Hat on Top, Coat Below
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Surprises
August 5, 2002
Erica came over Saturday afternoon, and we finished the top for the group baby quilt. No surprise there, since it’s what we planned to do, after all. What I didn’t expect was how well we’d work together. I was a little apprehensive about this collaboration thing, never having done a quilt like this, but it worked out great. Erica brought her blocks, which were wonderful improvisational ones that added a lot of energy to the design, and had some good ideas for finishing the quilt. Together, we resized the blocks that needed it (most of them), decided on a better plan for the sashing, fixed my wonky squares, and got the whole top sewn together in three or four hours. Dividing up the work just flowed naturally, and we didn’t get in each other’s way or disagree about how to proceed. I hadn’t expected disaster, but I was pleasantly surprised at how comfortable it felt working with her. We make a good sewing team.
An unpleasant surprise was finding out after we were done that the dye in one of the fabrics bled when wet (and this was after it had already been washed, since I wash all my fabric before I store it). Granted, I was doing something that I wouldn’t normally do to a quilt top—saturating a seam with water and ironing it to try and close up some needle holes left when we had to move the stitching line over—but all the other fabrics were behaving themselves. At least I discovered it when it was still possible to replace the offending pink, and the two blocks it was in were along the outside, so it wasn’t too hard to get them out and put them back. Sadly, I used this same fabric in the Kitty Baby quilt, so I made up a sample quilted piece with the bad fabric and waited anxiously to see what would happen when I washed it. I really didn’t want to have to replace a fabric in a completed quilt, but I also didn’t want to have pink bleeding into the background the first time the piece went through the laundry. Fortunately, there was no sign of color transfer when the sample came out of the dryer, so the whole bleeding pink episode turned out much better than it could have.
Saturday was a good day even before Erica came over, as I stepped on the scale in the morning to find I’d lost 2.5 pounds last week, my best week in a long time. I’m now 158.5, the first time I’ve been in the 150’s for two or three years. I’m also more than halfway to my goal. I went to Weight Watchers for my August weigh-in and am now the proud owner of an “I lost 25 pounds” magnet, as I’m down 27.8 pounds from when I started back to WW. I’d hoped to lose some weight last week, sure, but I was amazed it was so much, especially since I ate more and exercised less than I had the week before. I don’t think this week will be as good a week, since celebrating Mr. Karen’s birthday means having to deal with more tempting food than normal, plus we’ve got his family reunion this weekend, and that majorly disrupts my eating and exercise groove. I’ll just do the best I can and make sure to get back on track next week.
Addendum: Last week, coincidently on the same day that I got notice of my site’s review, my e-mail brought another piece of news, which caught me completely by surprise: I’m a finalist for a Diarist Award! I am thrilled and amazed that someone nominated me in the Best New Journal category for Quarter Two and that the panel chose my site as a finalist. I had to read the e-mail a few times before it sunk in, and I wasn’t really truly sure it was official until the site awards nominee list was posted late tonight. I’m honored to be included. This is very cool, and also a little scary.
I resisted the temptation to take time off work to spruce up my site, to do all the things on my OLJ to do list, to drive myself crazy rereading every entry and looking for typos and misplaced commas. I am giving in to the temptation to bask in this feeling of recognition and do the happy dance. (I did much the same thing when I discovered that Jenipurr had linked to me on her journals page; I felt like a real journaler then.) I read the e-mail notifying me of the nomination at work, and I’m sure I had a big, goofy grin on my face the rest of the afternoon. Of course, I couldn’t share what I was so happy about because, while I’m fine with posting my weight online and telling everyone my real age, I’m not yet comfortable blabbing about my online journal to my coworkers, even though I haven’t written anything I wouldn’t want them to read. Maybe if I win, I’ll tell them, though that seems like a farfetched turn of events. For now, I’m just happy to have this graphic I can use to spruce up the place.
