A Finish and a Start

Last week at work was one of those weeks where you feel cooped up and disconnected from the world. We had several days to spend in one big departmental meeting. I know it may sound interesting to sit and listen and pay attention, all day, to safety and environmental discussions, but I assure you it can be pretty dry and boring. I lasted about a day and a half, then started to taper off, and by the third day was in a state of total mental exhaustion. It is very tiring to sit and do nothing but listen. When I came home from work I felt this burning need to work on the quilt I had cut out, so I did that in the evenings. By Friday afternoon I needed a break. I was ready for the weekend. Not that I had a busy or interesting weekend on the way...it was just the weekend. One of the sweetest words in the English language.

Driving home Friday night I snapped this photo. Yes, while I was driving. Naughty, I know, but I simply held the camera up, listened for it to focus, and then snapped a few times, hoping something would come out OK as I wasn't going to look at the screen. This tornado cloud coming out of the sunset came out pretty nifty.

This one I was actually stopped at a light so it's OK :)  This is a view of the Pennypack Creek that runs through the park near my house. The road I'm on is the old King's Highway Bridge, a stone bridge that is over 300 years old. It's the only road through this section of the park--if they close this single block traffic gets backed up in all directions and it takes forever to get around.

My mind was in such a fog when I got home that I can't even remember if I sewed or sat or read or what I did. I am pretty sure I sewed. But after days and days of sewing triangles together, those days run together and you don't remember a time when you weren't sewing triangles. But after finishing up the rows, and then sewing the rows, and then piecing a border because I'm terrible at math and came up short (but used almost every square inch of a fat quarter bundle to get this up to size) I had a finished quilt top.

285 equilateral triangles plus a pieced border.

This quilt was quite laborious. I cut my triangles in what seemed the correct way, then convinced myself that was incorrect so I trimmed them all and made them smaller to start over, then realized I was right to begin with, and my quilt top was going to need a little something to bring it up to code. I was soooo tired of piecing, but I was determined to finish this over the weekend, so I soldiered on and pieced the border and now it's finished. I've got everything I need to finish this quilt, but I just can't look at it anymore right now. Maybe next weekend. I am pretty sure I have spent more time pressing the seams in this than I have ironing in my entire life. It helps that I have a fabulous new iron (stay tuned for a review), but still. Least favorite part of sewing...

I have some thread-trimming and a final pressing to do before I make a sandwich, but this part is all done.

All this sewing ended up giving me a headache from the poor posture I maintain when I've been sewing far too long but am determined to finish the task. At least it went away. Today we had a combination Super Bowl/birthday party for Z-man at my brother's house, but before we went I managed to start stitching on my next crochet project.

Navy blue and white in Red Heart brand yarn. I haven't used that stuff for ages but I used to all the time. It feels stiff when you're stitching but it washes up beautiful and soft.

Unfortunately, I can't share with you what this project is going to be right now until I'm sure I can hack it. It's a technique I've never done before, and I have researched it, but there's always that learning-by-doing factor that catches me  up now and then. Hopefully I'll be able to show you what I'm aiming for soon enough (but probably on Instagram--I need to keep this one a little bit secret).

I know I say this every Sunday, but I can't believe tomorrow is Monday already. I would like to find the guy who decided the weekend should only be two days and ask him "Whyyyyyyyy?" That was Henry Ford, wasn't it? Ugh. Stupid dead guy, instituting a long work week and making other people want to follow suit. Just....ugh.