blanket is fo'evs

Not many friends of mine still have their baby blanket. Yes, you could consider me some sort of odd-ball because YES, I still have mine. It's name is Blanket. I sleep with it every night. Maybe I shouldn't be making these statements over the internets.

Anywho, I went to the fabric store last Friday because my dear Blanket was in desperate need of help. I've washed it so many times over the past... oh... 29 years, that the fabric was literally shredding apart. Mind you, that Blanket has been recovered twice already. So the original blanket was enclosed in a blanket, which was within the outermost blanket. I picked a yard of yellow and a yard of white, paid for my purchase, and went home to work on Blanket. I didn't finish it in one night though. Which meant that:

I WAS WITHOUT MY BLANKET FOR ONE NIGHT.
THE HORROR.

The next day, I woke up depressed because of my non-Blanket night, but I was determined to finish it. I completed the blanket's envelope the night before, and all I had left to do was pin the blanket to the interior of the envelope, stitch it in place, and of course... add the signature "Jill's Blanket" to the corner. It let's everyone know to BACK OFF, because it's MY BLANKET.


I didn't choose the blanket life. The blanket life chose me.

It has been with me from my earliest, most surly days. See how upset I was? Why was everyone smiling? Clearly I was sad that I couldn't eat turkey yet. It was also with me the day I tried to eat my shoe. It traveled with me to my Audi's house. Lady dog loved my blanket. It was with me every Christmas: From the year that I got thee Domino Rally, to the one where I had brace-face and got my froggy slippers from Santa. It even traveled with me to Florida on our Griswold family vacation. So what if I was in my second year of college?

I may be a softy because I sleep with my Blanket, but I love it and see no reason why I should give it up. There are very few mementos that we hold onto while we transition from childhood into adulthood, other than pictures and Polaroids that we can look back on in our later years. But every time I curl up with my Blanket, it instantly transports me to every single night I've fallen asleep with it. There's not many things in life that can do that.

ERMAHGERD! BLAAAANKERRRRRT!

UPDATE.

8:15pm I wrote a blog post tonight that I'll post tomorrow, due to scanning pictures.. that I'll need to do at work. The post is done, but it's nothing without the pictures. NOTHING I SAY! But I am most certainly smiley now thanks to a fine bottle of Merlot, and I'm considering buying massive quantities of schtuff on Etsy. I'm looking for a cross stitch. More specifically, a hilarious cross stitch. Unfortunately, I roamed over into the realm of tapestries, and I found a couple of 'beauts. I found a kitty playing with string. There are numerous ones of Jesus in different prayer positions. DEAR LORD, there are also many... MANY entitled 50 shades of passion. I have to navigate myself out of here ASAP!

8:22pm Uh oh. I just found something. OH GOD. I think I'm going to buy it. Did I mention I found a CD that I made in college entitled Best CD Eva? It's a mix of the Spice Girls, Aerosmith, and Avril Lavigne. Don't be jealous of my mix CD.

8: 26pm UPDATE. I bought it. Don't be jealous.

YO I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want.
So tell me what you want, what you really, really want.
I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want.
So I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want.
I want a, I want a, I want a, I want a, I wanna really, really, really want is ERMAHGERD.

week overdue

Yes, I was supposed to write a post last weekend to update all of the crazy fun stuff that I've been doing, but my time ran short on every single day. How does that always seem to happen? I'm not that popular, so that's not it. I am planning a wedding though. I'll blame it on that. Things are going well, quite well if you ask me. You didn't ask me though, but I'm telling you that anyways.

After about a month or two of consideration, I've decided not to send out my quilt for finishing. To meet the criteria of having it finished off by a long-arm quilter, it would have had to be damn near perfect. And it wasn't damn near perfect. It never will be damn near perfect, because it's my first quilt and quite frankly, I don't want it to be damn near perfect. There were ripples. It didn't lie completely flat. And if there were any rogue strings or threads exposed during the quilting process, it could have torn the quilt and destroyed everything I worked so hard on.

So. I sucked it up. I picked up that quilt on Sunday and started quilting the columns again. And GAADAMN it wasn't easy. Imaging running a full-sized quilt through a sewing machine. It looked a lot like this:


AHHHHHHHH QUILT EXPLOSION!

But, like I said: I sucked it up! I kept the quilt as taught as I could, constantly changed the needles and kept the bobbin completely stocked with thread. After what seemed like hours, I had all of the columns completely finished. MAJOR SCORE. After almost a year of not working on it, I was happy to see it and feel it again. Yesterday, I started working on the rows, which will be a lot tougher than the columns. You see the columns are all perfectly straight. But the rows.... ehh... not so much. Again, I'll rely on MSPaint to express myself.

 

When I go to stitch a row, they don't line up completely. So as soon as I get to an area where the row doesn't line up, I have to turn the quilt, stitch along the column for literally less that centimeter, then turn the quilt again to continue sewing the row. I set myself a goal of completing two rows per day, and it should take me about 7 days total, unless I double up a little over the weekend.

HERE'S TO GETTING SHIT DONE.

eek.

OK. Yet another month has gone by and I still haven't posted. Even though I've done some crafty-crafts and such. I'll update this weekend. OK... Monday. Wednesday at the latest.

In the meantime, here are two delightful images of a snake we found this summer that was barfing a frog. Enjoy!