end of the month blog watch

Sigh. I'm never going to get caught up with AQ and the blogs in the ring. I am looking at all the blogs I read last month before they go into archive again, but I haven't ever looked at half of them at all! Mea culpa! Ack!

Anyway, that doesn't mean that I can't or won't waste time. Goofiness is a necessary part of my life, so here goes the latest I saw on other's sites:

Going Around The Web This is from Debra's blog, A Stitch in Time...

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you

Oh wow - of all of the cool books on my shelf, I managed to put my blind hand on an old journal of mine that I didn't even know was there. Poor you! Now you'll be subjected to my rambling writings twice in one day! Alas!

Oh. Nothing illuminating. (I went to page 12, btw, since this book doesn't have 123 pages.) "I get to meet Terry C. tomorrow." Wow. Powerful stuff, eh? Actually, she was the Ice Queen that I did my first student teaching with; she was such a completely lousy mentor that the university actually gave me a FREE semester of student teaching the following Spring to make up for placing me with such a b----. Secondary science, btw. I teach remedial HS biology every summer. I love it!

Also - my guilty pleasure of choice: I am so NOT ashamed of this that I actually keep a nice kitchen spoon in the jar at all times - I eat Ovaltine straight from the jar. I've been known to go through an entire jar in 3 days. Tons of B vitamins, but ONLY the chocolate kind. Now you know. ;)

And, I'm a Progressive Girl, with heavy hints of Academic, Girl Next Door and Granola. I drive a mini-van so I can pack all of my camping and medieval reenactment gear and help all of my friends when they need to move. Smudge stick? Check. Water filter? Check. American car? Check (but lords would I love an old-school Saab!) Life's ambitions? Have children and make folk's lives better. Gee shucks.

Believe

Completely NQR and TMI here, so stop reading now if you couldn't care less...

I have been waiting for my period so we can start trying to get pregnant again, this time with injectible gonadotropins. I got it today, and have my bloodwork and ultrasound tomorrow, and my first injections on Sunday, which happens to be Beltain; the ancient fertility festival.

I needed to confirm to myself that I am ready for this, so I wrote a poem and made a scrapbook page of it. I also made myself a necklace with metal letters spelling out BELIEVE that I will modify but keep wearing as I go along here.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the poem here - not so much as sharing it with all of you (although that is a nice perk!) but more as a way of announcing it to the universe. Here goes:

I am a Mother, waiting to be born.
I have been 19 years in the womb of the Maiden, growing.
Months and years of dreaming have finally brought my time near.

My heart is willing and ready to love you forever.
My arms, full-formed, are ready to hold you close.
My lungs ache for us to breathe each other in, deeply,
and my spirit can feel you coming on the morning breeze.

I am a Mother, waiting to be born;
waiting for you to bring us life.

not mine

Got to be the extra pair of hands when my friend with twins went to visit another friend and her newborn. I love everyone thinking such beautiful children are mine, but OI is that bittersweet. Soon. Soon. Soon.

I'm on hormones to help me get my period, and I start injectable fertility medications then. We want ONE baby at a time, and have a decent chance of getting more than that at a shot. Twins would be insanity, and triplets? Let's not even go there. One. One. One.

Soon. One. Soon. One. Soon. One...

Bogged down in the Doing

Ugh. I love creating and designing, but the execution phase? Blech. If I leave some real mystery about how the fabrics will play off of each other, I can still get excited about the piece during construction, but otherwise?

I've had the most fun (and have created some of my best work) when I am designing as I go. So why is this so hard for me to actually DO? Hm.... It often feels like as soon as I know how something is going to turn out, I get bored with it. Am I too resistant to change things midstream, or am I just plain lazy, or both?

Laziness is a hard one for me - am I not doing something because my body/mind/spirit aren't in alignment to let me do something due to my Fibromyalgia and other medical issues, or am I just a lazy mooch who wishes someone would throw me a pity party? (Doing it myself would *obviously* be too much like work!)

I have a gorgeous studio with lots of light and space. I have time coming out of my ears. I have supportive husband and parents, and no kids (yet) to distract me. I even have an art school education and an almost-great stash.

Now granted, there are days (more than I'd like) when I am on narcotics, or am otherwise just really having physical, cognitive, or psychological issues (mostly drug and sun deprivation inspired), but what about all of the days in-between when I'm actually doing ok, but still don't do anything BUT feel moderately ok? Hm. I tell myself that I am just pacing so I don't overdo it and land myself back on bedrest, but sometimes I wonder - is that is a reason or an excuse? I have to wonder, since I have *much* less trouble actually DOING things that I am excited about...

