my first quilt

I just finished (as in two weekends ago) my first quilt! [1]  Finally, today I mailed it off to my sister-in-law (via her mother, since they live in Chile and California, respectively) for her baby that's due next month.  Aside from the propensity of the project to completely consume our living room, it was a blast and I look forward to gettin' me some more quiltin' love.  ...At some future point.  For now, the semester:me::quilt:living room.

[1] Not including the group quilts we made in the YW program growing up, for which I tied yarn through pre-sandwiched quilts.

first and second

The earthquake earlier this week was strange enough, but now there's a hurricane on the way.  It's the END OF DAYS.  Ironically or not, the Christian-type station I've been listening to on the radio has been all about relaxing and being prepared physically and has totally abstained from any kind of apocalyptic rhetoric, which I find refreshing.  I'm trying to finish up the sewing-machine-dependent part of my quilt so that in the event that the power goes out, I'll have something to do (hand-finishing the edges).  When it comes to other emergency preparations, I'm not worried: our camping/backpacking gear will cover us easily for a week; light, cooking, and water included.  N says that there's a 5% chance that anything bad will actually happen; where he pulled that number from, I have no idea.  Frankly, I'm a little excited for the storm.

takin' it in

My mom went shopping with my Grandma recently (mom swore that gma hadn't renovated her wardrobe for something like twenty years) and in retelling the happenings to me, mom said that Grandma had small shoulders and in pointing this out to her, Grandma had responded, "Oh, I've always had small shoulders, I'm used to taking them in." (Or something to that effect.)

Since I have a pretty standard body, or at least one that doesn't need much tailoring with modern fashions, this kind of blew my mind; my grandma had altered her clothing all her life, and not in the I-pay-someone-to-do-it-for-me kind of way.  She's so awesome.

Alright, now for a tangent: N and I got called to be ordinance workers at the LDS Manhattan Temple this weekend and we need all-white attire for the job.  I was fine since I got temple clothes a bit ago, but N needed to piece together his outfit.  Sometime last year we picked up a white dress shirt for him at Costco, but it turned out to be a little big around the waist and thus it puffed awkwardly in the back when it was tucked in.

Having recently heard the above Grandma story and faced with the need for a white dress shirt, I decided to try to take in N's Costco shirt.  It was the most complicated alteration I've ever done and it didn't go over too badly. (Most of my past stuff has just been hemming which is pretty much straight lines.)

Here are the gory details via photo documentation, including a very messy interior/back (what do you call the side that goes towards the body?). And don't tell me it's not messy, 'cause I cherrypicked the nicest part...you don't wanna see the bad parts and you're never gunna have to, so there.  It fits him nicely, which is the important part.