The winter quilt is about ready to start sewing. I'm awaiting big shipments from hancock's in Paducah and Pine Tree QuiltWorks in Maine, battings/fabric and thread respectively. Both places are pretty speedy so I should be in business soon. I ordered white battings this time because this winter quilt really needs white under all that white snowy background. Normally I use unbleached (or whatever is handy).
Sent out a whole bunch of resumes today and I had emailed a bunch on Sunday, so let the job offers start rolling in any time now...... :-) I'm still pondering the "help needed to exercise icelandic horses" poster I saw up in a local post office. Do horses really need help exercising?
My other big news is that I signed up for the SETI project "Search for ExtraTerrestrial Life" - a research project at Berkeley. Uses the CPU power of 2.5 million home computers (in their spare time) to analyze data from radio telescopes. Took about 16 hours to run the first work unit I received. The second one seems to be going faster. Since it only runs when you're not doing something with your computer, it doesn't effect computer speed at all. The combined power of all these personal computers is supposed to be about 15 terraflops.
Added some new photos today for the first winter quilt I also threw in a couple shots of my messy work area. Hey, I'm not proud, things get messy at 2 in the morning when I'm working.
Much of our snow is gone, but I noticed while out and around yesterday that there were "neve" forming -- in high altitude, melting and re-freezing snow form these very pointy fields of snow formations called neve penitants. Here you just get this rippled or dimpled effect on the snow, but it's the same process.
Today is Ron and my fifteenth wedding anniversary.
Busy day today, even though my sleep cycle is a little flurblungent as they say. I went to home depot and got some pink foam insulation board. Comes in a couple thicknesses - I got the 3/4" one. It's 2 feet x 8 feet and a guy cut two boards of it in half so I could fit it into my car. A little duct tape and I now have a 4 X 8 foot design board that I can prop up and pin into.
this led to taking apart the little bit I'd done on the new winter quilt and rearranging it on the new design "wall." Looks surprisingly like what I hoped it would.
Had "red stuff" for dinner, although in the interest of time, I used a jarred sauce. I did provide the sausage, lots of peppers, onions and mushrooms though.
WOW. I have enjoyed his performances on A Prairie Home Companion for years and have a two CD set that I've put many miles on. But WOW.
I noticed that many of the men in the audience were leaning forward and studying every hand movement but I just sat back and enjoyed the music. I noticed that his whole body seemed to be dancing while he was playing - a full body, fully involved experience. I also noticed that the stops he put into his music were just as important a texture as the differences in pickings and strumming.
In the wee hours, I launched about 80% or more of the re-formatted site. Same pictures, a little easier to navigate I hope. The last site was good for about a year, so let's see how this one holds up.
You're already here, but the URL to tell your friends:
I thought it went pretty well. there were some machine-related problems but I covered most of the info on my "to do" list and everyone seemed to make progress on their own quilting samples. Several people mentioned specific things they found helpful and these were points I had tried to make along the way. People spent time chatting and visiting of course and we had a nice lunch break visiting.
I'm pooped! Ron and I went out to dinner at Lakeview Inn and the Guiness was just fine, thankyouverymuch.
Tomorrow it's back to work on the winter quilt and if the fates smile at the box office, a concert at Troy Music Hall - Leo Kotke.
I'm getting ready for a workshop I'm giving at East Side Quilters this Saturday. One question I'm hoping to prepare for is the impact of pre-washing or not prewashing/shrinking fabrics and battings.
the goal of the class is to get people doodling at their sewing machines and to go home with some confidence that yes they can fill up a large space with some sort of quilting design. AND to get the raffle quilt quilted. That's an ulterior motive.
Nice day here. I did shovel off the back flat roof yesterday in case the rains came before the 14" of snow were gone. Sounds like some rather schizo weather in the coming days, but waterlogged snow on roof is not a good idea.
I think I just had some excess energy to burn. I had a job interview yesterday with Workers' Compensation Board. Very interesting sounding but a lot of travel and a small step back in salary. On the plus side, entrance into civil service and a teaching job. the people I met there were very nice. They're located in a building that used to be a very nice dept. store - Topps.
5 more blocks needed for the border of the new winter quilt. It's coming along nicely I think. I even managed to put in one of my earliest fabrics!
I thought it would be interesting to keep a more diary-like journal during the coming year, perhaps not just focused on taking photos and sewing but a little about what I'm thinking about and doing.
I tend to be a pretty busy person, but the past week was over the top for me. I put everything aside for about 3-4 days to prepare a web page portfolio for a job I'd applied for. That was intense! The interview went pretty well, although I'm sure there are other more experienced web page designers out there. The job wasn't so much about writing code as organizing all of the resources of this organization and putting them on the web for their members to access.
Anyway, after that, the monthly NYQ! meeting and (Friday) a mega-headache, I was ready to sew today. I almost didn't care WHAT I sewed. But I did start a new quilt, and one of the grant ones to boot. I feel pretty good about it and made a dent in a bunch of little blocks. Ron is working this weekend so I have a nice block of time to work.
