Take THAT, huge retailers bent on taking over the World!

Step One:

Notice that you seem to be experiencing a pillowcase deficit in your home.

Step Two:

Stop in at a Big Box Store (a.k.a.: Ugh) the next time you are in town to see what they are offering.

Step Three:

Walk over to the linen department, find what you are looking for and hunt down the price tag.

Step Four:

Pick your jaw up off the floor.

(SERIOUSLY?  $40 for two pillowcases?  COTTON pillowcases? SINCE WHEN???)

Step Five:

Turn around and storm out of the store, muttering "No, no, no, no, no, no.  NO.  Just no." under your breath.

Step Six:

Drive home, thanking Heaven the entire way that your mother/grandmother/aunt/the internet taught you how to sew, and find some old flat sheets in the linen closet that you are currently not using - preferably the ones you bought at that garage sale for $1 each.

Step Seven:

Iron them.

Step Eight:

Using an older pillowcase as a template, cut out 8 rectangular pillow-sized pieces, match them into pairs (with right sides facing), sew three sides of each pair together, hem the openings and pop them right-side-out.

Step Nine:

Do a little victory shimmy, à la football touchdown booty shake, and sing "Oh no, you are NOT gettin' my money, SUCKAS!"

Step Ten:

Take a photo and blog about it, just because.

The Quilting Fairies

Dudes, I have no idea how it happened.

Or when.

Or who did it (quilting fairies? gnomes? elves?).

But the quilt top is done:

(I know, those two last strips at the head of the bed weren't attached to the rest when I took this photo; I've since sewed the whole thing together, but the light was gone, so this is the photo you're getting.  Also, please ignore the deplorably un-finished state of our home.  It's a work in progress.  Those floors are going to get painted this summer and hopefully, I will get off my arse and put the trim back up around the windows at some point this decade.)

The quilt is made entirely of scraps of fabric from my husband's old button-down work shirts, sheets, remnants from my stash and other little odds and sods.  I used a technique called "foundation piecing", which I learned from Denyse Schmidt's book "Quilts".  That means that the quilt top is made up of two layers of fabric and has a wonderful, sturdy, weighty feeling to it.  I was inspired by our winter landscape:

I recently learned that my local yarn mill actually has a long-arm quilting machine and they've tentatively agreed to quilt this sucker up for me, which means I won't have to spend 40 years trying to get it done with my little machine.  I may have to do some sweet-talking to convince Hazel to do it for me, but I'm down wit' dat.

Ok, Wood.  You win.  I'm keeping it.

So, apparently, there are other things in life besides knitting.

I have finished the Hemlock Ring Blanket for my grandma:

This thing took the concept of blocking to a whole new level.  I didn't think I would ever get the blocking done.  And I know I didn't do a great job with the edges, but I couldn't add any more pins BECAUSE I DIDN'T HAVE ANY MORE!

The blocking of this wiped me out of straight pins.

And it also represented the last of the w.i.p.'s I had going.  I found myself at a loss.  What to do?  I am waiting for my order of KnitPicks needles to arrive so that I can start Ruth and Kenny's socks and my new pullover.  Obviously, they are still in transit.

So, I whined and moped for about 2 minutes and then pulled out the quilt.  Yes, that quilt:

 For the past day and a half, I have been sewing, listening to podcasts, skulking around on Ravelry and sewing.  Which has been a little tricky today, given the shortage of pins around here.  I have exactly 2.5 new strips of quilt to show for it, which is a little pitiful.  Except that I refuse to do the whole craft-guilt thing.

The fact that it took me a whole day to get all the dishes done and I still haven't lifted a finger to vacuum the place?  Yes, that I will allow myself to feel a little guilty about.