It has been an odd day in that I have heard the voice of my tiny kitten-pie, Hen, cursing in the back of my head repeatedly. It wasn't a particularly hard day, just a weird one.

I have a finished stack o' tulip quilt blocks. Mwah ha ha! Think of all the evil, quilty things I can do with them. I have already laid half of them out on my bed to get sneak peek of the final product. I can not believe I ever doubted the blue!

Having a daughter turn ten is a very happy thing. Ten is a good year to be, plus as a parent you get to celebrate a decade of having done pretty well, actually. And then, ten is the beginning of being a tween. Of course, they didn't call it "tween" when I was that age, but I remember it being a time that was as aggravating as it was fun. Beebs is still very much a little girl at this point, but this quilt is for the coming years and all their hard spots. If the girls at school are mean, or the boys ignore her, or she thinks her parents are particularly wrong, and she feels quite alone, I hope maybe that she'll look at this and realize that she's not.

Yes, it's a bit of a heavy-handed birthday present. Whatever, it needs to be said. Hopefully, the Denyse Schmidt prints in her favorite colors lighten it up. (Thank you Erin.) Plus, you should imagine the words being said in a bit of a sing-song voice, like on the Juno soundtrack. I had originally thought I'd do the same words in cross-stitch, but I couldn't get excited about it. Then the Proverbial Quilt that Melissa has been working on, plus the more free-form lettering of cauchy09 in this quilt, lead my do do it in fabric. I used the same tutorial as the flickr quilt for the lettering. It more fun than I thought it would be.

I like that these in-progress quilt blocks look like the bud versions of what they will become. It gives me a little preview of what it will someday be.

What I don't like is all the comment spam I've been getting lately. It stinks, and I've had to turn on comment moderation to save any of you who have subscribed from getting spammed in return. Poo. I did take off the Captcha though, so at least that part of commenting should be easier!

Remember a week ago when I said I had cut and assembled just about all of the unit pieces for my tulip blocks? It turns out that was a bit of a lie. I was actually only halfway done, but didn't realize it. I forgot about an entire unit, and then I had too few (by different amounts) of all the others. My good little girl counted all my short piles and labeled them for me. I should have had 50 but I had 42, 36, 43. I've got my count down now—just a little more cutting and I can get my dining table back.

Totally unrelated, I've been having dreams about the bike rides I used to take as a kid. I'm not dreaming about how much fun it was or who I was with, just the actual route and the way the route felt—how some parts were sunny and some parts were shady, and some part gave me a nervous feeling because they were wooded and I couldn't see around the curves. I like it because I get to see the details of places I wouldn't think of otherwise, like the deli next to the liquor store where there were always candy wrappers on the ground. I am sure I am dreaming this because I'm trying to figure out what places are ok for Eva to bike to alone. I think I did a lot of exploring on my bike, but maybe I was a little older. I don't know.

Oh, happy day! I am quilting. I started cutting this project way back in (let me look it up ) October. Then I just plain-old lost interest. Maybe it was the Christmas crafting or maybe it was my fall obsession with knitting. Either way, this quilting project has been collecting dust (quite literally) on my sewing table. Every so often I would look at it and feel a little bad for how neglected it was. Not anymore. I picked it up again because I needed a break from the hand sewing on the Alabama Stitch top. Yay, string piecing!

After I had cut nearly everything and assembled most of the base units with the half-square triangles, I began to doubt my color choice for the background solid. It's Kona Robin's Egg, but really it's more turquoise than I would expect it to be. Why didn't I just use gray? I love gray and it would have been appropriate. I think I was trying to expand my horizons. What do you think? I think I'm OK with it now, or at least, I'm proceding.

I have been eyeing others' pretty pretty completed projects from the Alabama Stitch books. (BurdaStyle's Alabama Stitch-inspired contest gallery is particularly awesome.) The just look so soft— comfortable, yet elegant, rustic, yet refined. When my mom was visiting, she bought me Alabama Studio Style as a little present. I already had some organic cotton knits that I had bought on sale, and so a project was born.

Flat on, it seems ridiculous to make an entire top by hand with just a needle and thread. Why would you? It goes so much more quickly by machine. Ah but, the problem with that logic is that it leads you to say, Why bother to sew at all? Because, you can get it more quickly and possibly cheaper at Target. Which brings us back to the beginning. For me, and I know this is true for many of you, I sew because I like the process of making and because having, using, and sharing something I've made makes me really happy. Natalie Chanin's focus on process is reassuring. There are many steps to these projects (copying, tracing, cutting (twice), xacto-ing a stencil, stenciling, painting, drying, pinning, and finally, sewing), but each has its reasons and explanations of technique. We're not doing this for no reason, we're doing it for every reason.

