More interruptions

 Christmas and the sprained ankle derailed things a bit, but I made a comeback of sorts and got sucked into the Scrappy Tripalong over on Instagram. I got up to 16 blocks



And then just over a week ago this little guy happened and crafting came to a . *



Meet Ollie, who arrived a couple weeks earlier than we expected. He was a total surprise for Hazel, although not for Mat and me, as we've had been looking for a puppy and a good breeder for quite awhile. Luckily Hazel and Ollie get along very well, although she does have a tendency to treat him like a stuffed toy. The phrase "paws on the ground please Hazel" is heard several times a day, as she awkwardly totes him around from place to place, ignoring the fact he has legs and a will of his own. She'll learn though!



What I wasn't expecting was what hard work a puppy is, especially for a cat person like me, how tired I'd be, how much pee I'd have to mop up, and how house-bound I'd be. He's super-cute, tiny and really quite lovely, but damn. I simply have to trust all the dog owners who assure me that "it will get better, I promise!"

Luckily he settled into a routine fairly quickly (pugs are such laid back little creatures, or at least he is) and I've been able to get a bit of sewing on the Scrappy Tripalong done the last few nights. In fact I'm off right now to try and get the last 6 blocks sewed up into tubes and maybe cut into strips. At least I think they're the last, I'm assuming the quilt will be single bed-sized at 30 blocks because I think I'm kind of over cutting 16x2.5" strips. Unfortunately 6 of the blocks I made are slightly rectangular and I'd have to unpick them to get them right, so I have to hope I can use them down one side where it won't matter. I must have had the needle set just slightly wrong for one session.


*I can't remember which book that little joke came from, but I've loved it for years. For those people who call a '.' a period, if you call it a full stop, the sentence above makes sense.

Feeling creative again

I don't know what it is about the Christmas period but I totally lose any desire to be creative. This year it was compounded by the most disgusting hot, humid, rainy weather ever, bar none. And a sprained ankle. I actually thought sitting on the couch for hours on end with it up on pillows would be a crafting godsend, but all I did really was read and play on my phone. But the ankle is much better, so is the weather, and I got caught by this Scrappy Tripalong that started up on Instagram. I'd seen this tag pop up a few times in the last few days but didn't really twig to it until I read a couple blog posts. I thought "ahhhh...so that's what it is" and then I thought "nah, not really my thing" and then after I had a look at the hashtag album I thought "hmmm...I quite like some of these..." and then I thought "but I don't have any scraps large enough" and then about half an hour later I thought "but actually I have all those old sheets" and then an hour or so after that I thought "and they'd look pretty good, maybe I'll just have a look at them" and the next thing I knew I was cutting out vast numbers of strips and telling my husband I was making "a thing for the thing - you know". I think my brain must have been having a break at that point, but he found it amusing so now the project is "The Thing" in our house.

The Tripalong is based around the tutorial over at Quiltville, and it's super super simple. I'm not the most accurate piecer in the world but damn if my seams aren't matching and everything sits nice and flat! I'm also trying out pressing my seams to one side as per the tutorial. I usually press open but thought perhaps this would eliminate some of the bulk at the seam intersections. I guess I'd have to do one pressed open to compare but it does seem to help. I still don't like the way the seams sit though, you just can't get them as flat as you can when they're pressed open.

So here are my six blocks put together. I have strips for another 10 blocks sorted out, and probably enough strips for another 10 cut, although I may have to cut more of some colours. The trick is to have light and dark strips, and for my fabrics, also contrasting colours. I think having one bright colour per block will be essential, and also making sure there is one strip of blue. Blue really seems to stand out the most for some reason.