What is it with cats? For the last few mornings, Mr. Stomp-O-Matic (usually known as Pepper) has been going nuts early in the morning, wanting to look out the windows in the bedroom. There's something very unsettling about suddenly awakening to the pop and swish of a cat pushing behind a window shade. For a moment you don't know what it is, then you cringe in fear of the shade falling down (it has) or the cat knocking something off the dresser (he has). This morning, just opening the shades wasn't enough, Pepper wanted me awake and breakfast in his bowl, so here I am.
Don't you just love it when you unexpectedly find something that you had given up looking for? I dump all my too-small-to-use bits of fabric and thread into a big shopping bag, which sits on the floor of my studio. Last night I was looking for selvages for a project, and ended up dumping the bag on my cutting table. There in the bottom, I found the ergonomic seam ripper I bought over a year ago! I had used it for a while, liked it, then it disappeared, along with most of my other seam rippers. This summer, on our annual trip to Mary Jo's in Gastonia, NC, I bought a couple more seam rippers (not ergonomic) and since then the others have reappeared. I think this makes the full collection.
Then later, I found several of my self-threading needles that had disappeared. I had been down to one, and had just gotten my sister to bring me more (no place around here to buy them). Sadly, my close vision doesn't handle threading hand-sewing needles very well any more, I'm lucky to be able to thread machine needles!
I've been enjoying the basted applique, so decided to start a project that I can keep ready as hand-work. I decided to do a Baltimore album style block, but with sea and beach themes. I designed the first block Monday night, and have enough background fabric for two more blocks, which will limit the size of this quilt.
As if I didn't spend enough time on the computer, I've been reading more and more blogs. Last night I joined the Artful Quilters Web Ring (icon in sidebar) and have been looking through many of the blogs. So much creativity! I really appreciate it when people explain a little about their techniques, or the materials they use for a project.
Time to get moving, more later.