Ah well - Progress in a day, not perfection in a hour. Off to clean off my desk.

decisions

I've finally gotten the fabrics scanned in, and I don't think that the pinkish handdye is going to be as much of a problem as I initially thought. Now though, I am having trouble making two designs that are enough alike to show that they go together, but unalike enough that they look different. I've tried taking the same pattern and changing the colors up, but no luck so far. I keep ending up with quilts with very different personalities, and I don't want to be dictating that for the girls.

I'm also sick to death of appliquing little hearts and other shapes onto that preschooler's quilt. I have mastered machining points, but I am VERY tired of doing so. Ah well. Right now I'm enjoying the costumes in Troy that DH brought home to study the spear and shield technique. Go figure.

to overdye or not to overdye

Ok, I sort of got off my butt today. I couldn't remember how to scan fabrics into EQ5, but I worked on semi-matching patterns for the twins' quilts anyway. Trouble is, I bought 4 yards of expensive handdye this weekend to use in the piece, and they are just a little bit pinker than the peachs of the rest of the fabrics.

I figure that I have two choices if I want to use the fabs I have - either experiment with overdying the hand dye to make it a bit more orange (which honestly makes me *very* nervous), or I can sew it up as is, and then use pinker threads in my free motion quilting to bring more pink into the whole piece. I could also piece a little pink into the top itself.

I think that I am leaning towards the second option, since I can always take thread out, but dye? Not so easy. Plus, I love the handdye just the way it is! I think that I just answered my own question, but I'd love your suggestions on how to execute it!

tatakilt

tatakilt,
originally uploaded by Bingham-McLaughlin.

Did this work? I sure hope so! It seems to not want me to put in lots of text, so let's see if I can get this to work. If so, how do I get JP2 the credit for the miracle!?!? Lol...

Thanks for Art 101!

But not for any reasons that you would think of - it meant that I was able to just skip right over huge chunks of the digest, and am now officially reading entries from April! Hurray!

I can artspeak when I need to (good ole RISD education), but I guess Vermont has gotten into my bones; I speak as plainly as possible about my work, as it seems to me that my subconscious needs all the clarity it can get.

Ok, confession time: I have a stuffed lion named Guntar (after Gunther Gable Williams, the lion tamer from Wringling Bros fame) who has a goofy voice and acts as my inner child. He told me this morning that if I can make baby and toddler quilts for half the folks in my address book, then I ought to be able to make one for my own inner child as well. My professional brain thought 'perfect for Art Quilts X', but if that is what I need to do to justify it, then ok. I think Gunny might be onto something here....

Oh heck

I've gotten so far behind in my AQ that I seem to have lost about 40 digests to the stale news monster that deletes them from my inbox. Horrors! Who knows how many facinating challenges I missed in that time!?!?!? Yes, I know that I can go look at them in the archives, but I'm so far behind that I seriously doubt that that is going to happen.

Anyway, the wedding was completely delightful, but I must say that I am very glad that Kevin's and my wedding and January was completely funded for about the same cost as the dainty cake we consumed this weekend. What a stash I'd have if I had that kind of cash at my disposal - can you imagine the thought process? Hm... A Husky designer or an open bar? No contest - I don't even drink! To each their own though, so power to them, and I hope their marriage is a blessed one! Vivat!

However, more bad news in my mailbox today - can you believe just how #*$#$ unfair life can be sometimes? I like to think that I have my priorities straight, and this news just reinforces that, but WOW - my life is beautiful, and I am grateful for it every day...

Thanks for the posts on time management folks - I am an early riser too, and NPR is definately better company than my husband at that hour, so I am more than happy to let him sleep and have the house to myself. SQ has become part of my morning routine since we got cable again a few weeks ago (spent 1.5 years as a televisionless Luddite), and I actually got back in the studio last Friday morning before we left for the wedding. I now have three major projects in the works - my spike piece that I mentioned before, sort of matched toddler quilts in peach that I just got some great hand-dyed for the backings of, and a brightly colored little kid quilt with numbers and letters on it to give me a chance to play with SAS2 for the first time, which I going very nicely (I like the hand) but I am very vexed by the wweb not actually going to the edge of the release sheet - I keep ending up with half-fused figures! Yeah, I'm one of those uber-frugal types (my WW2 parents still horde string and brown paper) who uses every square inch of everything, so this is really irking me! I don't like having so many irons in the heat of the fire (tons on the backburner is more my norm), but since my body is variously cooperative atm, having different projects let's me work when I'm motivated, no matter what!

