Herding Cats

You've noticed how quiet I've been lately. I knew this would happen. I began my math course last night, and of course philosophy is still ongoing, so there's a pile of time out of my life right there. Not to mention now that DH and the girls are back in the house, I am obligated to stomp around the house with a cleaning cloth in hand, wiping unidentifiable substances off of walls, doors, fridges and floors, muttering and cursing under my breath while doing so. Part of me mourns the beauty of the self-cleaning house I had for those solitary six months...

And then there's the meals to prepare, trying to corral the girls into helping in some capacity with clean-up afterwards, even though the exercise seems as futile and pointless as herding cats. I think more energy is expended in hounding everyone to do their chores, but I live in perpetual hope of having something I say stick in their heads.... so I keep trying. I am nothing if not stubborn.

So my life has been tipped into a blender set to "frappe". Part of me really gets off on the crazy pace, and another part of me wants to take the first part of me out to the back pasture and put a bullet through it. Conflicted, am I. (I was going to blame this sentence structure on Kate at first, but then I realized it's more Yoda than Gollum. Carry on.)

Crafty update... I have about 15 inches on the Fluffy Alpaca Scarf... I am switching colours as the mood strikes me and throwing in random stripy goodness... it is still amusing despite the relative monotony of the brioche stitch. I think a large part of the appeal is the heavenly texture of the KnitPicks Andean Treasure alpaca that it's being knit from... nothing that excruciatingly soft can get annoying. (I say that now, but ask me again when I have 3 feet of that sucker knit up. My tune may be different.)

I am done with the machine sewing on the duvet cover... the binding is attached as is one side of the snap tape closure. I have about 8 hours of hand-stitching left to do to sew the binding to the back, and the reverse side of the snap tape. Good thing Survivor starts tonight and Grey's Anatomy next week! That be prime stitching time, friends. (They had last year's season finale for Grey's on tonight, and I was crying just as hard as I did the first time around. Somehow, knowing what's all going to happen makes it worse, not better.)

In closing, here's a close-up of the free-motion quilting I did on the duvet cover. It gives you a bit of an idea of the texture that the quilting added to the lovely paisley pattern.