So here’s the crazy quilt I’ve been working on in my spare time. I watched half of Luther last night with the girls and stitched away. This is my new alternative to wasting that time on the Internet while watching movies, because I can’t just sit and watch a movie; I get antsy and twitchy and inevitably end up walking out of the room to find something else to do before the movie is over if I don’t have something else to do.

I’m not exactly sure how big I’m going to let this thing get. It’s already starting to get a bit out of control, but I’m sort of going for a double-size quilt, so I’ve got a long way to go.

And it just sort of occurred to me that after I get the top pieced together I’ve got to do something about a middle layer and a backing. And then a binding. Oh, and the quilting, which I’ve never done before. I really don’t want this project to turn into the Braided Rug of 2003.

You see, I started a braided rug for one of the girl’s rooms back in Colorado. That project spread into 2004 and by the end of 2004 we began making our plans to move, so that project got packed away and never finished. I found it the other day and it is a symbol of pretty much the way I do everything: gung ho start, fizzled finish.

I keep thinking one of these days I will finish it. Maybe I should just call it done now and consider it a small rug instead of the intended room-sized rug it started out to be. Yeah. That might be a good idea.

Anyway, so the quilt. I’ve now got four girls very interested in the progress of this thing, so it’s kind built-in crafting accountability; they are totally ready to curl up under it and watch movies with it, so I need to get it finished while they are still all living in our home with us.

Now that I’ve learned how easy it is for me to engage in both conversation and mental processing while doing a fairly mindless project with my hands (one that requires no pattern to follow, just stick two pieces wrong sides together and sew them up!), I’m planning to take my basket to a class Craig and I are taking at Covenant this weekend ( Music and Theology with Denis Haack). I haven’t had a class since last spring, so I’m looking forward to it, and anything by Denis Haack or Jerram Barrs is high on my list for filling out my remaining 9 hours on my Graduate Certificate.

My parents are coming into town tonight to hang out with the girls and I have a whole list of grunt work jobs opportunities for my dad to do while I’m sewing in educational heaven. We will probably also eat dinner out tomorrow, thereby putting a one-day halt in our consumption of canned diced tomatoes.

Last thing: today I got an email in which I was given a real live writing assignment (i.e. the kind that pays per word). Then we get to go to the class this weekend and I can sew. This has the potential to be a really great weekend. *Grin*