Happy Birthday to Me!

Pretty much the best birthday ever, even without balloons and ponies. I took the day off work, lounged around, read Persuasion, drank iced coffee and ate fancy-shmancy pastries, and then we got a babysitter for the evening and Matt and I went to see Emmylou Harris at the zoo. There were fabulous presents as well (photos sometime, maybe). Also, sleeping late.

I'm pretty easy to please in my old age, aren't I?

You know, the really nice thing about being blonde is that you don't ever go grey, you just get blonde-er. I remember when I was working in theatre, how difficult it was to do age makeup on blondes and redheads; the face makeup never read properly because their hair just didn't take the grey paint. You wound up with people who looked like they were wearing old-age masks, whereas the grey on the brunettes brought everything together and actually read as "old" to the audience.

Bonus math geek fun: For the next five months, for the only time in my life, I will be half my father's age.

Happy birthday to Casey, and to Janet, wherever she is.

Looming Deadlines

The GRE is breathing down my neck, and I ought to have finished my writing sample by now, so of course I spent the weekend playing with fiber!

I finished the quilt top I started at Jessica's sewing bee last weekend:

This is from a kit I got at The Quilting Loft a while back (no way could I match up colors and patterns that well - I'm a bit of a disaster that way). The pattern says it's 52" square, but I haven't measured to see how close I got. I can tell I'm getting better, since the corners aren't off by nearly as much as they were on my earlier quilts, but I still have a ways to go. I need to decide on a backing fabric and figure out how on earth to quilt this.

A few weekends back, I managed to stop in at the Kingston Quilt Shop during Shop Hop weekend (purely by accident - we were on our way back from camping on the peninsula), and picked up their block kit:

The corners are really good on this one; I'm very proud. I'm going to make it into a hot pad, since it's only one lonely block. I've got to remember to get the shop hop on my calendar for next year.

I also finally cut the last square for the Beatrix Potter quilt for Adam - can you believe I let it languish for months because I was too lazy to cut a 5" square?

It's fairly tiny, so I'm going to add a border in the dark green. I think if I make it ~4", that should bring it up to a respectable toddler size. I need to pick up some peach-y flannel for the back.

Yes, these are all tops; I'm still terrified of ruining them with the quilting phase. I'll get there.

The Tour de Fleece started this weekend as well - I have several skeins that I spun leading up to it, and a full bobbin to show for the first two days:

This is a terrible photo of my progress from Saturday and Sunday. It's a superwash merino from Funky Carolina that I'm going to make into a two-ply sock yarn.

Finished skeins (pre-tour training):

Wine-Dark Sea - a bunch of stuff I carded together, mostly wool


Abyssinian Maid - a merino/silk single


Each to Each - a merino/tencel single


Eat a Peach - Spinderella mixed batt plied with New Zealand wool


Do I Dare? - Spinderella mixed batt two-ply


And Do I Dare? - Spinderella mixed batt navajo-plied

I also read Wuthering Heights for the umpteenth time. Sigh. (Although I agree with Leila: Heathcliff is a prat.)