Meanwhile, buds are showing on the trees here now, and I'm going to try and tackle my spring pre-moving, pre-renovating cleaning - one shelf, pile or drawer a day until my back gives out. Wish me luck!

5 down...

160+ to go...

AQ digests that is. I really like the list just the way it is, but sometimes I really wish that folks would do the chatty stuff in a blog, rather than on the main list. When I want personal stories, I read your blogs at my leisure and when I have the interest (and time - *definately* more lacking than interest since you are all so darned inspiring!!!), but when I have a huge backlog of digests to read, I don't want to skip any in case I miss some challenge news, or a cool new technique or tool. I *hate* just skimming through the posts and missing out on people's lives, so if they put their stuff in blogs, I wouldn't have to, and could read much about someone in a context where I actually have a better chance of getting to know them...

Ah well. Pet peeve of the day.

I'm back on the stupid narcotics again (colposcopy yesterday triggered me AGAIN), but I nevertheless had a brainstorm: get DH to move a bed side table over to my sofa, and then use my new cordless keyboard so I can type on my lap, and see the monitor easily on the table! Yahoo! Cords stink when I am on bedrest, since they get caught in my sheets or I fall over them... Thank heavens for my cousin's excellent taste in Christmas presents!!! (Lucky me, lucky me, lucky me - I would NEVER have been able to justify buying one for myself, but I am really excited about it! Anything to make bedrest easier!!!)

I have a near-family wedding this weekend, and I somehow resisted the impulse to make them a quilt. His eldest sister got a true lover's knot block made from excess bridal fabric from our fittings, but no one else has ever gotten a wedding quilt from me, so I'm glad I resisted the impulse. My cousin has been married for 12 years, and they might get one for their 15th, but I think I'll stick with baby quilts otherwise... Less expensive to make in terms of both money and time, so that hopefully I can actually get back into the studio for some real work at some point! Hopefully before MAY!!!! (grumble, grumble)

Question on time management

Ok folks, come clean. How the heck do you manage to read blogs, blog yourselves, AND keep up with QA all at the same time? Let alone actually get any work done on your art quilts or keep up with your homes and families, etc? I really want to know! Please?

Oi

Wow - that stupid HSG triggered my fibromyalgia and a week of hand and arm spasms that still hasn't really let up. Argh! I am 162 QA digests behind, and I will NOT delete them unread, so I guess I had better get busy!

Remember I said that I was doing a bunch of cross stitch and planned to do more? WHAT WAS I THINKING!?!?!?! If I am using my own design, or a nice British pattern (fewer outlines and blendings, as a general rule) then no problem, but Teresa Wenzler (sp?) didn't even put a cohesive thread list for the 150+ threads in her albeit gorgeous pattern! YIKES! The long and the short of it is that the same shop carries Patarnayan wools, which I thought I had lost my only local supplier of about 8 years ago, so I am now freely admitting that I am a needlepointer, and I just need to get over it. :) I started a piece last week that is already burbling along nicely, and will more than suffice when my body and brain go, but my arms are willing. My arms *aren't* particularly willing atm, but I am more stubborn than my pain is! Roar!

Meanwhile, my husband, my cats and their ensuing 1/2 gallon spill, and my varied and sundry embroidery projects have taken over my studio. I might not be up for getting any quilt art work done today, but I WILL clean up the MESS!!!

Any other medieval reenactors out there? I've been playing with the SCA for about 20 odd years now, and have amassed an absurd quantity of fabric for garb that never got made. Add to this that we hope to move next year.... trouble!!!! Part of me thinks 'get rid of *fabric*? Are you KIDDING?' and part of me says 'girl, you've had most of it for at LEAST 10 years - barter or just plain give it away, but *get it the heck out of your basement*!!!!!' So far I am doing really well at leaning towards the latter, and just read that our local chapter is even *planning* for a barter day at our next event on May 7. Might be hard to pass up the opportunity. Plus, I might even a) get some other cool stuff for DH and I, b)make a little money (gasp), c)actually get my woodshop back, d)get to see my bounty adorning our lovely local populace and thus be dubbed Albreda the Benefabricprovider! Yeah right. Downside? I'd have to ask DH to do yet another favor for me (being laid up sucks) and bring all the stuff up from downstairs, out to the car, etc, deal with the inevitable mildew that has accumulated on my sealed containers, and, maybe most importantly, just plain give up on getting my studio back for the time it takes to sort the whole mess. Sigh. I still think it is worth it, especially since it will free up the containers for general moving-related packing...

