Sanity Returns. Or Does It?

Looking for the December NewFO Linky Party and Giveaway?

Click right here.

Call me Scrooge, but I'm just about ready for things to get back to normal for a while. It's my annual I'm-Really-Tired-of-the-Holidays rant, although I'm not sure I've shared it so publicly on my blog before. Not that I have anything against the holidays...while they're happening...but once they're over, I'm really glad they're over. Today I was really wishing for a day at home with a little bit of peace on earth in my personal living space. Foolishly, I scheduled an appointment to get my hair trimmed today, and so I had to go into town for a little while. Otherwise, I stayed home and pretended to be something vegetable-like.

A few things were accomplished. For one thing, I finished the second little stitchery of the four I'm working on for the Gardener's Journal quilt.

Then, I ventured into the sewing room to finally cross my last December to-do off my list. The one thing I didn't finish last month was to make another vertical row for "The Birds Return" quilt.

So far, I've only completed one row, and I vowed to make a second one before I moved on to my January list. I don't know what I was thinking the last time I worked on this (which was also the first time I worked on it), but for some reason, I made corrections to the blocks that include quarter-square triangles for the roofs of the birdhouses. See this handy totally clear-as-mud little "flow chart" I left for myself that last time I worked on it?

Since I'm only working on one row at a time and cutting as I go. I did all this scribbling on the pattern so that I could see each time what I needed to cut and the dimensions I needed to cut it. I looked carefully at the corrections I made to the quarter square triangle cutting measurements and wondered why I'd changed it. I dismissed my own questioning thinking that I must be doing the actual piecing differently than the pattern suggests. So I go ahead and cut and sew, and danged if that piece didn't come out a 1/2-inch too narrow.

So I checked the measurements on the other pieces above and below, and sure enough, it was too narrow. So then, just for giggles, I made another piece using the measurements suggested in the printed pattern, and guess what? A perfect fit.

And all I could say was "WTF"? I considered the answer to this question for the remainder of my sewing time this morning, and I studied the first vertical row, which seemed to fit in all of its places just fine. The only conclusion that I could come up with was that I intended to play a little New Year's practical joke on myself the last time I worked on it. Hahahahahahahaha...very funny, Me. So, now I've made the necessary erasures, and hopefully I won't end up with the same problem next month...only in reverse. But you never can tell. Whatever brain storm befell me last time could come roaring back, and I'll be making corrections to the pattern again. 

So here's the first and second row side by side. Oh, and I realized I made the pole for the bird house a half inch too wide. That's because I was working from a scrap of leftover binding. When I saw that nicely already cut strip, I assumed it had been cut for this project. Wrong. And I wondered and wondered and wondered why those pieces ended up a half an inch too wide. I thought I might have cut the sky pieces on either side too wide and so I just went ahead and trimmed each side by 1/4-inch and went on with my sewing.

Wrong. I realized it while I was doing it, but I figured...how bad can it be if the poles are half an inch too wide? I mean, really. And now that I'm looking at this image, it is sticking out like a sore thumb to my eyes. I'm going to have to redo those pieces.

Do you ever get the feeling you're losing your mind? It's a good thing I'm writing a blog so that when I can't remember anything I've done, I can look back and remind myself. Hopefully, I'll remember that I'm writing a blog. And if I remember that I'm writing a blog, hopefully, I'll remember the name of it so that I can do a Google search. It's starting to look like I really shouldn't handle any sharp objects for a little while.

Smitty's back in the swing of things. When he came in this morning, he had a decidedly dirty nose.

Sort of makes you wonder what he's been into, doesn't it? I'm thinking he might have been digging in a gopher hole. If he was, he didn't bring the gopher for me to see. In fact, since I wrote the last time about his little gifts, he hasn't brought me a single thing. I guess I know where I stand.