Darn you!

You get -2 points for hoarding. I had delusions of gaining an 
insurmountable lead, which you have crushed. Waah waaaaaaaah...

Anyway, I really finished the presents. Here they are! Aren't they so so so cute? One picture is the whole blanket, which has little pom-poms. Then the little bunny has a pom-pom tail to match, which maybe you can't see in the photo. It's got a bit of stuffing in it's body; nothing in the ears. I am very pleased.

Now I have to decide what to work on next. Perhaps back to 

the quilt squares? Perhaps I'll tackle the dress? I also need to set up some projects that can go on this big trip with me, as I leave in less than a week. Eep!!

1.5 hours for me; 28 hours total.

Catherine

Really 31 Days?

I was talking with Darling about the blog, and how the end of June was the next time point. I realized that we have both been big slackers this time around! By this point in the first quarter, we were already at 100 hours and now we're pokin' along with 25. Hopefully it's one of those ebb and flow things and after I beat Catherine this time, the work will move more easily again. Maybe it's sewing constipation.

Anyhow, I have to confess to weekend hoarding. I've almost finished Santa's body, which is nice. Still no progress on the pink skirt.

3.75 hours over the weekend. 28.75 hours total. 30 days left in Calgary.

Margie

A salsa deficiency

Well, today I finished the last of the three jars of precious, precious salsa. Now my appetite for winning is on the rise. Bwa ha ha!

I finished my little creature today and it is super cute! I am very pleased. I also worked on the final details of the quilt and made some progress, to the tune of 1 hour, 25 minutes overall. I think I can finish tomorrow and will show them all off at once. :D

26.5 hours for me!

Catherine

No More Excuses

Well, TV season has ended. No more junky shows to fill up my DVR to be watched later. No more excuses not to be working away on my projects. Rats.

I did work last night, formerly reserved for Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice and Vampire Diaries (and Fringe?), on the Santa cross stitch, so that was good. I'll do some more work on it today. Maybe finish up that pink skirt for Smallest too.

The magic of the DVR is that I could tape all those shows and watch them throughout the week. I don't even know what night Fringe is/was on, it just shows up and I watch it. Of course, I'm way behind on Fringe because Darling and I like to watch it together, but he's in Houston. When he does come up for visits, we never seem to have the time to sit and watch hours of TV, so I've decided to watch them and fill him in later. Maybe we'll watch the season finale (parts I and II) the next time he's here.

Anyhow, need to do more stitching.

1 hour, 30 minutes Thursday, 25 hours total. I shall regain my lead!

Margie

... with big, pointy teeth!

One of the fun things about having extra time to work on the baby blanket is that I also wanted to make a little friend to go with the blanket. Hee hee! I'm hoping it won't be as confusing as the lamb/bunny/tooth I made for my sister's children.

Here are the parts, including some in progress. What do you think it will be, boys and girls?

25 hours, 5 minutes for me.

Catherine

Misery loves company

Well, I did not finish the baby blanket in time for the shower. I knit like a crazy person this morning (actually, I just tried to knit like a fast person, but now I'm laughing because I'm imagining what a crazy person would look like knitting. Perhaps like the crazy hyena in Lion King?) and I sewed the squares together, but I didn't finish the ninth one. So, I put the 8 into a bag and took it up to the shower, and told the mom-to-be that it was a work in progress. Happily, it turns out that the grandmom-to-be also was making something, and also hadn't finished. Everyone else had lovely presents, but all purchased things. So, it was fine. The mom-to-be was particularly cute about it - she said, 'that's ok. The baby is a work in progress too.' I told her I thought I would finish first. :D

And, I am close! I came home and worked on it some more, and finished the 9th square and sewed it in. I've decided to put a little pattern on and edge the blanket with a darker pink color. I am also making a little creature to go along with the blanket, which I am excited about. Hopefully I'll wrap everything up tomorrow, but for now, all I can say is that I've got 5 hours, 15 minutes to add.

24 hours total! I move into a very slim lead.

Catherine 

The 9th square!!

