Breaking point?

This weekend is a marathon writing weekend. Project X and I are spending quite a bit of time together. I'm right on schedule to finish up by St. Patrick's Day. It's kind of all I think about. On the commute, I listen to the Project X playlist. At work, where things have been nuts (wrapping up another show), the little green notebook is never more than arm's-length away. This is that weird semi-hypnotic stage where everything around me seems to be in context of this book. And writing non-stop has been really fun.

But yesterday I hit a little wall.

Not a writer's block wall, but one that could easily translate to "I'm just going to put this aside a for a few (weeks/months)." Because I'm nearing 40,000 words (about 200 pages), and I suddenly thought, "Gee... what if it's no good?"

Not the idea. I love the idea. Nothing will ever make me not love the idea, which I'll share eventually (it's really high-concept and I feel a little protective).

The writing, though--what if the writing isn't any good?

But one fun thing about writing really fast is, hey, even if the whole thing is as useless as a basket of single socks, at least I didn't waste too much time on it.

I feel better this morning. Last night I hit a transition point, and the subsequent jump in narrative time is really fun and interesting to write.

Okay. I'm a bundle of nervous energy. I'd better go get some coffee.

Sorry I'm not around the blogosphere very much this week! I was all caught up and suddenly I look at my RSS feeds and I have hundreds of things to read. Bah!

Making, making, making... (kind of)

I have quilt pictures to post, but I have to mail the quilt off first. I don't think the recipient reads this blog, but just in case, I'll wait a few days.

In the meantime, we didn't get our family Christmas card out this year, but the night after that big photo shoot, we did a little one with Winston for our annual Winston Alender Calendar. And of course, the calendar made it out the door while the Christmas cards fester in iPhoto.

Here's a link to the photos, if you're interested in checking them out.

Dog show and book are really pressing down on me lately, but both of those should be lifted by week's end... Hope everyone is happy and healthy in the new year!

A lump of coal for me!

Let's just acknowledge that I get an F for blogging and move on with our lives. Okay? Okay.

In the plus column, I get an A+ for crafting. I have been very productive lately, making several Christmas presents. From Bend the Rules Sewing, I made a lined tote bag for my sister-in-law out of some very cute monkey fabric. I also made an apron out of a similar monkey fabric, and a very odd little trivet out of still more monkey fabric.

I helped the same sister-in-law make some very cute little teacup cozies for her mother, and then I hauled out the serger (rethreaded it myself! only took an hour) and made some coasters for the in-laws' rental properties. Many moons ago, I made a series of crazy quilt squares using four pieces of fabric sewn together and then cut with a 6.5" square stencil. Now I piled those together with pieces of flannel, old sweatpants, or old towels, traced a 4.5" square on them, and serged together coasters. It was extremely cathartic and highly addictive. Only two broken needles brought my fun to a stop... fifteen coasters later.

I'm also working on a quilt for a baby (6 months late--the quilt, not the baby), some totebags for the baby's big sisters, and some late Christmas gifts for a rather understanding segment of my own family.

I have to put the finishing buttons on an infant dress I made a while back, kind of for the heck of it--it's the perfect gift for a baby due any day to some friends in Europe. And I also took a look at my fabric stash yesterday and saw a lot of possibilities for some very hilarious baby dresses, which I will make for my own amusement and then put on Etsy or something.

As you can see, I've been fitting in quite a bit of workshoppy time, when I'm not working or taking the dog to the vet. Yes, I was tossing the tennis ball for Winston the other day, and it beaned him right in the face. His eye swelled up intermittently for the next 24 hours, always returning to normal the moment a vet visit was mentioned and then swelling up once the threat of medical care had passed. It turns out all that was needed to cure it was $81 and a useless half-hour at the vet's office, during which time they confirmed that absolutely nothing was wrong.

I hope you have all had a lovely holiday. Try to capture a bit of the Christmas spirit and take it with you into 2008. I'd love to say I'll be blogging again before then (and hey, you never know), but perhaps as part of my New Year's resolutions, I should try to be more realistic.

At any rate, I'll be posting pictures of many projects before too long.

Thith oneth for you, Tom.

Tom, 365 days seems like a really long time to do something without being certain of the results. Perhaps I'm just lazy (or maybe I'm biased). ;-)

So anyway, there is zero craftiness happening in this home right now. The pants were a total bust, in that I didn't finish them. I think they'll be fine, except that the crepe-backed satin doesn't sit flat at the seams, so the pant legs look like they're collapsing inward on themselves. I'm thinking about ironing on some hem tape to hold them flat.

