for a dear friend.  Then I looked at it again.  I actually did a double take.  *sigh*  I am clearly not meant to chain piece and chat at the same time.

This was the worst offender.  The Sawblades blocks I made the other day (and have yet to show off) suffered from similar problems.   Soon, I have to make Spinner blocks.  I shudder to think about the damage I can do to such simple blocks.

If I wasn't such an addict, I might actually think about quitting.

Catching Up

Life has a been a little on the hectic side.  Work just slide into the "OMG! HOLIDAYS ARE A-COMING!!!"-phase, and I am now working between 40 and 50 hours a week.  I haven't seen much of my sewing machine, which bites hard.

On that note, I have read all of the lovely comments everyone has left on my give-away post.  Thank you all so much!  I'd respond to all of them, if I could find that thing called 'time' again.

I promise, however, that I will be getting back with the program.  WTF Wednesday and Think Modern Thursday should make their reappearances this week.  I'm looking forward to it :)

I'm also looking forward to the new year already.  I know, I know!  We're not even done with Christmas yet.  Well, okay, the rest of you aren't.  Working retail has burned me out on the last quarter of the year, so I'm finding things to keep me upbeat and looking forward to having my life back.

For those of you who stick with me through the holidays, I'll be adding new content toward the end of January.  I'll be beginning a new weekly segment called "Skill Building Saturdays".  My goal there is to help newer quilters tackle all aspects of quilting, from color and fabric selection to quilting to bias binding.  Also, I'm planning a Double Wedding Ring Quilt-Along for this blog.  And, for those of you who love traditional quilts, I'm planning on tackling a Dear Jane quilt with a couple of real life friends.  I've already decided to call mine "Jane's Walk on the Wild Side" and to use super-bright, modern prints.

The biggest news, quilting-wise, in my life at the moment is that there is a new branch of the Modern Quilt Guild, the Rock River Modern Quilt Guild.  It's being co-organized by myself, Sandi of Piecemeal Quilts and Karrie of Freckled Whimsy.  Feel free to click on over and join us at our new online meeting place.  Currently, the plan is to keep things very informal, and dues-free until the group reaches a point that it's necessary.  The point of the whole thing is to build a community and have fun.  We've already scheduled our first, "formal" meeting for November 6, at 2 P.M.  We'd love to see you if Janesville, WI, is a reasonable drive for you, and don't forget to bring something for Show and Tell!

That does it for today...  I'm going to take advantage of Zebediah being with Grandma for the night and finish up at least one quilt block today.  I'll be super happy if I can get the pieces cut for another two, but I know better than to expect too much.  I gave up a day off today, and worked my (not-so) little tush off to get us a little more caught up at work, so I'm pretty beat.

#100 - It's Give-Away Time!!

(This would have been up first thing this morning, but I failed at finding my camera, and then failed at finding the memory card for it.  Hubby had it, of course.  So then, I had to borrow a memory card from my mother-in-law.  Anyway..)

*cheering*

I made it!

ONE HUNDRED POSTS!

And I didn't even have to come up with filler content.  Who knew I was so verbose?  (Well, maybe my husband, lol!)

To commemorate the occasion, I've spruced up my blog.  You guys can finally see the logo that's been decorating my buttons.  In addition, there's a give-away!

Drumroll, please...

You, yes, YOU, have the chance to win this mini-quilt made by yours truly.  I call it "Exuberance".

A close-up of the metallic thread quilting:

I love it!  I loved it back when I came up with the idea, and started buying fabrics over a year ago.  I'm still collecting batiks, actually, because I want to do a bed-sized one for myself, just without the metallic thread.  Methinks that would be a little scratchy for sleeping.

But I digress, again.  I'm good at that.

This is the classic and ever popular Double Wedding Ring, done up almost entirely in batiks.  The solid is Kona Charcoal.  I've quilted it with a combination of black silk thread and a multicolored metallic.  It will all be done on my trusty Bessie, a Brother PC-210.

I'm attempting my first pieced binding, as you can see from the pictures.  I promise, I will totally have this done by the time I send this off to the lucky winner.  (Another batch of firsts for me:  first use of  metallic thread, first use of silk thread, first double layer of batting, first pieced binding, first give-away...)  Work kept getting in the way of my self-imposed deadline... Darn that having to pay the bills thing!

A small warning for those of you wanting to win this quilt...  If you are allergic to cats, you may want to reconsider entering.  I have three cats, and, well, they're magnetically attracted to my quilts.  I will wash this quilt, and once done with being photographed, it will be put into a large Ziploc bag.  Still, I feel I should warn you.

You have several ways to enter:

1.) Become a follower of my blog, and leave a comment.  For the purposes of this contest, adding me to your Google reader does not count.  Use the Followers widget in the sidebar on the right.

2.) If you are already a follower, leave a comment to that effect.

3.) Blog about this give-away on your own blog, and leave a comment with a link to your post about it.

4.) Post about this give-away on your facebook page, and leave a comment with a link to it.

5.) Put my blog in your blogroll or blog list on your sidebar, and leave a comment linking to your blog.

6.) And for a bit of impishness on my part, your last chance for an entry is to email me privately at greycatgiveaways [at] hotmail [dot] com, and tell me which batik was used a grand total of ONCE in the top of this mini-quilt.  Leave a comment saying that you've e-mailed me.  (This one I will be verifying against my e-mail account, so be sure to use the same e-mail address linked to your comment.)

Here are pictures of each individual quadrant, to give everyone a fighting chance at finding that one batik:

That's five chances to enter!  FIVE!  Please ensure that each entry is a separate comment.  I'll be choosing a winner via random number generator, so if you follow that simple guideline, you'll have a better chance at winning.  (**DISCLAIMER -  Due to the manner in which blogger displays comments, which is 200 to a page, the coding for the numbering system restarts the numbering with each page.  So, if your comment is on page 2, add 200 to the number shown by your comment, or 400 if you're on page three, and so on and so forth.)

Here's a picture of my son giving the quilt the sweetheart seal of approval before it's even done:

I will be posting the winner on October 15, 2010, along with the rest of the bloggers participating in the Fall into Fall Quilter's Blog Give-Away.  I will give the winner one week to contact me with their mailing information.  If contact is not made, a new winner will be selected via random number generator, and the cycle will begin anew.

And, just to share a little something else...  Today is my husband's and my sixth wedding anniversary.  That's right.  Six years ago today, the poor man got stuck with me permanently.  I love you, JohnPaul, and I look forward to many more anniversaries to come!

UPDATE:

Anyway...  The random number generator gave me this:

...which means that the winning comment was:

Congratulations, Brooke!  And to answer your question, this actually a fairly easy quilt to make.  The curves are actually very gentle, so it's just a matter of finding your centers (easy with the notches from you GO! die) and taking your time.  Keep your eye on this blog.  Somewhere in the last couple of weeks in January, I'll be starting a Double Wedding Ring Quilt-Along.  

E-mail me at gyrmalcyn [dot] go [go] pop {at} gmail [dot] com with your shipping information, and I'll get this quilt by the end of the week.  I still have to wash and photograph the final product, but I should be doing that tomorrow evening.

Actually, working on finishing up the binding was part of my Friday Night Sew-in project.  I did a lot of "unsewing" taking the binding off, and then figuring out where I'd gone wrong.  

And, for those of you who are curious, the batik that was used just once: