I’ve been working on resurrecting the He Wrote She Wrote blog. We’ve done the first chat–something about the idea of chatting with Bob cracks me up–and we’re figuring the rest now that Mollie–the professional internet person among us–has pointed out some aspects to just putting on a show in the internet barn entails.
So what did you work on this week?
It seems like every weekend I’ve been putting hours into the cat quilt – sewing and trimming interminable bits of fabric. I did the same thing this past weekend, devoting the majority of three days to this project, and I have finally finished the squares.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CAoEo6ehYP1/
Eight different colors, six squares each. When I put these together it is going to be a monster. I’m debating about pulling the pink ones and letting them be their own quilt. The others will be arranged a row of colors at a time. Then I’ll need to decide on a border and backing. Hopefully, this next weekend will see the temporary end of this project so I can do something else.
Oh, yes, the pink ones want to be their own quilt. I love that print, all of its colors.
Beautiful! Agree that the pink evokes a different feeling and could well be its own quilt.
I’ve been trying out a new structure to my days, with freelance work confined to 11-5. I think it might work, and would give me the start and end of the day, when the light’s better for photography, and I usually have more energy, for the stuff I really want to do.
I’m feeling good about having planted out everything I’ve grown from seed (ex a few that need growing on a bit more first) in the garden and allotment, and made frames and netted my two strawberry beds, since they’re starting to colour and the birds are already attacking them. So should have my first strawberries this week.
Just spotted the first dahlia flower, at least a month earlier than usual (we’ve had a most unBritish spring). https://www.instagram.com/p/CAtEuovne7E/
I just watched a gardening show recently where the British gardener referred to dahlias as what sounded like day-lias and it totally threw me. (US pronunciation, the first syllable rhymes with “dad”.) I thought she was saying daylilies at first, but it made no sense in context. But I love the flowers, no matter how it’s pronounced!
Yes, I’m with you on the Brit pronunciation. I knew it was “dahlias” but heard “daylilies.” Repeatedly.
Whereas the American pronunciation sounds like they’re related to Daleks.
Wait, that’s DAH-lecks?
How come I’ve mispronounced that? The only place I ever hear it is in the shows. I thought it was DAY-lecks.
But DAHyahs are DAYyahs over there?
Huh.
You can’t have misheard ‘Daleks’! They say who they are all the time! ‘We are the daleks! We are going to exterminate you! Especially if you mispronounce us!’
So: Dah-leks but day-lias. You’ll soon be fluent in English.
I knew it was Dah-leks. I’ve watched too much Who to screw that up.
It’s not the English that screws me up, it’s having so many flavors of English. It’s like Baskin Robbins for words.
Me too! “Totally Tangerine” turns out to be exactly as lurid as the name would suggest.
I made sourdough English muffins this week, so of course I had to make eggs Benedict for breakfast the next day.
My herb garden is going crazy. Sometimes I head to the allotment to weed and I find myself gazing at it adoringly. The tarragon that I planted last year and thought was going to die over the winter has come back with a vengeance—much better than last year. I have been putting it on/in everything.
And of course I have been working at my day job. There’s a lot going on. (Not my role specifically, but the overall organization.) It’s fairly stressful and demoralizing.
I worked six days straight at my job for the first time in weeks, so what I want to do on my day off is rest, but I have laundry, and baking, and I need to deliver my absentee ballot request to the county clerk’s office to speed things up….
Yay on an easy HWSW resurrection!!
I’m supposed to go back to work tomorrow. Our number of new incidence of virus is increasing. Please send every good vibes you can spare. Muchos gracias.
So I’m organising the work bag. Resources for making worksheets because sharing of textbooks won’t be allowed. The children come in on a phased basis from Monday.
Two food bits on Working Wednesday hashtag. Quite oddly pleased with them. @SarahV2k fyi.
Be well, Sure Thing. Good luck keeping social distancing with your littles.
Oh, good luck, Sure Thing. Stay safe, please. We need you.
I think your vibes worked! The unions came through for us. The five majority unions collectively stated that we need two to three weeks more of real preparation. 🙏🏼
Thank you.
YAY!
Wonderful! Hooray for unions!
If you’re interested, the British Museum is doing a live event on vikings via Facebook today. It’s a 8pm British Summer Time, and it looks like it might be good fun. Enjoy!
Oooh, that’s 3PM ET.
I think this is it:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/vikings-live
ETA: Well, that was interesting. I made notes. Thank you, Lily!
Lily clearly has a vested interest in this book. Sorry, non-book.
Everything is in teeny tiny bits of progress, so it feels like I’m doing nothing, which I know is not true. I have a weekly chart to prove it!
Ooh, maybe I need a weekly chart, too. I certainly feel like I am spinning my wheels. Thanks for the idea!
I finished a vest and I made a few crocheted dreamcatchers for a friend’s birthday. I had to throw them on the sidewalk with a note on them saying not to touch them for a few days because I have no way to wash handmade gifts and then know if they are dry or not without touching them with my skin. It was very depressing.
I am starting to knit a cat now. Because that’s where I am.
I just recorded a 5-minute marketing lesson for one of my clients…and fortunately, no one but me heard DH upstairs, yanking open a squeaky dresser drawer.
Also fortunately, I don’t have to listen to the lesson. I’m used to the sound of my recorded voice (OMG who IS that ridiculously cheerful woman?), but now I would hear the squeak and nothing but the squeak.
