The top of the quilt is done! I'll post pictures eventually, but my camera has pretty much bitten the dust, and Neale can't find the charger for his. This week is spring break. So far, I've been working in the yard. This is the time of year I want to be outside. Projects for the week: I want to put The Niece's quilt together and start the machine quilting. I'm going to put in a garden, and work on killing the vinca.

I wasn't going to plant anything this year, but then I read an article in Garden Gate about growing veggies in a bed that's 4' square, and it was quite a bit of food, so I'm going to do it. I found 50+ bricks in the backyard, half buried in the flower bed by the back fence. I've got a 42x46" area staked out in the middle of the yard. The plan is to dig up the grass and loosen the soil, then build up a bed with the bricks. All I'll need at Home Depot is a big bag of garden soil, maybe some compost, and plants. Right now, I've got pea, lettuce, and radish seeds, so I'll start with those, and then in a month or so, I'll put in a couple of tomato plants, a bell pepper, and maybe a zuccini. I think a lot of my previous garden issue has been that I started too big, I tried to do too much, so I'm going to scale it way back this year. That, and the bed I was using didn't have enough light. I don't know when the previous owners last planted a garden, but now, there isn't enough sunlight getting to that bed, so I planted mint there, and I'm hoping it takes the bed over.

I've gotten most of the vinca out of the bed in front, and I started on the bed in back yesterday. The best way seems to be to cut it down to the ground, without leaving any clippings lying around, because they'll root, and then spray it with either Round Up or white vinegar, tack ground cloth over it, and leave it for a few weeks. I'm going to try the vinegar first in the front, because #1, I don't like chemicals, and #2, it will make the soil unsuitable for planting anything else for months. I'm going to try the vinegar for a few weeks, and if it doesn't work, I'll get some Round Up.

I have a niece! She's beautiful. Soon, very soon, she will have a quilt. I am almost finished with the top, I have one more row to add, then I have to put it all together. I'm machine-piecing the border and the back, and I'm machine quilting the center. I think I want to do just a little hand quilting on the borders. Basically, a bee in each corner and a couple of looping lines through the edge. I bet I can finish by the end of Spring Break.

I'm working on an amigurumi octopus. I want to knit bunnies for Easter.

For Lent, I am giving up beer, coffee, and baking desserts. Now, this is the spirit of the last one: I am going to cut back on sweets by promising that until Easter, I won't make a big batch of cookies, or a cake or pie to have lying around the house to snack on. Not that I do this all that often, but in the spirit of Lenten sacrifice, I'm going to refrain. If I remember correctly, feast days are exempt, and Sundays are considered feast days, also biscuits aren't dessert, so we can still have our standard weekend breakfast of biscuits and eggs. I did make some shortbread for my sister last night, because she's apparently been having a rough time of it with the baby, and, although I did lick the spoon, I'm not eating any of the finished product. I think God will understand.

I am pretty much at the halfway point piecing the top of Abby's quilt. I promise, I'll post pictures, but I want to wait until it's done, or at least, until the top is done. Friday, I went to the Stitchin' Post. That was so awesome! Really nice material. I got two pieces, 1 1/2 yards each, to make a vanne, a Provencal-style whole cloth quilt. I need to find a solid color for the border, but I have the center panels, for when I'm ready to start. I also scoped out the Dr. Seuss fabric for the next baby quilt I'm going to make. This is for Neale's friend Dave and his wife Claire and their baby. Normally, I don't make quilts for people who aren't related to me, but Dave and Neale go WAY back, and he asked. I think I'm going to make it a little narrower than crib size, so I can use one piece of the Dr. Seuss fabric for the backing. That will still make it 40 inches by 60.

I don't know why I'm on such a quilting kick lately, but I keep seeing things I want to make. I'll probably start a knitting project, too, just to have something more portable to do. Probably either a bunny or a ball.

I think I've found a long-term career goal, too. I think I want to start my own school. Really, what I want to do is come up with the philosophy, and then be allowed to teach, but we'll see. I think a hybrid Montessori school is the way to go. There are some great things about Montessori, and really, mainstream education is starting to integrate the big ones: multi-age classrooms, and organizing classrooms into centers, so students have some time to move around the room and work independently. I'd even use some of the Montessori materials, particularly for math and the Time Line of Life, because I think that's just an amazing work. However, there are a lot of things about Montessori that are stuck. The reading curriculum, in particular, could use some re-working. Putting such a huge emphasis on phonics doesn't really work with English, anyway, especially since I knew so many children who learned words from environmental print before they mastered enough letters to build words phonetically, and they didn't have the patience to labor over phonics. Not that phonics isn't important, it is, but one thing I learned from the literacy classes I took is that English can't be taught exclusively with phonics or whole-language.