My favourite room in my house? My living room/studio (actually 2 rooms with French doors between them). Why? 6 huge floor to cathedral ceiling windows and 7 skylights, all with a southern exposure and a view out over our overgrown backyard! tough to beat the bennies of sunlight when you live in northern Vermont... (except that I have to be on constant guard to prevent fabric fading! Got some neat albeit inadvertant effects though, so it could be worse.)

Scissor ache!

I cut all of the letter and half of the numbers last night and my fingers *complained* - I can't beleive that I used to cut ALL of my pieces by hand!!! Today I cut the rest of the numbers and get started on the objects. I've never used WU before, and so far I'm unconvinced. If it gives a softer hand, I might decide that it was worth the trouble, but it seems to sort of partially stick... I think that I'll do a test piece today to see how it goes.

Laura Wasilowski gave me a hint (thanks, Laura!) in that I keep all of my fused scraps separate from my plain fabric scraps. I don't have scads of fused scraps (yet) but another thing I may do today (hopefully my last one in bed, for a while at least!) is sort out my plain color scraps by colorway...

I am itching to get really working again. I am going to pick up an afghan cross stitch baby pattern tomorrow so I can work on that when I am down, but my quilts are calling me! I realize that if I were into crazy quilting or handquilting, that I could keep working in bed, but I'm not, and figuring out how to iron from bed? Move my sewing machine onto an over the bed table? I pieced an entire top from bed when I had a brain infection once, but I don't see myself doing that again any time soon.

Anyone have any hints for quilt artistry while on bedrest? Note: I am not always at my cognitive sharpest when I'm down, so safey is paramount!

Flat on my back blues

Yeah, I'm still in a world of pain, and sitting upright doesn't really work for me, so I'll keep this short. I started drawing templates of the letters for a quilt I've been planning, just so I have something that I can work on from the sofa. I'm not really very happy with the WU-fabric-freezer paper sandwich, but time will tell. I'm getting a bunch of cross stitch done though - just wish it were on a more meaningful project.

Off to the Dr again today. I'm still on the narcotics from last week, and today I learn how to give myself several injections a day, and we'll talk about my upcoming protocol. I used to figure that I'd be on bedrest for the last trimester, but all this early process pain is making me wonder if I'll be on bedrest from day one, if not earlier! I just found out that the local stitching shop didn't close though - it just moved, so hopefully I can get in there this coming weekend and get a new project to work on. I have the feeling that I'm going to have plenty of time...

Any therapists on the list?

In a long discussion with friends yesterday about our latest pieces brought me to an interesting realization: I am using the same fabric for my spike in the current piece (representing the roadblocks between myself and pregnancy) as I did for the silver lining in my postcard piece of the same name.

Are my subfertility hassles somehow a silver lining for me? This has taken long enough that I've met and married my husband, and no one now doubts that I am ready, willing and able to be a parent. Is there more, or did I just pick the same fabric because it was silvery enough to be both a silver lining and an iron railroad spike?

Hm... I read Tarot intuitively, and a tattoo and henna artist friend of mine started reading the henna she applied for clients in the same way. Does anyone out there 'read' their quilt art?

I'd already wondered about the extremely bright colors in my current peice - NOT in the realm of my usual pallette. I hope/think that it is because I am feeling optimistic...

Guilty pleasure

Diane wants to know what my guilty pleasure is. Real no-brainer here folks - chocolate. I've been letting myself enjoy more of my Easter basket these last few days - drowning my pain in chocolate-induced endoprhins sounded like a reasonable response to my procedure!

I'm a big fan of FMT (funny movie therapy) too, but I have to say that my guiltiest pleasure, in that I just can't justify it at all, is a good modern chick romance novel or movie, a la Bridget Jones or those other modern woman gets married/has baby genre. I good solid laugh at something slightly smutty or outrageously silly makes me a happy camper. Evidence? I'm looking forward to eating bunny ears during Miss Congeniality on TNT tonight!!! (Even better? Kevin likes them too!!!)

I'm still on the narcotics, and woke up every 10 minutes or so all night (no kidding) with itchiness that can't be beat from this stupid reaction to the contrast medium used in my HSG, but I'm doing better (or maybe I'm just too tired to notice how lousy I feel...). Ah well... more sloth and pain scheduled for today, but hopefully I can start functioning again tomorrow.