I finished the 8th one, even though it tried to thwart me by looking like I had dropped a loop. And I sewed a whole bunch of the pieces together, so now I have three strips of blanket. Somehow that makes me think of pigs in a blanket, even though that makes no sense. Now I'm on to the last last square!! I've got about an inch done, as you can see, and about 58 hours to finish. That would be lots of time, if not for work and a birthday party and an adventure race and the sleeping and more sleeping... speaking of which, I'm off to bed.

2 hours today; 18.75 total.

Catherine

Work schmurk

I had the best laid plans to bring a bunch of work home tonight, which I did, but the actual *doing* of the work didn't go as well. In part because I AM RUNNING OUT OF TIME to make this baby blanket! Augh.

So, I spent 1.5 hours knitting. I've gotten to the end of the 8th square but I am too tired to cast it off. Tomorrow. I've also decided that I am going to use the same pink color to sew the squares together because if I used a different color, I would feel the need to outline the whole blanket with that color, and I really don't know if I have time. Auuuuuugh...

16 hours, 45 minutes for me.

Catherine

A pink of my own

Well, I'm about halfway through the 8th square, and about to start on the third-to-last skein of pink yarn. I probably need to finish this square today/tomorrow, and do the 9th square during the rest of the week, so I can assemble them on Saturday. Yikes! I am running out of time.

I have also had the idea to use this weird pink fabric that I have (kind of a mesh, and very bright color. What was I thinking when I bought it??) as the glue that holds the squares together. I'm not sure how that would actually work, but the idea of mixing the yarn and fabric is appealing.  

I also was thinking recently about this funny creature that I made for my sister's children some time ago, which was supposed to be a bunny or lamb or something, but when they received it they unanimously thought was a tooth. Maybe it would be cute to make another unidentified soft object to go with the quilt? It would be a nice change from knitting, anyway.

2 hours today, 15 hours 15 minutes so far.

Catherine

Bye-bye mistake!

Yesterday at morning choir practice before the Big Concert last night, while the girls were practicing their part, I finished un-sewing the mistake. Then I started re-sewing and made another mistake. I caught this one quickly, so I'm back on track and almost finished with the re-sewing part.

The Concert was great! Singing the Requiem was lots and lots of fun. Makes me think I might join our church choir when we move back to Houston...

1 hour Saturday, 23.5 hours total.

Margie

A mistake of my own

Well, I've recently realized the baby shower (for which I am preparing the knitted quilt) is only 8 days away. That definitely helps with the motivation!

I got through square 7, though after I had bound it off and cut the yarn I realized I probably should have done another 1-3 rows to make it a nice square. What can you do. Now I'm an inch into square 8, with one more square to go plus sewing them all together. Eep!

Now I'm off to enjoy the nice weather.

2 hours, 40 min today; 13 hours 15 min so far.

Catherine

Pink, pink, pink.

I have a mistake in my cross stitch. I wanted to ignore it and just do the piece with the mistake in there, but it's going to mess lots of other things up, so I will have to undo and redo. As then President of Rice said at my matriculation ceremony, "building, unbuilding and rebuilding."

So rather than undo the stitching, today I worked on the other fat quarter skirt that I had planned to make for Smallest. There are eight different fabrics and they're all pink. Pink! Smallest is a girly girl, no doubt about it. I am not into pink. Not even as I get older.

In the instructions, it talks about different sizes of fat quarters that you can have - 20 inches x 18 inches, or 20 inches x 20 inches. My quarters are 10 inches x 23 inches. Maybe it's a Canadian fat quarter. Who knows. At any rate, the pattern calls for four fabrics for the skirt and five for the ruffle. I have eight, but as they're half the size called for, that's the same as four. I realized that I left some of the fabric out of the ruffle, but it's huge already and putting another 40 inches on doesn't appeal to me. Smallest will never know. Ruffles are a pain.

If I get on it, I can finish it tomorrow, just in time for the return of the nice weather.

The Boy had a soccer game tonight. It was their first game without two long time teammates. The team played great and the boys had a super time. I hope it will be a good season. The two missing teammates moved up a level to play with the bigger kids on a bigger field.

