Cuttings and goings

G'day all!

I seem to be very busy at the moment. I am certainly finding plenty to occupy my days.

Today I briefly admired the material I cut up yesterday for the quiltalong.

allcutup

Can I just say that I am in awe of anyone who can make a quilt whilst looking after kids/dads/family and holding down a job? The amount of time needed, the space, the sharp tools...

It took me a good couple of hours to cut out all of these.

Admittedly along the way I had to argue with myself about what to do about this sort of thing - look at the line of dots in that folded in half fabric!

wonkyspots

The edges and the centre are not exactly in line. This seems to be very common with printed material. I presume the middle gets left behind a bit when the fabric travels through all the rollers.

Then I took the bus to one of my favourite op shops. I was very bad. I bought more stuff. I shall show it off when I have it dry (and can take pics in daylight). I rode to another op shop and bought more stuff, including a Force Unleashed tshirt for 50c!!!

A chap had been watching me knitting on the bus. I take the bus to this particular op shop not because it is quick but because it is often hard to get a car park there and the roads around it are particularly busy and I don't feel comfortable leaving the car on the road. Also the bus stop is right outside the shop and 5 minutes walk from home. And did I say that I can knit on the bus? I can't knit whilst driving.

The chap stands up to get off the bus. I shuffle my legs out of the way (I'm sitting sideways over the back wheels of the bus) and he says "You do that very quickly, m'lady."

Eh, I think, of course I do! After all this practice I should be pretty good! But I say politely, "Thanks!"

Then I realised he said "m'lady." I have not been called that in years. I used to be in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) until the politicking got too boring. I loved eating, dancing and singing, not necessarily in that order. Back-stabbing was very low on my list of things to do and enjoy. Anyway, m'lady and milday and my lady are all used in the SCA when talking to women, cos we are all ladies there (including a few of the blokes but that is ok with me). I have my award of arms so I am "my lady" not "m'lady." (Or, a sable coney rampant to sinister. When embellished its teeth are dripping gore and it may or may not be holding a dandelion flower.)

After two visits to op shops, including a bit of shopping by bike at wholefoods, I get home only to remember that I've forgotten to send off Minnie's prize. Yes I am slow. So off I go again on the bike to mail that.

My legs are tired. I decided not to go to the farmers' market where last week I bought this plant:

erigeron

(Erigeron glaucus selection "Elstead pink" - it is supposed to be a native of California. Haven't checked that yet.)

My legs are so tired that I could only press the sewing machine pedal. I put together five of the lots of strips shown above. That took most of two hours. I only have another eight or so lots of strips to go. It better not matter that my sewing is not perfect. It was bad enough having to unpick half of one strip pairing (wonder what sorts of google hits I'll get now?) when I thought "Gosh, that strip seems awfully pale," and discovered that yes indeed I had not sewn the strips together with right sides facing each other.

Can I reiterate that I am impressed by anyone who gets a quilt finished? The amount of sewing in just this pretty simple thing is amazing. If I've counted the number of blocks correctly, there is about 80m of sewing just to put the strips back together in blocks of six. Then they have to be cut up and sewn again. It is not as if you can carry these things around on the bus or train with you, unlike knitting and crocheting and some forms of embroidery.

For knitty people still with me, here's a sample of some recent stash enhancement.

stash_sonata

Some Elann Sonata in a pretty blue and grey colourway. Very me colours! (OK, not the gray.) I even checked out how it looked and knitted up in various items on Ravelry. I <3 Ravelry. What did we do without it? I plan to make some sort of wrappy weird thing like umm combination? on Knitty. I need to cover up my arms when I am on the bike but I want to be cool too. I started to knit something up but that was the project I lost, boo hoo.

I've got a bit more to show off too. My very bad indeed!

anon!

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