What I have in mind is a school where students would be in multi-age classrooms, set up in centers, with one teacher per grade level, and possibly and aid. Teachers would give lessons to groups of students, and in between times, students would have assignments to complete at centers. A lot of the morning would be reading/writing workshop, and students would do math, science, language arts, and social studies every day, but there would be more independent work, and more opportunities for students to learn to manage their time. It would follow the American Pediatric Association's guidelines for activity by having half an hour of P.E. every day and two 15-minute recesses. I have no idea how, or if I could make this happen, but I feel like I have a direction now.

My snowday accomplishments so far have been: I finished reading "21 Balloons" and I finished the sweater! It would have been really nice to have had the completed sweater to wear this week, since it's a bamboo/wool blend, but maybe I'll get to wear it once or twice before next year. Regardless, I plan to wear the hell out of that sweater next winter!

I'm making progress on the baby quilt, but once I figured out I had about 4 inches to go to finish the sleeve on my sweater, I concentrated on that, and now I'm done!

Of course, I'm going to try to finish the quilt pretty quickly, but I need a new knitting project. I've still got fingerless gloves to work on. I've been wanting to try toys, though. I got the supplies to knit little cotton bunnies, I may start a bunny.

AHHHHH! Overload!!!

I'm working on Abby's quilt. I just got a really cute idea. I'm going to machine quilt the centers, but I'm thinking now, I may hand-quilt the border. I was going to applique bees onto the corner blocks, because the middle is all hexagons, I've kind of got the whole beehive/honeycomb thing going. Now, though, I think I'm going to quilt bees into the corner blocks and do a couple of loopy lines through the border, like the path of a flying bee, and spell out "Abby" in cursive in the middle. I think that would be cool.

Went to Barnes & Noble this afternoon, and a copy of "Sew Beautiful" decided it needed to come home with me. I was helpless to resist the children in white clothes with pin tucks and embroidery and lace insertion. Then, when I got it home and started looking at it, there's a whole little set for a baby done in boutis, which is the Marseilles-style corded quilting that I am currently in love with. The baby bonnet pattern is free, and there's information to order the patterns for the jacket, booties, mittens, petasson (lap cover) and baby bottle cover. There are also kits. Can I just say, I want.

I think I want to try a wholecloth linen quilt for Kingdom A&S. I may not make it, but I think I want to do a four-panel Tristan quilt-style hanging. I just need to find a story and figure out how to tell it in four panels. I'm kind of thinking a unicorn story. Unicorn with a maiden, then the unicorn being hunted, then captured in a fence, then the unicorn free again. I can use the climbing rose pattern from the Tristan quilt around the edges, and separate the panels with fleurs-de-lis and seashells. Maybe. First, though, I have baby projects and a sweater to finish.

Candlelight Camp is over. The event itself went really smoothly, and sort of assuaged my SCA burnout a little. It was really nice to see people pull together to make the event happen. That tendency has been sadly lacking.

So now, I have about half a dozen projects that I want to do, like now. I have some beautiful royal blue wool that was going to be an overdress, but I didn't get to make it, but it would have been way too warm to wear anyway. I now have at least 3 new outfits I want to make. Plus, I want to make a quilt for myself. I want to make a wholecloth one, I'm thinking for Kingdom A&S. This will require more research. I still really want to make a quilted bodice and skirt, which will also require more research, and probably more hours of work than is sane.

I'm kind of thinking I want to make myself a quilt based on Japanese designs. There are a couple of patterns of hexagons and triangles in Japanese Quilt Blocks that I like. One is called "bamboo basket" and the other is a turtle variation. I'm thinking of doing one of those on a large scale, and incorporate sashiko-style designs in the corners and along the border. I may end up working on two simultaneously. Should be interesting. Provided I can keep tendinitis at bay.

The holidays are over. I didn't quite finish the fingerless gloves I was working on. I am almost finished with the sweater, I just have one more sleeve. I started cutting out pieces for my niece's baby quilt. Then, I hurt my right arm. It appears to be tendinitis, so I've been resting my arm. Hopefully, I'll be able to get back to things soon.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about a feast. No, I don't want to cook one. I just haven't seen any feasts that have impressed me lately, and I was thinking about what I'd do. I'm thinking an early spring feast, French/Italian.

first course (because "remove" isn't period)
Green Poree - a light soup of chard, herbs, and broth
meatballs
bread with butter

second course
roast chicken
turnips with cheese
apple custard tart

third course
lamb casserole - chunks of lamb slow-cooked in broth
cheese gnocchi
asparagus with saffron

fourth course
torta bianca - cheesecake
wafers
confits - candied fennel seeds