Messes, Un-messes, and Progress

Ugh.  Yesterday I started cleaning up my work area in the workroom.  And, of course, in order to tidy, you first have to make a mess:

But!  On the bright side, I got a small ongoing project done.

At some point in the past I'd bought a small sack of 2" squares.  Many of which got sewn into my current project, on the right.  But finally I've finished getting them all neatly stacked, as you can see in the two containers.  Now what to make with the rest of them....

And, of course, I've been stitching along on my cross-stitch project whenever the boys are in their swimming or rock climbing classes.

The soldier nutcracker is done, and I'm now working on the Santa nutcracker.

Charity Quilt Top

I had guild meeting this week - and it's the one of the three guilds I'm in that I'm currently attending.  Kind of have to, since I'm Secretary.  The other two... well, one meets during the day, and the boys are on summer vacation, so that's currently out.  The other one I haven't been to in quite a while, as I can't take Squiddle to his vision therapy and make it to the meeting.  But at some point he'll be done with that, who knows when.

Anyhow!  I had undertaken to make two more blocks of this set, after the guild's last sew-in, and make them into a top.  But none of the blocks went together!  Since the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month was red, I rifled through the bins of fabric I have for my guild's charity blocks, and pulled a few different reds.  And a cow print.  Sometimes, if nothing works together, you just have to go for a fabulous border, right?

The colors, I swear, were a bit richer in reality than they are in the photo.  But, regardless, scraps used up, top turned in, at some point it'll be a gender-neutral gift for some kid in the hospital or foster care.  Win!

That said, I am feeling a bit melancholy about not being at Costume College right now.  Though, as I understand it, there was a hotel workers strike going on last week, which I don't know if it's still continuing or if it's impacting the convention in any way.  I'm also getting hit with a bit of cognitive dissonance when I see pictures - the convention is at a new hotel this year, only the third since I started going.  The new hotel is quite close to LAX, which would make it very convenient for out-of-towners like me....  Maybe next year.  Hopefully Jazzy won't have Summer Boost school for reading improvement, if so.  Though at least that's done!  (Three weeks, getting him to school by 9 and picking up at noon, half an hour drive each way since, because of insufficient enrollment, the program at the local school was cancelled.  Not to mention afternoon swimming and rock climbing lessons for both boys.)

A Second Nutcracker Enters The Stage

 

Weekly update photo!  I've been working on this during my boys' swimming, rock climbing, and vision therapy sessions, as well as at other assorted times.  Most of which they don't have this coming week, so progress will be slower.  But all the backstitching on Herr Drosselmeyer is done.  Dark brown backstitching on top of black, by the way?  Is painful, tedious, and hard to see.  Bleh!

Nutcrackers!

Since neither of my potential quilt-holders are up yet (Jazzy is, but he's not tall enough to hold the donation quilt top up for display), I thought I'd post a couple pictures of the embroidery project I've picked up.

This is from a magazine from 1990 - Better Homes and Gardens Creative Ideas Cross Stitch Christmas.  The project was all done up to the point of the leftmost nutcracker's head.  He still doesn't have a face, technically, because I don't have the right shade in my stash.  I need to go buy sixteen skeins of embroidery floss later today in order to finish this work.  I only have six of the colors... and I definitely don't have enough black!

And here's what I was complaining about on the back:

Thread city, baby!  You can very easily tell where I took over on the hat and the second nutcracker's boots.  Having all those loose threads just hanging about is untidy and runs the risk of them showing through the white Aida cloth.  Not sure yet what I'll do about them.

Unpleasant Surprises

So.  I actually sewed some!  I'd taken home ten leftover 9" quilt blocks from our last guild charity sew-in.  I figured, if I made two more and sashed them and put on a border, it would make a decent size donation quilt top.  Except the one border turned into four borders, but I am actually reasonably proud of it because I think it works well and I pulled everything from the charity scrap boxes.  But!  I don't have a picture of it yet.

This would be because we're supposed to have gotten out heat pump installed today.  Which meant hauling all the boxes of my fabric and costume stuffs out to the barn.  But that got done!  And then we just needed to move the five big pots (four roses, one horseradish) along the back wall over to the side of the house, so the heat pump could go where they were.

We got two moved before I discovered the in-ground wasps' nest.

The hard way.

I got three or four stings out of it (three locations but one hurt a lot more than the others, so maybe I got stung twice there?) and we retreated indoors, calling (a) the installers, and (b) the pest control people.

So our furnace got replaced today, but the heat pump itself will have to wait until the end of the month.  The pest control people will be out on Tuesday.

And as I was watering various things this evening, I found two more in-ground wasps' nests, also near the house!

Fortunately, I am not allergic and the pain is mostly gone.  And in the process of moving stuff from the garage, I found a half-finished cross stitch kit I'd bought at my guild's Sewing Room Sale, and have started work on it.  I try hard not to be catty about other crafters' work, but let's just say the back is nowhere near as neat as the front.

Human Again

Not an excuse for my extended absence from here, but an excuse for my more recent absence, at least... Jazzy had his class field trip to the zoo on the 2nd.  I chaperoned.  There were enough chaperones that I only ended up in charge of him and one of his classmates, so it all worked out well.  After the field trip was over, literally as I was walking back to my car, I got a call from their school letting me know that Squiddle had thrown up in class.  Apparently his complaints of a sore throat that morning hadn't been nothing after all.  So I drove there, picked him up.  The next day was Saturday, and Jazzy came down with it as well then.  Fever, vomiting, sore throat.  They both took a few days off school and went back on Thursday.

Guess what I came down with that Friday?  The 9th.  And have been suffering from ever since?  I grant that after the first 48 hours it transitioned from the flu to severe head cold symptoms, thank goodness, but today, the 20th, is the first day I've finally felt somewhere around 90% human.  I have gone, in the interim, through more than a bottle each of DayQuil and NyQuil.  And at least Wonderful Husband seems to be immune (*knock on wood*) to whatever this bug is.

Just in time for tomorrow to be the boys' last day of school!

(And, unrelatedly, on our drive back from Squiddle's vision therapy today, he and I saw a couple of juvenile orcas off the Purdy Spit!  Four years living in the Puget Sound area, and this is the first time we've seen any.  'Twas glorious.)

Quilts, Done!

Friday evening, I finally took the last stitch on the binding for Squiddle's annual quilt, and tossed it through the wash with three color catchers.  They all came out a lovely crimson color!  So now both the boys have their quilts on their beds.  First, Squiddle's:

He wanted to rearrange the furniture in his room a week or so ago, so now his bed can be accessed from either side.  Which at least makes making the bed easier in the mornings!  Each square finishes at 2.5", so the quilt was 87.5" square before washing and drying, which probably tightened it up a bit.

And since Squiddle finally got his quilt, so did Jazzy:

A bit more cosmopolitan and grownup, perhaps?  But he asked for black and white and red and triangles, so that's what he got.  I don't have the measurements to hand, but I think it's a touch wider and a touch shorter than the other one.