Other random non-sewing stuff... I bought some cat treats to give to Fang, my Very Old Cat. At first, I wouldn't let the kids give them to her at will because I didn't want her to get fat. Then I stopped and reconsidered. I actually do want her to get fat because she's very underweight. So the kids have a great time giving her treats. I've also told them to put the treats in her food bowl because she'll eat more food after she eats the treat. She's pitiful.

2 hours today, 22.5 hours total

Double digits

Not much to say, except that I did get another chance to flex my knitting muscles, for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I'm about halfway done with square #7. Should I use the same color to sew the squares together or a different one?

10 hours, 35 minutes for me. At some point I'll get back to even numbers...

Catherine

Speed demon

Margie's post made me think about the time I thought I had ADD. It turns out, I was just in graduate school, and also trying to plan a wedding. That's too much for anyone. 

It's funny - I also like planning things and imagining how fabulous they're going to be, and buy lots of supplies, but then don't finish. I think the slow step for me, though, is even just starting. For example, I have had this fabric out on my ironing board for at least a week, and got the interfacing, and have read the instructions, and it all seems very straightforward. So what's the deal? I don't know.

Interestingly (to me, at least), I may have the same problem with running. I have a big mental block to just putting the first few steps together, and the first mile or two is always fairly miserable, but then as I get closer to the end, I speed up. SPR (who knows a thing or two about running) thinks this is quite unusual, but to me it makes perfect sense: When I can really appreciate how far I have left to go, I can do a better job of figuring out how much energy I have and parcel it out accordingly. Also, at some point I'm just ready to be done, so I speed up even more. 

Hopefully that will be the same for my knitting project, as the baby shower (where I intend to give this as a present) is only 2 weeks away! I worked for an hour and 45 minutes so far this morning, and may have another stab at it after breakfast. I finished square #6, and started #7, so I may be down to the last three.

9 hours, 20 minutes for me.

Catherine

Ha ha!

I finished the checkerboards! I had grand plans for putting on ties or something to close them with, and perhaps I will do that, but at this point, I'm calling it good and moving on. The smaller one with blue squares is for my big brother and the black and white one is for The Boy. I may crochet little checkers for my brother as well, but that's something for another time.

I did better today with staying off the computer and away from the TV. It was also choir night, but I'm singing with them, so I didn't get to do any stitching during practice. Only one more choir rehearsal for the girls, then the concert and the year end dinner and that's it. May 16th is the end of Calgary Children's Choir for the girls.

I was asking the Manager about nice things to do for the Director and I started to say we wanted to do something nice because we were leaving and I couldn't say it without crying. Here comes the sucky part of moving. 54 days left in Calgary.

1 hour today, 20.5 hours total.

Margie

Attack of the ADDs!

Before I start, here is the finished Teddy Bear Wreath. I need to do something with it to make it into a Christmas ornament, but that will come later. I will pay someone to do that for me.

I was diagnosed with ADD (inattentive type) when I was 30. It made so much of my childhood and the struggles I had in college all make sense. It was great to know. One of the hallmarks of ADD is that I love, love, love to start new projects but I HATE to finish things. It's all about stimulation and excitement and starting something new is always better than finishing something old. Deadlines can make things exciting, as can silly contests with your sister.

At any rate, I have found myself struggling in the last week or so to do any work whatsoever. I made myself do some work tonight and that was helpful. I've been watching too much TV and playing on the computer too much. Bad habits. It's probably also the dread of moving and not wanting to go, so if I just don't do anything, I won't have to move, right?

So there we go. I did some work on these quilted checkerboards I had started for my son and my brother. Perhaps I can do some more work tomorrow after Smallest is home from school. Probably need a grocery run while she's in school.

45 min. today, 19.5 hours total

Margie

A collage of sewing and gluttony

Busy body

I have to confess to more minor hoarding - I did 45 minutes of work yesterday but ran out the door before I could blog. That was 25 minutes of knitting and 20 minutes of getting patterns out and ready, and ironing fabric for dress #1. Very exciting! I meant to do more today but instead caught up on some very overdue work. So, probably for the best.

7 hours, 35 minutes.

Catherine