Technical note: If you one of these stenciled projects, don't buy the little spray cans of fabric paint at the craft store. They contain almost no paint and have poor control. If I do it again, I'm going to do as the book suggests and use watered down paint in a dollar store spray bottle.

Technical note 2: I made a mylar stencil, but I think a felt stencil would have been best. The sprayed-on paint beaded on the stencil and threatened to bleed. I think the felt would just absorb it. I though about doing Meg's freezer paper stencil but the thought of doing all the cutting and not having it on something permanent bothered me.

I made two little mini quilts, it seems like very long ago, for Lark for their book, Pretty Little Mini Quilts. It's out now—very exciting—and my contributors copy has arrived at my door. Oh, there's nothing wrong with quilts.

The folks at Lark also had the really good idea of asking contributors if they would like to donate their quilts made for the book to Craft Hope for Haiti. I was so happy about this because I had wanted to contribute something to the auction, but just didn't know what to make or when I would find time to make it. Done! My little red minny muu quilt went to Craft Hope, but I kept the green one with the Heather Bailey fabrics. I have plans for it in my kitchen. Its little sprout-y embroideries were inspired by a particularly mushroom-filled period in Elie's terrarium.

I wish I could share the auction link, but the quilt was up and sold before I knew! I would say that's a good thing. Craft Hope has raised over $30k for Haiti—that's crazy.

In other book-related news, a friend let me know that my local quilt shop, Sew Sassy, is featuring Quilts Baby! now and that they have a version of Erin's elephant quilt in the window. Fun!

Dang, it's cold here! Elie just half-jokingly offered to use some of my felted crafting sweaters for weatherstripping and door wadding.

This weekend was all about two things: relaxing and doing chores that you'd rather put off. The relaxing was awesome and the chores were even fine because now they are done. Remember how I made Eva a beautiful redwork quilt? I put off washing it forever (if you look up the date of the post where I shared it, I will be shamed) because I knew I was facing bleed issues. This was my first quilt, and it was red and white, and I didn't prewash my fabrics. Gasp! I didn't realize how bad I had been until a rainstorm poured into Eva's bedroom window and soaked one little corner of the redwork quilt. Oh, did it bleed. It looked like melted blow-pop, and it was enough to shock me into very bad laundry practices.

This weekend Eva asked me if I would please wash the quilt. It had gone to far. I suppose there's no time like the new year for this sort of thing, so I bit the bullet and washed years of hand quilting and embroidery work with white right next to red. I started it off in my bathtub using cold water and a gallon of vinegar along with a cup or two of salt. My science is fuzzy, but maybe this is supposed to set the dye? I read it online and I thought it couldn't hurt. I also added 3 shout color catchers. It made the tub water so pink. After some agitation I squeezed it out then threw it in a laundry basket a whisked it down to the basement to the waiting washer filled with cold water, soap, and 3 more color catchers. The water was still bright pink on the second rinse cycle. It came out OK. The white is not pure and there's a general pinky glow, but I'm sure it's not as bad as it could have been

I think I'm going to try to write the post I was thinking yesterday.

Yesterday, we returned home from a week away with family. We hit snowy roads both coming and going and ending in a few inches of fresh snow at my doorstep. After you've been cramped in a car for hours on end, shoveling snow feels wonderfully fresh and fun. All three of us were out shoveling or brooming the snow and generally feeling glad to be home Afterward once inside, I got that feeling that I should immediately start unpacking and going through the mail, but I let myself wait. Instead, I sat in my gray armchair and knit the last ribbed inch of the sock I've been working on, as the last half-hour of sunlight-on-snow lit up my window.

I love the December holidays and the busy, merry-making parts of winter, but I've also come to love the coming months, the cozy months of winter, because there's really no reason not to sit and make things and have a little tea and watch a movie snuggled on the couch. I plan on being here plenty during the cozy time. During the busy time, there was just too much going on for me to have very much good to say!

But I did make a lot. These little sewn things were gifts for my nephews, ages 1, 3, and 9—an artist and two boys who certainly are not adverse to tossing a ball. The pencil case is of course Kathy's pattern as seen in Last Minute Quilted Gifts, and the balls were this pattern from the purl bee.

Maitreya sent lots of fun green fabrics for her one quilt block, and really the only thing she asked was that we incorporate the letter M, for her love of typography. I decided to do four different Ms using embroidery, and because I tend to dawdle with embroidery, it took a while to complete, but here it is—Yay!

I am thoroughly enjoying the long weekend. This is the third day of sleeping in, and it feels pretty good. I don't really even have an agenda for today, which is so unlike me, but I did a lot of the agenda-type stuff yesterday. Maybe we'll do a group craft—who knows? Hope things are equally chill in your neck of the woods.

-Dorie