Slowing the crafty brain.

I love sewing. I love writing. But between feeling like I should be sewing or I should be writing, I'm starting to feel like there's no time left in my day where I'm NOT supposed to be doing something. Add to the mix the horrific prospect of working out and it gets even messier.

Even if I do a bunch of writing, I still have that feeling that I'm slacking off. It seems like there needs to be a bit of a schedule to it, or I'm going to lose my mind.

Especially having spent the day looking over 20-something pages of dog names.

Especially if Winston doesn't stop barking. Oh, pardon me -- if Rock Creek's Winston Churchill doesn't stop barking.

He's barking because I locked him in the bedroom because the delivery man will be here soon, and he turns into a raging guard dog when people ring the doorbell. He sounds much bigger than he is. The other night, when the pizza man came, Winston was "roh-roh-roh-ing" in the front hall, and I was running around like a cowboy in one of those contests where they grease up a pig and tie a bag of money to it and make a hundred people chase it around a muddy pen.

(I made up the part about the money -- there must be something good tied to the pig, though, or what's the point? Maybe it's a gift certificate to a fabric store.)

Anyhoo, so Winston is impersonating a mastiff in the front hall and I'm trying to get him, and I shout to the pizza man, "Just a second!" and he shouts back, "GOOD!"

So I'm all smugness and light, knowing that my dog is scary enough that pizza men are scared witless of his manly barking.

Um, what else. Got me some Netflix, gonna watch it and eat Chinese food. Assuming Winston doesn't scare off the delivery man.

As promised, Leo's quilt (with inquisitive Winston in foreground):

New dog quilt, coming right up.

I'm adding the finishing touches (i.e., binding) to Leo's quilt. I'll put up some pictures soon. I like this quilt a lot. In retrospect, I would have done the quilting slightly differently, but it's too late to worry about that now. There are always more quilts.

I like the fact that my quilts all have names. This one is called "Leo." I also have "Winston", "Angus", "Hugo", "Winston's Camo Sampler", and "Sondheim". I just think it's funny that the names don't fit the personalities of the quilts very well. Perhaps I'm not making the right quilts for the right dogs. Anyway, "Angus" might as well be called "Ross", because Ross (the cat) has taken it over.

I realize that this doesn't make much sense. Luckily, I'm the only one reading.

Nostalgia.

Reading over an entry from the day after we got Winston just made me flash back to the first couple of days with him. As anyone who has had an 8-week-old puppy around will tell you, they are exhausting, mentally and physically. So while Winston slept in his crate (always his safe place), I napped on the couch. I woke up a little while later to see this little puppy sitting on the floor looking up at me, checking me out. For the sake of sentiment, I'd love to say he wagged his tail at me, but I don't remember whether he did or not. One thing is for sure -- I love this dog.

Time flies when you're ________.

September already! And that half gone. At work, we are already moved on to the big live show. What is it now, ten weeks away? Every time I think of it, I get a serious flock of butterflies in the old belly.

I need to edit the description of this blog to include the word "sewing", because that seems to be the leisure activity of choice these days. Yesterday I made a wrap skirt for a friend and one for myself. I'm going to wear it today, in fact. I hope no one at work thinks I'm nutty for pretty much only wearing wrap skirts. In the first place, I love them (and now I have five, which makes ten completely distinct fabrics), and in the second place, they're about the only thing that fits these days.

On that note, I guess if I add "sewing" to the description, I should go ahead and add "eating". I am a shameless little piggy these days. And I feel like something needs to click before I'll be able to get a handle on it. But maybe that's a cop out.

What else...? Still revising The Girl Least Likely. I hope this will be the last go-round before the next round of submissions. That would be nice. I need to get back to working on 7S.

Writing a first draft is like trying to make flowers grow by pulling on them.

Actually, that's not true. That's what I'm making it like right now. In reality, it can be broken down to a fairly reliable process of writing-leading-to-results. But it's easier to pretend it's out of my hands. Plus, you have a lot more time to make skirts that way.