Various and Sundry Monday: Vol 17

Stressed is desserts spelled backwards. Coincidence? I think not.
–Unknown

Favourite Things Friday: Monday Edition
Last week was such a busy week that by the time Friday came, I was pretty much out of steam and didn't get to my FTF post. I had something really good; a complete no-brainer. So I'm posting it today instead of waiting until next Friday because I'm still pretty excited about it and it is still my favorite thing today. My AURIfil color card came! I've looked at it about a million times. The colors are amazing and thread is incredibly smooth and silky. I love to stroke each little thread sample as I look over the card. I think I'm going to have to start wearing gloves when I handle it so that the oils from my fingers don't discolor the threads

I was really impressed with how fast it came. I ordered it Saturday-before-last, late in the evening and it was here by Thursday, which made it a really fun mail day. I had my colors all picked out before I went to bed. I submitted my order first thing Friday morning. Monogrammed Heirlooms carries all of the 50-weight threads and sells the 1400-yard spools for $8.00, which is a really great price. If you order 4 or more spools, you get 10% off your order and if you order 10 or more spools you get 20% off {and I am totally not getting paid to advertise for them }. I'm hoping that they will be as fast at shipping the thread as they did the color card, because that means it will be here by Wednesday!

Pinwheel Sampler Update
I'm still tooling along with the ditch-work on the pinwheel sampler quilt. There are several reasons for that. First, I had the busiest work week in the history of ever last week. Second, I decided to do more stitch-in-the-ditch than I originally planned to. And third, I'm still a bit intimidated by my quilting plan, so I let the first two reasons slow me down. Procrastination at its most subtle. Here's an interesting section from the back. I can't wait to fill it all in with pretty scrolls and curlicues and at the same time, I'm scared I'll mess it up.

Too Many Irons In the Fire
While I was procrastinating the pinwheel sampler, I decided to work a bit on my Halloween quilt. It's up next on my list of Ph.D's. I got the top mostly put together. I'm going to piece some scrappy pumpkins and appliqué funny jack-o-lantern faces on them and put them in a row across the bottom. It's not in the original pattern, so I'm hoping it will fit in with the rest of the quilt. The border is going to be scrappy and the blocks are all appliqué. The jack-o-lanterns have both, so hopefully it will work.

Here's a close-up of the embroidered poem, which is something I added to the pattern too. You can see close-ups of the other blocks here.

And here is one of the place mats, also in progress. I did extras of each appliqué block, without any real idea for a layout in the place mats. I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants here, which I'm not too fond of. I've got ideas for two of the remaining 5 and am probably going to do a little more procrastinating on the pinwheel sampler while I get them together, so I don't forget what I want to do.

Reunion: Survived
Dear Blog-Stalking Burglars,

Thank you for not robbing our house while we were at my 20-year High School reunion over the weekend, even though I told you ahead of time that I was going to be gone and you had plenty of opportunity to sneak in while we were out. I promise not to talk about leaving my house empty again before it actually happens.

xo –E

P.S. On second thought, if I give you my schedule for the next few weeks, could you please come and 'clean out' the garage?

So. The big 20-year reunion. It was exactly as awkward and uncomfortable as I imagined it would be. There were 660+ kids in my graduating class. I estimate that about 125 of them were at the reunion. And I still fit in exactly where I fit in back then. There were still the jocks and cheerleaders {one of them even did a cheer. Twice. While wearing heels.} and the popular kids. There were still the partiers. And I was still a nerd. But it was also a lot of fun. I loved seeing everyone again and the reunion committee did an incredibly amazing job with the program. Two of the top three people on my list of people I wanted to see again were there. The dinner was good and the dessert was chocolate. All in all, it was a fairly painless experience. And bless Mr. Bug's heart for coming along and spending what I can only imagine was the most boring evening of his life.

These are my FHA girls. Our senior year, Shawnelle {center} was in a state leadership position and Hollie {left} and I had leadership positions in our chapter. We were in FHA together all through high school, so we planned more than one event together and went to more than one convention together. These girls were some of my closest friends and it was really fun to see them again.

The chatter on Facebook over the last day or two is that everyone wants to get together again every year, and not wait so long for the next reunion. I'm not sure I could handle that much high school. I guess we'll have to see how I feel about it next year.

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