May 7th

My papers are
DONE!!!

Oh quilting and blogging, how I've missed you~

an update..

Still plugging along at my papers.. two more weeks to go and I should be finished (or, royally screwed).  I have not been stitching much, not even to relieve stress because I've found that a total quilting hiatus is really necessary to keep my focus.  When I need a break from writing I find myself watching old episodes of new-to-me favorite shows, like Ugly Betty (and yes, the Glee addiction is still pretty strong), thank god for Netflix!

We had a playdate this morning with Merrill and Sabrina and I took the opportunity to snap some photos of Merrill's diamond star quilt, which, btw, is offically bigger than mine.  Isn't it amazing? 

I loved looking at them side by side-- her quilt totally reads pink/purple to me, but I had to ask her to know what mine read as.. she claims green & blue.  Do you agree?

Life as it is..

I feel that there are about 6 other blog posts I should be writing, but this is what you're getting today, because this is what's on my mind.  Life feels pretty intense right now.  Graduation is quickly approaching and the pages of my second paper are not developing at an equally fast pace.  I've been distracted by quilts (what else is new?), upcoming travel plans (Boston, Northampton, and Athens-- in the next 2 months), crazy amounts of dental work (advice-- if you've been putting off a visit, just GO!), and regular life stuff.  I'm pretty sure I'm slowly becoming obsessed with Noah Puckerman (paper topic #2-- Teaching Paralinguistic Features through TV, example: GLEE) but because it's "school related" it's really ok, right?

Thankfully, George is content to sit and play playdoh while I let Travel Q #3 flow from my fingers in a desperate attempt to relieve some stress.  My favorite VeggieTales station on pandora gives us background music (mostly kids songs with a healthy dose of Jack Johnson and Regina Spektor thrown in).  He doesn't mind when I sing along, usually.  We'll sit like this til his motivation changes and then we're off again, playing til dinner. 
I know what I want to write, but the ideas don't always flow when I've got the time to sit at the computer.  As I stitch, occasionally good paragraphs write themselves and I've got to jump up to jot them down (like at the library yesterday where I found myself searching my purse for a scrap of paper to capture the phrasing to introduce a favorite article about nonverbal language in sitcoms..), but at this point, I'm grateful for whatever comes to mind. 
Slow and fast, fast and slow.  I know life will be totally different once the semester is over..
What's driving your life these days?

Accomplishments

Accomplishments today:

• Christmas tree is up.
• found usb cord for the voice recorder (or, well, discovered that the cable from Scout will also work for the recorder..)
• transcribed the first 2 minutes of a 5 minute oral interview for my Pedagogical Grammar paper.
• read two chapters for Phonetics/Phonology class tonight (current topics: ambisyllabicity and stress attracting suffixes.  I LOVE this stuff!) *note: don't click the links unless you're an English language nerd/fanatic
• Took pictures of the Spiderweb quilt which is done done done! (except for a trip thru the wash and burying a few last threads)

I used one of C's old Polo Ralph Lauren oxford shirts for the background and I would have made it bigger except that I ran out of shirt fabric and didn't want to splice in anything else.

The label was my 2nd attempt at piecing letters.  I pieced it into the back and quilted over it, so in case I have more kids in the future, there won't be any arguments over who this quilt belongs to.

I used the tutorial available on Bonnie Hunter's webpage and if I were to do it again (which I'd love to, but i have quite a few reservations), I'd use thinner paper for the foundations and remove it before stitching the blocks together.  I like how Bonnie uses deli waxed paper sheets for some of her foundation piecing, and I'd love to get my hands on a big box of the stuff (prefferably the 12" x 12" sheets) but the restaurant supply shop in my neighborhood is not open to the public and I don't have any friends in the restaurant business anymore.  If you know of anywhere I can look or buy some, please leave a comment!  I loved constructing this quilt and would really like to do another, but I can't do it on notebook paper again...

The next few weeks are jam packed with appointments, To-dos, and deadlines so I'm doing my best to stay on top of as much as I can.  right now I have a note book with 4 pages of lists going.. Do you have any secrets for surviving the hectic month of December?