Too. Much. Stuff.

The weight of all the stuff heaped on (1) my sewing desk, (2) the ironing board, and (3) my desk desk have conspired to keep me from creating.  Too many different projects in too many different stages competing for attention, and thus I work on none of them!

So I've decided I'm going to clear out one project a day, one way or another.

Friday I finished sewing the four pillowcases that go with the Legend of Zelda quilt top for Squiddle, and hung them on a hanger in the closet next to that quilt top.  (I am certainly not going to be getting up to any quilting until I can at least see the surface of the quilting desk.)

Yesterday I finished cutting the last fifteen sets of four white muslin side triangles for a red/turquoise stars quilt.  So that is all kitted up, the ziploc bag sealed, waiting for the next sewing day.  If nothing else, the Gig Harbor Quilt Guild will be doing an all-day sewing day next month!

Today I am working at cutting the last sixteen blocks for a very scrappy Double Four-Patch quilt.  The only constant for that one is the chain, which is unbleached muslin.  Two blocks down, fourteen to go as of this writing!  Then that ziploc gets sealed and set aside like the stars, waiting its turn for a sewing binge.

Other things heaped on just the sewing table: blocks, possible sashing, and fabric for alternate blocks for a patriotic quilt; I won the star blocks at a block exchange many years ago at the Orange County Quilt Guild.  (I ran the exchange, so I never put my name in, but one month I was out and someone else ran it for me, so they did put my name in, and I won.)  Let's see, what else.  A Christmas tree skirt.  Two bags of scraps to be cut up into strips and squares.  Piles of strips and squares from that cutting up process.  Some old dinosaur fabric that might become a quilt back for Jazzy.  That, I can actually probably return to my totes for now.  The box with the completed blocks and some pieces for last year's Treadle On Block of the Month.  And a couple miscellaneous pieces of fabric that, like the dinosaurs, can probably get put back into stash for now.

Then there's the stuff heaped on the ironing board and my desk.  We'll get into those another day, because if I list those out too, I'll get depressed!  For now, I go back to cutting blocks and getting my one task a day done.

Plodding Along

Grief comes and goes in waves.  I think I'm fine, and then I come downstairs in the morning and look over at the white Ikea fake sheepskin on the sofa, expecting to see a white cat on it, and there... isn't.

I'll be picking up Sushi's ashes tomorrow, and then at some point, probably in the spring, will inter them in the ground, probably planting them under a rosebush.

But I'm not in a constant state of grief, so things move on.  I've been working on the Olde World Map cross stitch, and have repigmented the figure in the lower left corner.  Given he? she? is clearly supposed to represent Africa and maybe Asia, having them be lily-white rubbed me the wrong way.

So I went through my box of floss and pulled out three shades of brown that seemed to work well together, and voila!

I've also been seriously thinking about attending Costume College this year.  For the first time in... four years?  Thinking about it seriously enough that I've finally washed that 15 yards of lightweight muslin and found a pattern or three I want to start working on.  (The first two are corset/chemise and bodiced petticoat respectively; the third is the gown to go with them.)  That said, the patterns are download-only so I'm going to need to transfer them to a thumb drive and take them to Office Depot and say "large scale print plz!"

No Crafting - Just Grief

So this has not been a good week.

My cat of 15 years, Sushi, had not been doing great.  I'd taken him in to the urgent care a week ago yesterday, and they gave me some anti-inflammatories and painkillers to help with his limp, which we  think was the result of Ramen, the kitten (catten, now, I guess) wrestling with him too enthusiastically.  And they helped.  A little. But he kept not eating and barely drinking and by the time our regular vet was open yesterday morning, he was not doing well at all.  Nothing came up on his bloodwork except that he was cold, and very dehydrated.  So they were going to keep him through the day, getting fluid and electrolytes into him through an IV, and I was supposed to pick him up before they closed at 6.

A couple hours later, I got a call that he had just... slipped away.

And nothing had come up on his bloodwork or the x-rays the urgent care had done, so we don't even know why.

I keep telling myself that he was warm, he was being cared for, he knew he was loved... but it's hard not to think I could have done more; I should have done more.  Given that we don't even know what he died of, though, that's probably objectively not true.

Adding to my grief is the fact that Squiddle, at 10, is now also processing loss at an adult level, and this is the first time he's lost someone.  (Jazzy, at 7, is sad but not grieving.  There's a difference.)

