Grrr...

Although I have many, MANY more interesting and important things to document here, all I can bring myself to write about right now is my quilting woes.

Being a perfectionist has its down sides, and I have been working on overcoming this weakness in me for several years now. One place where perfectionism is a particular problem is in quilting. Let's face it: quilts are NEVER perfect, even when they look pretty darn close. I have decided that I love quilting enough that I am willing to overlook a certain amount of error in order to be able to enjoy the process and the product. However, the quilt that I am currently working on (see the entry below, a little way down the page) is having enough problems that it is just about outside the reaches of the acceptable margin of error. I do not think it is fixable at this point, at least fixable at a level that I can still have some pride in my work, but I can't bring myself to abandon it either. So I keep (slowly) plugging away... sluggish because I know I'm not going to be happy with it anyway.

My mom, a master quilter, keeps telling me it's fine and that it will never be perfect, but I'm not really convinced on this one.

I am sure that when I am finished, many will say it is wonderful, and beautiful, and blah, blah, blah, but they will either be kindly overlooking the major skee-womp-ish-ness of the final product or will not be looking very closely. I will then have to smile and say thank you graciously while I sigh deeply inside, because no one likes it when you devalue their compliment with all kinds of, "Actually, it's horrible and I didn't want to finish it, but thanks anyway..."

Hmmm... I guess this one I'll have to keep struggling with internally for awhile. Maybe re-reading this post will help me see the foolishness in my ways. Or maybe not.

Priscilla Ahn

This is beautiful. I am not up on pop culture much at all but this is just wonderful...

Priscilla Ahn

Quilting

One thing some people may not know about me is that I LOVE quilting. Unfortunately, time and means have limited my quilting for the last few years. To make up for it, I have helped many other people work on their quilts, and many of these quilts have been successfully completed. I have taken a small amount of pride in their lovely work, but that is not the same thing as having a beautiful quilt finished yourself. Now that my thesis is completed and the diploma in hand, I have really wanted to start again but my love of expensive fabric has still been a limiting factor.

However, my desire to quilt has finally exceeded a reasonable level and this has forced me to overcome a fear that I have had. That fear is a fear of making scrap quilts. For those of you who don't know, a scrap quilt can be made with any pattern, but instead of going out and purchasing coordinating fabric, you use fabric left over from other projects and can make them as coordinating or not, as you please. I have a great fear of this, largely because I am never really confident in the coordination of such random fabric and am worried that I will go through all of the work of completing a quilt and not even like how it turns out due to the fabric selection.

As I said, my desire to quilt has forced me to overcome this fear and my mother has shared her library of scrap fabrics in order that I might once again enter the world of quilting.

So here are the fabrics that I have chosen:


And here is the pattern that I am using (it is a quilt my mom made recently):


When it is all done, I will post a picture of it for all to see. And then you can be a judge of how you feel about scrap quilts...

Hey!

Last night, Joseph and I were sitting in our room talking when Austin walked in and, with his hands on his hips, stated loudly, "Hey!" trying to get our attention. We continued talking and did not immediately acknowledge his attempts to talk with us. Growing impatient, he yelled loudly, "Hey!" Once again, we were mid-conversation and continued talking. Finally he yelled, "Hey old man!"

Wow. We're not quite sure where he learned that one. Needless to say, it stopped our conversation right away because we were laughing so hard.

Small house or long cord?

So, the other day I vacuumed my entire house without unplugging the vacuum. I never had to move the plug from the outlet and I got every nook and cranny in my house clean. As a note, the outlet it was plugged into was not in the center of the house. It was in one of the corners of the house.

Hmmm. Does that mean that I have a very small house, or a very long cord?

Birthdays!

Austin's birthday was last week and I still need to upload pictures to post, but here are a couple of pictures from my birthday yesterday. I had a great day and Joseph got me a coconut cream pie for a cake and gave me the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook for my birthday - which I have wanted for a very long time!

More graduation pictures

These pictures are from our convocation on Friday morning.

This is me and my graduate advisor:

The graduating graduate students and a couple of professors from our department:

The graduating graduate students:

Joseph and me at a reception held by the Math Education Department: