Quiltypost #4: Monday's are not lazy.

Usually.

But yesterday was definitely a very productive day! I FINALLY got all of my quilt squares sewn together! I had to wait an extra day because my last machine needle broke, so I had to wait for my mom to pick me up some more. But yes, the squares are all sewn together and it looks FANTASTIC!!

Next step now is to go to a fabric store and pick out something for the back side of the quilt, as well as picking up some batting for inside the quilt. Unfortunately due to work and the mommy's work, I'll have to wait until next week for that. But that's okay because they way things are moving now, I could potentially have this thing done by April 10th! That's definitely what I'm aiming for anyway.

In other news, I got an awesome job lead yesterday and I'm super pumped and excited and optimistic about it! In this job, I would be doing communications for an event management company in Fort Mac! Sick opportunity! It's very easy for me to get my hopes up. So I have. They're right up there now but I'm still keeping my cool and looking at other opportunities as well. Gotta be optimistic but realistic, you know?

I haven't done this in a while, but since I haven't had anything visual in my blogs lately, here is a list of my favourite things I've seen on the interwebz!


My friend Scott send me this! So great!


Do you remember AIR PLANTS? Those things were so cool!!


Apartment Therapy
My new favourite blog at the moment. Still lots of mid-century ugly modern crap and white walls, but at least there is a LOT of variety of other things



Using dice on a letterpress!
I'm not a big fan of the orange, but I'm digging the prints that Stukenborg is producing for his Etsy shop.




How pretty are floating shelves? The place I hope to move into when I get to Fort Mac is super small, so I'm going to have to maximize my storage space without buying a lot of furniture. Shelves will be key.

Too tired to go on. You get the point, I think a lot of things are cool and I'm getting way too excited about moving to Alberta. If I don't get this job, I will cry for a week.

Goodnight, folks!

♥♥♥ Monica

Quiltypost #3- Peacetime

Huzzah! The grandmother's sewing machine is in fact of a much better quality than my mom's! I have gotten more done in the past couple of days than I have in the past three weeks! This is a great feeling. It's so much easier to sew things when the sewing machine works. Whee! I have the backing sewn onto all of my squares, I have numbered them in order of the colour pattern that I want, and I have sewn the first row together! Yayyyyy!! If Ashley doesn't call me soon so we can go get drunk, I might just sew into the wee hours of the morning.

Oohhh I was so tempted to take pictures of my squares all laid out and show it on here, but I decided against it. From here on in, I'm going to keep you in suspense.

Got in contact with Ashley. Further sewage (hahahaha words) will have to wait for tomorrow!

♥♥♥

Update from the battlefield

I don't know if I have lost the war because I am giving up on my sewing machine, or if I've won it because I'm taking the high road and walking away. I guess it doesn't really matter, because my sewing machine is an inanimate object and therefore does not have feelings. I do, however. I was at my wits end tonight trying to sew more squares. I bought this big spool of heavy-duty thread only to find out that it was too big to fit onto the top of my sewing machine! It wasn't rotating properly, which was causing the thread to snap. I almost snapped.

So my mom, hearing my cries of frustration and rage, called my grandmother and she's going to pick up HER sewing machine tomorrow. I'm going to go ahead and assume that it is a slightly better quality, or at least not worse. If it's the same quality with the same problems, I'll just have to deal with it I guess. If it's better quality though, that would be ideal. Cause you know, I'd like to finish this thing before I move out of the province...

In midst of duking it out with my dollar-store sewing machine, I had a bit of a breakdown and convinced myself that if I couldn't make a sewing machine work, I couldn't do ANYTHING. The wonderful boyfriend cheered me up later,though, explaining to me that I am in fact good at many things including baking and conversation. He can always cheer me up. ♥

So yes, the blanket is still a work in progress but at least I haven't set it on fire. Yet.

♥♥♥

Monica

Quiltypost #2- This means WAR

I have declared war against my sewing machine and thread. Honestly, it shouldn't be this difficult. I'm not a totally incompetent person. Sure, I often look at crafts other people make and think "Wow, I could do that!" and then they fail miserably, but this is just ridiculous. It doesn't help that my thread came from the dollar store (and it feels like the friggin' sewing machine did too), it breaks every few inches and for some reason the machine is staining my thread SOMEWHERE, so it is coming out grey. I have a total of six squares sewn, and I've been at it all afternoon. And they're a mess. I'd take a sewing course at the local college but I'm pretty sure they'd kick me out on grounds of utter failure at life.

It doesn't help that I've been feeling pretty stupid in general lately. Nothing seems to be going my way. Looks like I'm destined for flipping burgers. But I haven't tried that yet, and I'd most likely suck at it anyway.

Ugh. Tomorrow I'm going to buy some GOOD thread that costs maybe more than 69 cents, maybe this one wont break every few inches. Of course if its the sewing machine that's the problem, then good thread wont matter anyway, the project's in the shitter.

Might as well go do some homework before I fail out of PR too.

UGH.

Monica

Yay for progress!