So Mr. Fluffypants has been shedding to beat the band, and he will only tolerate so much combing or brushing before teeth and claws get involved. And the new vacuum cleaner was getting clogged with the handfuls of dust etc.-mixed-with-fur that wouldn’t go past the neck into the vacuum cleaner bag. The husband opined that the ideal tool would be a long metal tool with a hook at one end. We made several out of old wire hangers, but they were too flexible, so I searched high and low for the old family potholder loom on which we used to weave jersey loops into lopsided potholders for Aunt Mary or Mrs. Moss next door. Nada.
Equally frustrated, the husband found a company in New Hampshire that specialized in loop weaving looms, and bought one via mail, along with two spare bags of loops in case I might be willing to make some potholders to replace the ratty ones we usually use for cooking pots and such.
This weekend I completed my 22nd potholder — a pastime that was strangely relaxing. You can watch TV while potholdering, you know! You knitters and crocheters and quilters would probably scorn the whole process as a lame challenge for 7-year-olds, but I now have 22 potholders that I didn’t have a month ago. And no COVID-19! Two, two, TWO things to crow about. 🙂
It sounds wonderful! I have some potholder tops, but haven’t gotten around to finishing them yet.
And I remember using the potholder loom to make those potholders!
As the youngest kid, I was in charge of making potholders for at least a decade. Those homemade potholders are a real nostalgia trip.
All the most civilized crafters (and that is definitely us Arghers) are delighted with anyone making any thing – potholders sound very useful, and worthy of delight!
I loved making those as a kid.
Hmmm. Maybe I need to do that again.
This was the company our stuff came from. Bright colors bag and designer colors bag, along with a smaller bag of loops in the original loom kit. With a little booklet of various ingenious designs that were fun to try. The quality and consistency of these loops was much better than the ones I remember from age seven or so.
https://harrisville.com/collections/potholder-kits
Oooooh.
I was really excited and had an order for a new loom and 2 extra bags of loops until I got to the shipping charges. I don’t think $16.95 is a reasonable price for shipping and handling. But I am inspired to look around for a more affordable option.
They look very pretty, but the whole concept is new to me.
Me too. I think that sort of potholder must be very American.
I finished my friend’s outdoor cushions. Seven flat seat cushions with zippers, 6 fluffy (if you can call anything made of marine vinyl fluffy) seatbacks. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but okay. When my 80 flower plants come in June they will help me plant them!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CAtN02_gno3/
Wow! Very impressive. I really like the colors in the cushions you did and the throw or decorative pillow.
Marine vinyl – you must have a tough sewing machine. I am impressed that all the edges are straight. It looks professional and inviting.
I’ve just been puttering along, doing just what I have to do. Next week is our primary and I think about 30% of our registered voters requested a mail-in ballot. That’s going to mean a lot of time at the Bureau of Elections counting and reconciling ballots. Also, I have a couple of doctor appointments. I’m going to be busy.
Just finished cleaning house. Yesterday was a crown at the dentist, and my mouth is still upset. Friday is a doc visit. Vacation has been spent puttering. Welcome break from work (so welcome), but I haven’t accomplished a thing….
Wanted to plant some things, but I don’t get my butt in gear before it gets too hot.
Wanted to get my bike in order so I could start biking places as exercise.
Wanted to declutter. Psh. Wanted to finish my jewelry clean out and hangup project. Wanted to start learning audio book narration, and work more on all the crochet projects.
I’m unmotivated to do more than clean the apartment. T.T I think work’s been mentally draining, and it killed working on anything else. I struggle to get out of the funk.
I like the idea of nightly bite sized bits, just gotta push through and do them. :/
Ok, made banana bread and a pasta salad to take to my mama’s. Gonna pull myself up by my whiny bootstraps and start trying to do a little something every night!
I gotta repair a dog toy before it’s demolished, and I’m gonna repair a couple other items while I’m at it!
I have this tiny illustration of a rabbit in a room with a bright red chair, and I want to make it in three dimensions, so I have built a 1″ tall chair, and made a little box to put walls into and painted the walls and painted the inside of the box, and I am so unsure what I am doing here it is kind of invigorating?
Also! My younger daughter (she’s 22 now! yikes!) is starting to make herself a quilt, so she’s keeping me company in the studio which is fun. It is made from 10 dinosaur fabrics I got from spoonflower, and she is fussy-cutting some of the dinos for blocks of different sizes, and the whole this is going to be hilarious.
I used a chainsaw for the first time in my life. Nuff said.
Glad you’re still in one piece. I’m not brave enough.
I’ve been working on a new kids’ book – and feeling a bit blah about it. It was okay, and I loved the protagonist, but the story as a whole wasn’t exciting me all that much. Two days ago I realised I had the wrong antagonist. Whoa! As soon as I found the right one, everything changed.
You all continue to amaze me with how talented and creative you are. I’m working in the garden and this week I finally figured out the final twist for book 3. Yay!
I am so looking forward to the HWSW blogs again!
I presented an award to an outstanding — and out-of-state — ROTC cadet whose unit organized a Zoom awards ceremony.
(I’ve done awards for two organizations for most of the last thirty years, from Hawaii to New York state, and tried to present at least the local ones in person, but this is the first year any of the units have done a remote ceremony.)
I finished the outline for the second cozy and sent it to my editor. Finished putting the garden in right before the heat wave hit. Started the massive project of sorting through all the books so I could do a major purge. Obviously the Crusie books are keepers, but I turns out that I have some of them in two or three copies–paperback and hardcover, signed and unsigned…so some of those are going to be given away too.
This morning I had a routine cardiac stress test. I passed just fine, but oy, am I tired.
I haven’t done anything new, but at least I managed something old-in-a-new-way. I’ve been doing this sort of job for 30 years but the place I’m doing it now does things differently. Today completed my first international patent filing in the new way, and now the next won’t be quite so stressful. And it’s in a week or so, which means I won’t have time to forget all my new skills.