Photographic Ode to Jenni on the Block
Jenni on the platform:
Jenni on the jump!
Jenni on the couch:
Yay for having visitors!
Breaking News! Secret Family Craft Project Revealed!
Rachel (my cousin) and I made a quilt for Sarah (her sister/mycousin) and Jake as a wedding present.
It's your standard Log Cabin quilt done in the barn raising setting.
We picked out the fabrics together Thursday night. Most of the fabric (including the backing) is from the City Girl by Kitty Yoshida for Benartex line. The center pink/white is a Michael Miller fabric and the darkest dark is obviously just a random purple batik. The "first light" fabric was a super LARGE scale print so it looks really different in each block. Which we now claim was, of course, our plan.
Pieced all the blocks on Saturday (both sewing, 2 machines).
Pieced the blocks together into the top, pieced the back, sandwiched and basted it on Sunday.
Monday & Tuesday I did as much quilting as I could get done. Wednesday night Rachel quilted.
Thursday I made the binding strips and sewed them down, took them over to Rachel's, taught her to blind stitch and did as much as we could that night. And Rachel continued blindstitching it on the plane to England!
It's 85 x 85 / a square queen. Strip pieced with 2.5 inch strips, using Eleanor Burns method from the quilt in a day book.
It's already been presented to the happy couple although the weddin' isn't until the 31st. Yay!! :) (Sarah, I'm so glad you like it!)
Yay!!!
Things I'm planning to do this weekend.
- Dance, motherfuckers, dance.
- Drink beer.
- Watch movies. (Batman???)
- Eat.
- Sleep late.
- Accidentally get sunburned. (If it's inevitable, it might as well be on the to-do list don't ya think.)
- Get totally annoyed at all the stupid too cool for school hipsters parading around with their snark while I am just trying to enjoy the music.
- Get bumped, pushed, prodded, stepped on and knocked over.
Yes, I'll be at Pitchfork. With the Nipper. And Tracy. (And Cinnamon will be there too!) I turned the A/C on before I left the house this morning and I don't plan to turn it off again until Tuesday. We'll need the relief. Take that environment! You give me miserable buttloads of heat and humidity and I give you selfish wasteful use of electricity. It's a no-win game.
Cheers y'all.
10 Years of Jen But Not of Me.
So I was bound and determined to do Jen's meme today but turns out there are just too many years I don't remember at all (at least off hand anyway), so you'll have to go read hers and imagine mine.
In other news, I just ate some potentially dodgy hummus. It seems to taste and look fine on the one side of the jar and I'm just going to ignore the other weird-looking (and kinda hardened?) half and hope I don't die from eating this because I'm stuck somewhere shitty* with absolutely nothing else to eat and I'm STARVING.
In case you were wondering.
And I've got nothing else for ya as I spent most of the weekend, as well as yesterday and today, working on a secret family craft project. SECRET.FAMILY.CRAFT.PROJECT. You've certainly never heard me say that before. Lots of fun but the secrecy is killing me. Or both of us. I think.
*Stuck Somewhere Shitty. I wouldn't WANT this to be my personal mantra but damn it seems like it is by default.
I am so in love with my own hair right now.
I would totally marry it, were it the marrying kind. But it refuses to maintain any kind of commitment or consistency. Just like the men (not) in my life. So there you have it.
If you do anything today, you should GO LOOK AT THESE AWESOME PICTURES of Number 4's brothers going totally AIR JORDAN on her niece's tiny basketball hoop.
These pictures = the best thing that happened to me this week.
Stop.Fucking.Asking.About.My.Weekend.
Here's a clue: people who are SINGLE don't usually have anything to do on the holidays!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck, is that not obvious by the fact that everyone else is with their PARTNER or their CHILDREN?
Also: I was at the secondary browsing location for EIGHT blisteringly awful hours on Sunday with many, many, many problems caused by stupid, stupid, stupid people.
I did go help pack the McCain kitchen in preparation for the move into the Big House as I plan to call it.
Also I baked a cake, but it sucked ass. Mary and Clark claim to have liked it but you should never try a NEW recipe out on NICE people because you will not get the truth.
That is all.
If you don't see a new banner up top,
then may I suggest "refresh"?
And if that doesn't work, helloooo go to the eye doctor already! You're blind!
And on Friday, I went to the darkroom.
For the first time in absolutely AGES. With a binder of very very old negatives.
Go to Flickr and click on the links to view them larger (about the size of the actual prints).
Sunday
Kitchenered and DONE:
Yarn Wound and Started:
I also hemmed THIRTEEN t-shirts:
I thought I wasn't wearing them because they were too long. Turns out some of them are also pornographically tight. That's OK though, I'll wear them for "running"* as I like to wear tight shirts to go with my HUGE and WAY LOOSE shorts (you should never go loose + loose or tight + tight, you have to do opposites. Tight + tight = looks slutty. Loose + loose = shapeless baggy grossness).
*if you can call it that.
Saturday
This is pretty much a kit I bought at the Chicago Quilt festival in April.
Except I threw in some leftover fabric from the Friendship Stars, and I used what they gave you for the border on the front instead and I wound up making a pieced back with some of those elements as well.
I used to feel like I had to apologize on the occasion that I made a quilt from a kit since i didn't pick out the fabric or the pattern, I just saw something pretty and said "Hey I want to make exactly that."
But then I thought, how is that any different than when people knit a sweater in the exact same yarn and same color as it's shown in the pattern?
I am much more proud and pleased with quilts I've made on my own where I picked the fabric myself and I picked a pattern myself and it all came together (say here or here among others) but quilt kits do make a super fast, super easy gift (considering half the TIME of quilting is picking fabric and picking patterns) and I still did put my own work and TIME and CARE into the ones made from kits (this or this) as the ones I came up with on my own.
So I guess I'm done feeling bad about it.