In other news, Winston is sick. He ate something over the weekend, and as I was in Long Beach for the dog show, no amazing hydrogen peroxide trick was employed. So he'd been a little sick (upset tummy) all week, and on Monday, the vet told us to give him antacids, but yesterday things came to a head and he was admitted for some more x-rays (I will have a glowing green dog by the time they finish all of his x-rays) and for fluids, because the poor baby was very dehydrated.

I'm waiting to hear, but it's looking like surgery will NOT be necessary, which is good, because not only is there a dog show to be produced (post-produced), but there is a manuscript to be revised, and sanity to be maintained. Barely.

I made a discovery the other day: I can go without craving craftiness for weeks, but the second I'm supposed to be revising my book, I start immediately trying to procrastinate by sewing. Unfortunately for Evil Katie, Virtuous Katie put her foot down in this instance.

Oh, Lordy, I'm tired. I'm so behind on blogs, but I promise I'll catch up.

Hope everyone is well!

PS - I didn't re-sign-up for this round of Wardrobe Refashion... more on that later.

I love the smell of fabric in the morning...

First, big thanks to narcissaqtpie for the patterns she so kindly sent me. I can't imagine being brave enough to actually get rid of patterns. Even the ones I accidentally bought while trying to organize the stack at the thrift store (giving back, that's called), I have developed an unnatural attachment to. Probably because I'm anticipating the return of the Executive Linebacker style for women, and I want to be prepared.

In other news, I have had zero time for sewing lately. Zero! Well, I've had four minutes every morning as I wait for the iron to heat up. I'm sewing the border on a baby quilt (which is already two months overdue... the quilt, not the baby), and I get one seam pinned or sewn every time I iron.

This is unacceptable! Especially because I want to try to make a lot of holiday gifts by hand this year (sorry, 4Horses, it is what it is). And that means sewing. And that means I'm going to have to leave cookies out and hope the elves come by and do some stitching in the middle of the night.

This is not to say I've had a lack of inspiration. Oh, no! I'm still buying patterns and fabric. I bought a holiday print from Joann to make myself a holiday skirt along the lines of the Halloween skirt. It's even Sue-approved, so there you go.

I also bought Simplicity 3903, these table runners that you weave through one another... as soon as I got home and looked at the pattern, I wondered why on earth I had to buy a pattern to make table runners. But they were on sale for $1.99 so I stopped worrying about it. But I love the look of them, sort of a tablecloth and placemats put together...



I'm also planning to make chair covers to slip over our dining room chairs, because, really how hard can those be?

The only problem, as usual, is finding the time to get everything done! Maybe I should get together a band of singers and have them sing me a benefit song.

(Sung to the tune of "Do They Know It's Christmas?".)

It's Christmas time, there's no need to be ashamed...
At Christmas time, we make a list with lots of names...
And in my sewing room of plenty, I can make a cool placemat,
Throw your arms around the sewing machine at Christmas time.

But say a prayer; pray for the busy ones...
At Christmas time, it's hard, but when you're having fun...
There's a time-consuming dog show, and there's a messy house to clean,
And the kitchen sink is plugged up, and the plumber is so mean,
And the panther in the backyard is scary cat of doom,
Well, tonight, let's hope I sew a thing or two.

Or there won't be woven table runners this Christmas time,
(oh ohhhh oh)
And the greatest gift you'll get is a placemat,
Which you will want to stow
Because the seams and selvage show,
Won't I get to sew a thing at all?

Okay, that's all. Happy crafting! *sniff* Have fun without me.

(Oh, and no one is allowed to point out that I could have been sewing in the time it took me to create this blog post, do you hear me???)

Why I have not updated my dog--er, blog.

You will have to forgive me, because never before in my life have I been so immersed in the world of dog shows. Actually, I'm not sure if that's technically true; show night is pretty intense. Other than that, no. All I can dog about is dogs. If I'm not looking at the image of a dog on the Avid, I am compiling a database of dogs using Microsoft Dog. Or creating graphics featuring dog names.

The irony of all this is that the actual dog in my life is spending the week at daycare, which makes me sad, because I miss him. In the car, I keep thinking I'm hearing him shift around in his little pop-up crate, but it must be... rats? I don't know.

Also, the curious matter of publishing this on my own blog is the result of MyDog's blog control giving me an error dog one too many times. I don't think it will always be like this; on the other dog, if it's not too annoying, maybe it will be.

Either way, I am dog tired and have to go write more about dogs.