aaaaaaahhhh

i finally had the day i’ve been craving. it snowed most of the day and i didn’t have to go to work. or leave the house for any reason. i played with the circular saw and made some crude acrylic “frames” for some art (i’ll post photos later this week sometime) and only had a few mishaps (one piece of acrylic broke off before i’d cut it all the way off–no biggie, plenty still left for the frames; lots of little pieces of plexi-dust (as opposed to sawdust, but then again, it’s not really the dust of the saw and they don’t call it wooddust, but you get the idea–is that stuff toxic?) all over everything in the furnace room (hooray for hand-held vacuums!); and a slight nick in the saw’s power cord (i set it down while the blade hadn’t stopped running and the front edge of the blade that is not protected by the blade guard brushed against the cord.)–oh well, a little black tape and now it just looks like a saw that someone actually uses, right?)

i also baked bread and roasted some root vegetables to throw into food for the rest of the week (sweet potatoes, carrots and beets)–that’s my new technique to get me to eat vegetables during winter. they mostly taste pretty good in things with black beans which we eat all the time.

i also began reading a book called “in praise of slowness” which i’ve had checked out for an embarrassingly long time and *ahem* haven’t had the time to read it. it’s all about not speeding through life. a great read from the hammock chair in my sunny dining room. also a great prelude to a nap–not because it’s boring (which it’s not) but because it makes you believe that taking a nap is a completely justifiable use of your time.

i then went back to my pillow project in the sewing room and that’s where i am now. i’m working on making some pillows for the living room with orange accents and using a denyse schmidt quilt pattern called “ice pops.” quilting is my current “thing”–except so far, i’m much more excited about the piecing part than the quilting part. in order to satisfy that craving, yesterday i made a duvet cover for my bed and pieced the top and the bottom. since it was a duvet cover, i feel totally justified in not quilting it (that would be overkill, right?) and i love the way it makes my bed look just a little more… finished. the kitties like it.

closer detail:

here’s the other side:

we had just been using the comforter by itself and it has a big blue ink splot on one side. mostly, i just wanted a duvet cover because that’s easier to wash than a comforter and since the kitties sleep there all day (and half the night) and get fur all over it and since i’m allergic to the kitties (but unwilling to kick them out of the bedroom–they look so cozy!) i thought i’d just make it easier to wash. i love the way it turned out! i’ve been inspired by some blogs of non-traditional quilters like lady harvatine, glittergoods, my aunt june, and probably a few others i’ve forgotten. i’ve spent waaaaay too much time browsing flickr for keywords, “denyseschmidt” because i’ve found that it leads me to like-minded quilters and quilting bloggers. i’ve also been introduced to the concept of free-motion quilting and want to find out more about how it works. today, i looked through my sewing machine manual and learned how to lower my feed dogs (one of the first steps to free motion quilting. isn’t that a fun phrase?) which was much easier than i’d thought it would be (hey, there’s a switch on the back of my machine that lowers them! no screwdriver or swearing necessary!) and then i played around with the tension and the presser foot and… short story? it’s going to take some practice and probably a few more tutorials of some kind, but i definitely want to play with it more. could be fun! swirly quilting–not just straight lines anymore!

check out this falling snow picture i took–can you see the 6 pointed snowflake in the center? (all the other snowflakes ended up just being circular blobs–isn’t this cool?!)

one more funny/embarrassing story for the weekend. yesterday, i was cleaning out the kitchen sink and realized i apparently hadn’t cleaned it for a few days. i found this:

it’s a black bean that sprouted and was putting down roots in my drain. embarrassing, yes, but somehow also feels like a hopeful sign of springtime. but for now, i’m so very happy to drink cocoa and read a book in my hammock, watching the snow fall outside.