And, cherry on top of the Shit Monday Cake, my uncle has been diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer.  Five year survival rates are 5-10%.  Realistically, he probably has a year or less to live.

2024 had better be front loading all the bad stuff for me, and it had better be done, is all I can say.

NYE brief post

So, in the two weeks since I took up the Olde World Map project again, I've finished the two hemispheres and the lower right corner (the Native American).  Next I'm moving on the the bottom center which has a ship under sail.

Outside, it is pitch black and the occasional firework is being shot off.  I am not planning to stay up until midnight!  I'm too tired and too aware that I need to start shifting the boys (and their father) back to a school schedule.

I have started in on one of the gifts I got for Christmas, though, the Lego Viking Village set.  I've even persuaded Squiddle to work with me on it the last two days.  Five bags down, ten to go!  And after that, if he's amenable, we can build the Viking Ship and Midgard Serpent set to go with it.

New Old Project

So, last week I went with my mother up to Threadneedle Street up in Issaquah, which according to Google is my closest dedicated embroidery shop.  And it's a little hole in the wall type store, but it's packed with good stuff, beautifully organized.  It's one of those shops that just feels like it should be in a larger, more stylish space.  So I will definitely be going again!

I bought a Christmas gift for my sister there, and another needle minder, two of the Lavender and Lace Celtic seasons patterns, and the fabric, beads, and specialty threads for Mirabilia designs' Maidens of the Seasons, which I want to make a 2024 project.

(Wonderful Husband was feeling a bit at sea about what to get me, so I told him my purchases there can be his Christmas gift for me.  I even promised I'd act surprised when I opened it.  He has taken me up on the offer and spirited them away.)

But the thing is, I've had a half-finished project lingering on my scroll frame for... must be over ten years now, since I can't remember stitching on it since Squiddle was born.  And I've decided I don't want to take it off and put it away half-finished just to put a new project on.  So I've started working on it again.  Janlynn's Olde World Map.

I like finding and finishing others' half-done cross stitch works.  Just, this time, the half-done work is my own!  And, looking at it, it looks like the last time I worked on this, my method was to find all the areas of one particular color across the entire project and do them all.  But now, I'm doing it in sections.  Currently I'm working on the right-hand globe.  When I started, I had all the water done, and Africa filled in.  Now I've got all the continents filled in, all of the lettering, and about half the mountains, internal outline, and latitude and longitude markings.  I've also discovered that I dislike working the "two strands of floss and two strands of pearlized blending filament" sections; it's rougher to pull the filament through, the stitches are bulkier, and I keep worrying that the 10+ year old plastic will snap.  That said, there are only three more sections of it, so I shall persevere!

Ugh

I've been working on various things and not posting about any of them!  Some of them I can't post about for another few weeks, because people they're for might read this blog.

But!  Things I can post.

A small Halloween stitchery that I did in fact finish on Halloween between our 40+ trick-or-treaters.  Pattern from The Stitcherhood, which changes their freebie patterns monthly.

A little black cat, from this thread on Tumblr.  The original is from Peru, and dated anywhere from 900-1430!

And, finally, one of the big things I've been working on:

This is already wrapped up and sent off.  One of my uncles, my dad's best friend, had a bad health scare this year and I realized I'd never made him and his wife a quilt.  So I took this stack of Crown of Thorns blocks I'd made and sewed them together.  30 Feathered Wreath quilteries later, I still need more practice with the motif.

Missed a week!

Hey-ho!  I've been working on the boys' Halloween costumes.  Squiddle wanted Link's Champion tunic from the video game Breath of the Wild, so I sewed the tunic and Wonderful Husband has been painting the white decoration lines onto it.  Jazzy opted to be a dragon, and the pattern (McCall's 8225) has been giving me a few headaches.

That said, I finished another Christmas stitch!  This one from Crafting Traditions magazine from Nov/Dec 1996!

I did change it slightly from the original:

I felt that since it had Santa in it, "Merry Christmas" was somewhat redundant.  And having Santa's sack being matchy-matchy with the shutters seemed a bit dated, so I took a poll of Jazzy and my mother and they both voted for a green bag instead.

It's not perfect - for part of the border and most of the pine trees, the stitches ended up going in a different direction than the rest of the work.  But by the time I'd realized it, I really didn't want to rip it all out and redo it.  Plus, in my household, no one but me will ever know or notice.  I did end up getting a slightly stronger pair of readers to work on this, because that full coverage midnight blue behind Santa was a bitch to deal with.