Sleep-Deprived Sewing

Sorry I didn't post last night. Was too wiped out when I got home and then was trying to clear some TiVo and couldn't pay attention to that and blog at the same time.

Pat, I have no need for a vowel, but can I please buy about 4 extra hours in a day?

Fan Mail
Thanks for the feedback and other comments. I love it! :)

I'm guessing it was Lisa who commented that she thought I didn't buy the watch at REI. I didn't buy it on Friday, but went back and bought it at the REI near my house on Saturday after I had made up my mind which watch I wanted. That's also when I went mildly bonkers, buying four t-shirts, a skirt and two sports bras along with the watch.

And now, on to our regularly scheduled program!

So I got home from the football game on Sunday night at about 10:30, and it was critical that I get my second set of blocks done for Monday's M&Ms exchange. You can see a pic of my first block here on a previous blog entry. I was damn close to finishing them on Friday night at Sandy's house. I got the "twosies" of half-square triangles sewn to the center squares and was ready to sew on the strips of "foursies" to each side when I realized that they weren't going to line up correctly.

I thought that the problem was just that I had the plain square sewn on the wrong end of the strip of three half-square triangles, so Carol, Sandy and I busted out a trio of seam rippers and got those 18 strips down to three squares in a heartbeat. However, it was 11:45 at that point, so the only polite thing to do was pack up and get the hell out of Sandy's house so she could go to sleep.

Saturday was spent driving on five freeways running errands and attending the UCLA-Arizona football game (ugh. our games aren't exactly entertaining this year!), and there was no time on Sunday morning to do any sewing before we left for our Steelers-Chargers adventure.

So I busted out my Designer I when I got home at about 10:30 Sunday night and was ready to sew. At which point, I realized that my strips of three half-square triangles were sewn together with all of the individual squares off-kilter by 90 degrees. SHAZBOT! (well, I said things much worse than that, but my mother reads this blog, so we'll stick with Shazbot!)

Move over to the couch, seam ripper in hand. Turn on The Amazing Race from two weeks ago (may as well multi-task and clear some TiVo while I frog these things). Turn 18 strips into 54 individual half-square triangles. Move back over to the sewing machine, which is on the kitchen table since it required way too much energy to dig out my sewing cabinet to sew there.

Place all of the half-square triangles around the block centerpiece as the correct exploded block. Sew everything back into twosies, then into foursie strips. Remember, we're hard up on midnight at this point.

Grab the set of nine centers and sew a strip of foursies on. Go to my cut-n-press on the kitchen counter, press the first three blocks and realize that Houston, we have a problem! One block, the ONLY one that was correct, looked like this:

The other eight looked like this:

Can you find the mistake? I checked all nine of the blocks. Eight of them were wrong. Swore a lot. Then decided that it was 12:20, it was a nine-person block exchange and that if all eight recipients of my block got the same thing, would it be such a bad thing if the block was technically incorrect? I left it alone. The Amish would be proud of me.

I did, however, check my second set of foursies to make sure they were all correct. Amazingly, only one was out of whack, so I fixed it and went on my merry way.

The block exchange was quite fun. Lisa made a fabulous beef stew, other people brought other pieces of the potluck dinner and we laughed until 9:30! Sandy and I wound up chatting for a while afterwards so I got home late, never turned on the TV and fell into bed.

I have pics of everyone holding up their blocks (except for Beth. Beth flaked out on us, although she did drop off her blocks) and will get to that post in a day or two. Right now? I need to go work out RIGHT THIS SECOND so I can get showered and back over to my office in time for my very favorite standing meeting. Ugh. I'll do my best to post again at least one more time this week. Enjoy! :)

Oh yeah, I finished my first sock last night! No pics yet. Second sock is casted on and about half an inch into the cuff. Yay!