running

Ooops.

Huh.  Somehow, it’s been a month since I last posted.  I do have four posts sitting as drafts, and I will get to posting them.  I promise.

It’s been an eventful month.  One of my best friends from Germany came to visit for a week, which was so much fun.  We did some touristing during the week – I worked on the move while we did the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of Natural History.  American History was a lot of fun with her – Europe does American history in broad, broad strokes, so it was really exciting to talk to her about the details, and how history has influenced culture and current events here.  I also took a few hours to take her up to the Hill and introduce her to a staffer friend of mine.  He was able to give us a great tour, including a fantastic extra stop at the Speaker’s Balcony!  As many times as I’ve done the Hill tour, that was the first time I got to do that!  Her last day here, M and I took her up to the National Cathedral, and then over to the Zoo.  We were expecting some massive crowds, especially when we saw that they didn’t have the pandas out in the yard (that pavilion is TINY), but they were doing really great crowd control and the pandas were more active than we’ve ever seen them.  I got some fantastic pictures.

Oh, and M and I were pretty cute too.

mandi

 

After the zoo, M and I took her out to Wolftrap to see the National Symphony Orchestra perform with Sarah Chang.  Immediate reviews on twitter were pretty glowing of Sarah Chang’s performance, but I have to be super honest, we weren’t that impressed.  Don’t get me wrong, she was good.  But there wasn’t anything terribly special about her playing ability.  All in all, it was a great week, and I was definitely sad to have to take her to the airport Sunday morning.  I DID manage to also get her addicted to embroidery while she was here, and I sent her off with a bunch of scraps, floss, needles, a bag to put it all in, and a mini quilt for her to embroider.  Because it’s not a vacation at my house unless you also sew. 😉

Beyond that, it’s just been busy.  Work has been crazy hectic, M started a new job and has been stressed out beyond belief, I started marathon training, and I’ve also been trying to stay on top of swaps AND also put together a travel set for BFF.

BFF found out last month that she’s going to be doing her PhD at Max Planck in Germany!  It’s SUCH a big deal, and I am SO proud of her.  I mean, I love Germany.  It is an amazing place, and I’m so happy for her to get to know the country.  I’m also so so proud of her for pushing forward on the grad school dreams.  Max Planck is a huge deal.  I can’t get over it.  BUT, I’m also heartbroken that she’s moving halfway around the world.  We don’t see each other very often – she lives in Boston, but there’s something to be said for the ability to call her in the middle of the night, or the ability to jump on a plane and be with her in an hour and a half – it’s not cheap, but $300 here or there isn’t the end of the world at the drop of a hat.  This is the end of an era, and I’m crossing my fingers that she gets WhatsApp the second she gets a cell phone over there so I can at least text her.  Because otherwise, I might lose my mind.

Obviously, since she’s leaving, I had to make her a travel set, and it needed to include every bag/wallet she might ever need.  So, I started with a Weekender Bag, and then promptly lost my damn mind.  A Wherever You Go Wallet, an Open Wide pouch in each size, a Jane Market Bag, a Manicure Kit, a Travel Kit, a Document Wallet, a Luggage Tag, a Wet Bag, a Bobby Pin Pouch, a Hair Tie Pouch, a Jewelry Clutch, a Toothpaste/Toothbrush Bag, and (theoretically) cord keepers.

Not all of these things are done yet, but I’m making decent progress.  Not great progress for flying to Boston for our last hurrah in less than 24 hours, but I don’t need to sleep tonight!

I promise to have more pictures once I get home from Boston.  In the meantime, I’m going to go grab a drink and head home to sew!

Sewing, Planning, and Running

I opted to skip the Freshly Pieced link-up this week.  I’ve been fairly horrible about taking pictures and not sharing them on instagram, so I didn’t see the point in re-documenting it here.