I'm finally ready to start sewing my squares together! Things are finally starting to come together and I'm really excited about this. Hopefully I'll have my squares nice and sewn by next week!! If I didn't have work, school and homework, this would be done a lot sooner.

Side note, I'm drinking champagne in class. Who cares if it's non-alcoholic? Celebrate today!

♥♥♥

Monica

Hello Hello Hello!

So I FINALLY got around to doing some work on my blankie today! I'm still just in the process of sewing the little cotton backings onto my squares to keep them from stretching and moving around too much when I sew the actual squares together. Hopefully that process will be done in the next day or two and the mommy can finally teach me how to use the sewing machine. Silly things like school and visiting my friends got in the way of me getting much more progress done but I'm confident that things will really get rolling once I learn how to use that darn machine.

Another silly thing getting in the way would be my job search. I'll be graduating from my PR program in something like 6 weeks (eek!) so I've been applying to jobs like crazy! No word back from them yet though, which is a bit disappointing but I know how long it takes to get a job anywhere nowadays. I have a couple of good ones that I'm going to apply to tomorrow so I'm hoping that I'll be able to get out of this dusty old town upon graduation. Whee!

Just so you have a little bit more than a mundane update on my life, here is a list of animals that I have every intention of having as pets someday:

10 Weird Miniature Versions of Normal Animals

And as a preview:



Lofty dreams have I.

♥♥♥
Monica

Bah!

Slowdowns! Alas I was unable to receive sewing machine lessons from the mommy before she and the daddy went away to Mexico (lucky ducks). So I'm either going to have to teach myself, or I'll have to wait until they get back for me to start sewing my squares together. I can do a few hand-sewing things done in the meantime. But still, I was hoping to have a bit more done by the end of Reading Week. Again, Bah!

Not a Quiltypost

So I haven't actually sat down to work on my blankie yet today (it's only 9 PM, the day is young!), but I did manage to take a walk over to Fabricland. It was gorgeous out today so I put my huge down-filled winter coat in the closet and pulled out my lighter pea coat for the stroll. After removing all the blasted cat fur from my coat, I wrapped my purple pashmina that I got from my cousin when I was her bridesmaid (it's actually from India!) and stepped out into the glorious sun. I think I've become vitamin-D deficient, because actually having the sun shine on my face for the first time in weeks did WONDERS for my mood. It was still a bit chilly out but I didn't even care. It was a lovely, albeit brief, walk to Fabricland.

I was thinking of something a little bit thicker than regular cotton for the back of my blankie but so far all my favourite patterns are in thin cotton or rayon. No matter, I'm sure I'll find something spectacular. My absolute favourite pattern so far includes a white background, hot pink stripes in various widths, and SPARKLES. Thats right, kidlets, I will bring bling to my blankie if its the last thing I do. Maybe I'll double up the material if I can afford it. Maybe I'll just have to settle for a thinner material. Either way, this blankie is going to be so fly when I'm done with it.

So since I don't have much else to update in terms of the blankie, I'll just share with you a few of my favourite things!

As I was reading through the new posts on my Google Reader, I came across two new interior design blogs! Both are full of fantastic ideas that REALLY make me wish that I lived in my own apartment instead of a shoebox in my parents house. The first one is Design Evolution, which is a blog that is organized So well. Up at the top there are tabs that categorize all of the posts into "decore", "crafts + diy", "recipes + entertaining" and more. My favourite categories so far might be the decor section (dug) and the recipes + entertaining section. There are so many cute ideas in there that I could encorporate into my future parties that will showcase my talent as a culinary goddess and reverence-worthy hostess.

Next up is Estilo Home. I like this blog because it's really picture heavy and I can kind of relate to the blogger. She's just kind of getting started with the whole interior design thing. Although she's loved it since she was a child, she is REALLY getting into it now and I'm quite inspired with a lot of the things that she is putting up there. What I also love about this blog is that through it I have found the blogger's tumblr, which is basically page after page of the blogger's favourite rooms. I really like most of them and I think they all have really inspiring elements.

One thing I can't figure out is why all these interior designers love WHITE so much. I'm all for light and neutral palettes, but bright white walls in every room of the house just sounds kind of blinding to me. I gotta have me some colour. So maybe I'll start posting some pictures that I like on here once in a while.

And lastly but not leasty:



Come ON, how cool was THAT? Was that shot all in one take? I can't even wrap my mind around how someone could come up with things like these. I love Ok Go videos.

I've been thinking of moving my blog to another provider that offers more customization options. It seems like with blogger, if I don't have serious HTML skills, I'm doomed to squeezing my blog content into one out of a very small selection of pre-made templates. This means that if my pictures don't fit in a template that I really like I have to either deal with half-visible pictures, or I have to change to a template that I like less. Which was the case yesterday. So now my blog is ugly, in my opinion, and I think I'm just ready to move up to something a little less basic. Any suggestions for hosts?

Alright I think I'm going to go cut out a few more cotton squares for my blankie now. Maybe there'll be a Quiltypost for REAL tomorrow, if I don't have a lazyday again. Goodnight kidlets!

♥♥♥
Monica