I survived...

but WOW did that HURT! I'm back on narcotics every two hours. But the results were good - my tubes are clear!!! Yahoo!!! Kevin even got me a present - an ironing cover for my big table!!! (Few things better than a hubby who knows to shop for pressies in a fiber store!!!)

I'm not even going to *touch* my stash until I am off the meds - no drug-induced poor cutting choices here! I dragged out some old cross-stitch projects to work on while I'm still on bedrest, and Kevin is taking great care of me. I have my injectibles class next Tuesday, and we are go to start in on them! Hurray!

Anyway, back to bed for me. Have a good weekend everyone, and thanks for the support!

Oh. That's TODAY?

Yeah, my HSG is in six hours, and I'm really nervous. Therefore, I am watching TV, blogging and trying not to hit the chocolate.

Elle sent me a lovely little note, and her blog (hahaquilts.blogspot.com)put me onto Ami's site, with its World's Worst Quilt contest. Gods, I needed that laugh. If you haven't seen it, and your day has been... less than grand, go check it out.

I've made a few peices that make me want to barf, but mostly because what I was making was to the recipient's taste rather than my own. I have a pucker on the back of the most recent baby quilt I've completed, and my color choices could use some help sometimes. I UNquilted an entire piece since I made the top during my brain infection (HHV6 is NOT my friend) and really just couldn't stand to condemn it to wearing a polyester beard for the rest of it's life, and I still can't figure out how to start a seam on my machine without making that nasty, loopy knot on the backside. I have a lot to learn, and I'm not always the sharpest tack, but my efforts are usually sincere, if a bit... lazy. (I do that self-handicapping thing so I have an excuse if something sucks. Dr Phil would have a field day with me.) However, I don't think that I've made a quilt that would garner more than an honorable mention from Ami... I hope!

Why am I nervous about such a simple procedure? Here's a horror story for you, and it is NOT an urban fertility-clinic legend: I KNOW the woman this happened to. Instead of the saline or dye that usually gets used to fill one's uterus and fallopian tubes in this procedure, her Dr inadvertantly used FORMALDEHYDE. At YALE! You had better believe that I am going to make my Dr double check his/her solution! Plus, since I have a history of pain disorders, I expect to be a hurting unit. Am I afraid of pain? Heck no - I'm BORED with it. I have better things to do, and missing them makes me lose them, and I am tired of loss.

Enough nervous, maudlin BS. There is *bound* to be something decent on cable at 9:13 AM. Right?

Could I catch a break? Please?

Frustration mounts.

A little backstory: I've been trying to get pregnant since the beginning of 2003. My husband only came along recently, and before that I was trying with a sperm donor. There have been a lot of starts and stops along the road so far; anovulatory cycles and a LEEP procedure (to biopsy my cervix because my Pap came back positive) being the most notable.

Well, now that I have a game plan for getting going on injectible fertility meds and maybe IVF (depending on what my HSG show tomorrow - a test where they fill one's uterus with dye to see if one has clear fallopian tubes), I get a call yesterday from my NP saying that my recent Pap shows abnormal cells again, and that they want another look (colposcopy). They can do this even if I'm pregnant, and she assured me that this should have no impact on my trying. If the results are bad though, I'll probably need another LEEP to clear it up, and that will mean getting benched for another 3 months, unless I get pregnant first! (Like I needed any *more* motivation to get pregnant!)

Add to this the fact that all of my current studio projects (with maybe the exception of my most current, but even that deals with my fertility woes obliquely) are either for other people's babies, or about the lack of my own. My studio *used* to be my escape from all this craziness, and now it too is full of it.

Today I drown myself in my new cable TV and a great scifi novel I picked up for a buck at B&N. Talk about foresight...

Foundation piecing sunshine (rain or no!)

Beleive it or not, I had never done foundation piecing before yesterday. I picked up some of the Patchwork Place 'foundation papers' figuring that they were the translucent stuff I had seen others use, but it is pretty much just copy paper (at least on first inspection) so I feel kind of ripped off.

Anway, I got most of the first block (of 5) pieced and appliqued! I thought of using invisible thread and a zig zag stitch, but opted for actually ironing under a seam allowance and putting a row of straight stich applique down along the inside edge of each piece instead.

I'm using a lot of mottled fabrics in this peice, and I'm not really sure I made the right choices in terms of which bits to cut for which pieces, but I'm confident that I will be at least mostly happy with the resulting piece.

I had originally thought that I'd be using fusibles on this piece, but I don't really like the stiffness, even for a wall hanging. This change in plans means I'm thinking differently about the quilting/embellishing process (I know, I know, me? Embellish? Yeah, I'm considering it; esp gold beads. Go die of surprise somewhere else.)