It’s been a kind of terrible week.  We got some news last weekend that I’m still trying to digest, and I’m definitely not okay with it.  But it seems that there’s nothing we can do.  It’s been killing me, and I took a day or so to sit around and feel sorry for myself, and I’ve been trying to turn the rest of the horrible feelings into sewjo, which has worked kind of well.  Usually, when bad things happen, I run.  I run out the anger and the frustration and the sadness and I get to go home without the ability to feel anything else.  Running usually helps give me some power back when I feel like everything is out of my control, but this is the one time it’s not going to work.  Everything that’s happened has honestly brought into focus the fact that we/I have no control, that we can do everything right and it still won’t matter, and there’s nothing that we can do to change it.  I want to run, I want to fight, but I feel so defeated.  And that will be the end of the vague-blogging.

That said, I decided to take the week off of running and just let myself exist and sew, which seems to be what I need.  It’s been unusually satisfying to create this week, and it seems that my soul is crying out to make beautiful things from little pieces.  Because I don’t have enough projects on my plate, I think I’m going to start working on a postage-stamp scrap vomit quilt.  We’ll see when that gets started, since I have a ton of other stuff that HAS to be done first.  You can see my WIPs on the WIP page by clicking on the pink menu button.

In the past week, I’ve finished the second handmade item for my SPD Fairy Tale Swap partner, made fantastic progress on the mini quilt for that, finished the Alison Glass Angel Mini and thread catcher, accomplished my June DCMQG Bee block, and added about 15 projects to my plate.  I need to do individual posts for the Alison Glass packages I sent, as well as for DCMQG, so those are coming.

I’m also on the hunt for my next planner.  For the past 6 months, I’ve been working out of a Kate Spade agenda (large, gold dots.)  I love it.  I love how it’s organized, I love the font, I love all the extra space for notes to keep track of my swaps, I love the paper, and I especially love that it’s spiral bound, but with a hard cover over the spiral.  Each month is color coded with the important stuff.  Last minute stuff tends to get tossed in in regular black ink when I’m sitting at my desk at work, but theoretically, each month is a different color.  What I don’t love about it is how the hard cover has worn.  My dots are faded, it looks dirty, and it’s not.  So, for the past few weeks, I’ve been researching hard.  And I’ve come to a few conclusions.  Some of these conclusions might insult some of you, and I’m sorry, but this is where I am.

1. I do not understand people who need 7 leatherbound planners.  If you need this many planners for your life, you are doing it wrong.

2. I do not understand the purpose of spending $60-75 on a planner and then using it as a scrapbook.  If you really want to scrapbook your life, there are gorgeous albums for that.

3. Why, why, WHY is it so hard to find a planner with a covered spiral at roughly the same size as the Kate Spade?

4. WHY does KS not make vinyl covers for her planners?  I mean, yeah, it’s $36 for the large one and that’s not breaking the bank, but I HATE that in 3 months I don’t want to show off my gorgeous KS planner because the dots have started to rub off.

5. WHY ARE DISPOSABLE PLANNERS SO EXPENSIVE?!

6. There are not enough real-people review blog posts about planners out there.  I actually also feel this way about fashion, but that’s another blog post entirely.

I’m honestly down to one of two options.  I’m either going to re-order a KS planner, although I’m incredibly sad that the fun quotes each month are gone for 2016, and then cover it with clear contact paper to prevent some of that wear and tear.  OR, I’m going to suck it the fuck up and order an Emily Ley Simplified Planner in Pineapple when they are available in September.  I’m not super okay with either option, but I feel like there’s not much choice.  Thanks, universe.

And, finally, I’m in the process of trying really hard to reorganize my sewing space.  I’ve been using these fantastic drawers for my fabric, but I’m having a hard time keeping everything folded when I’m constantly rifling through them to find what I need.  And my blue and neutral drawers are about to explode.  They are stuffed full.  In addition, my notions are a disaster and I can’t ever find anything, and I don’t have a good storage option for my UFQs/WiPs.  I’m getting really frustrated with the mess, and I don’t know how to make it better.  I’m also really tired of having to cut on the floor or move my sewing machine off to the side of my table, which usually involves moving eight million other things in order to get enough space to move my machine and cut.  Basically, my space is a mess and I can’t function anymore.  I need some serious help.  Suggestions would be much appreciated.  We don’t have a ton of space here – M and I share a small bedroom as his office/my sewing space.  So, adding a table in the middle of the room isn’t an option (although I feel like that’s where I might be.)  Help.  Someone help me.