Anyway, if some Plains tribes could do rain dances, I may have just done sun quilting - the sky is blue, the puddles are drying up, and the sun is shining in my east studio window, so I'm off to work.

BTW - got the new cable hooked up yesterday, so I got to watch Simply Quilts for the first time in well over a year. (I got TONS done without having a TV, but missed the images...)

Avoid Sin City and other thoughts

Ok - the movie Sin City is supposed to be very violent (like watching the news isn't?) and have cool new black and white effects. What they *don't* tell you in the previews is that it is DISGUSTING. I realized less than 15 minutes into it that I needed to get the heck out of the theatre or risk my (already strung taut) mental health. I ducked into Miss Congeniality 2 instead, and was MUCH happier. PSA ended.

I took the weekend off from studio stuff to a) celebrate DH Kevin's birthday with him, and to b) deal with my less-than-stellar fertility news, delivered Sat AM. We basically continued the celebration all weekend long, and did the same with the mental processing around my future injectibles cycles. (I am feeling much better about the latter now that we have a gameplan! hurray!)

BUT - It is now Monday, my cable TV gets hooked up today (images that my brain is starving for, and I want to watch the Pope's funeral on Friday, may he rest in peace), and I really want to get back to work on my swoops and spike piece in all sorts of sunshiny colors, but it is RAINING AGAIN!!! How much of a copout is it to say that I need actual sunshine to work on this piece? I feel like both I and my work need to be imbued with solar radiation to get this off the ground, especially since I almost NEVER work with such bright colors!

One thing that I think I WILL be able to accomplish today is a comparitive test of various fusbles, so I can figure out how and with what I want to construct this sucker for whenever the sun decides to show her face!

Washout

My ultrasound this morning was not good news. It looks like I have all the symptoms of PCOS, but not the hormone levels for it, at least as of 16 months ago. This cycle is a washout, and I'm going to need to go on to injectible fertility meds next month. I'm scheduling another test this week that will tell us whether or not we need to jump right to IVF.

Needless to say, this is NOT how I wanted to spend DH Kevin's birthday. I'm off to make a late birthday breakfast for him, and to break in our new waffle maker, but I am VERY glad that I medicated with retail therapy yesterday afternoon as a precaution against this morning's test, and that I have all the colors/fabrics worked out for my new piece.

Too bad that I want to drown myself in chocolate, but refined sugar is one of the things that needs to go if I do indeed have PCOS. No fairsies. At least fabric will still be allowed, even if I can never afford it again...

April Foolishness

Rabbit Rabbit! My DH, Kevin, is celebrating his birthday tomorrow, and I had the noive to ask HIM for a present; he is much more computer savvy than I am, so I asked if he could *pretty please with jam on it* try and figure out how to put my pictures in here. He said he'd try. (Ain't he sweet?)

I think I have decided to put the spike in the piece, and I thank Deborah and Liz for their comments on this issue! I started auditioning fabrics this AM, but feel like I'm lacking certain elements in my stash... so I thought I'd do some dying (haven't done much in YEARS) and the book I hit up for a refresher said DO NOT dye when you are hoping to get pregnant, and since I have meds coursing through my bloodstream and an ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow morning, I guess that means me! Argh! Now I'm probably going to have to 'settle' for colors/fabrics/prints less than what I want for the piece. NOT what I wanted to wake up to.

Add to this that I definately overdid it yesterday, walking with my old roomie and her twins, and that my fibromyalgia is acting up as a result, and I am NOT being a particularly happy camper today, although that long nap and DH making lunch helped.

I joined the Weirdness challenge community on Yahoo groups though, and WOW are they a bunch of wackos! I love it! Some of my ideas are a little off the wall, but theirs aren't even attached to it! Hurray!!!!

About the whole 'winners' thing on the AQ boards (yes, I am still 94 posts behind, ok?): winning to me is anything that makes me proud of myself and my efforts. Being back on this list and opening my work (even without pictures) to all of you (and the world at large, I suppose!) is a big step for me, and I'm proud of it. Making my toy turtle a 'kilt' of her very own was good for me too - it was my first piece on my new Husky, and that represents taking myself more seriously (that and celebrating that I ran my Kenmore into the ground), so even that little bit of kitsch is something that I am proud of; not for what it is, but for who am for having made it.

Wow - send me back to that paragraph next time I get snarky on myself, ok? Enjoy!