Safe and Sound

So why am I so nervous? I guess it's because I've heard those alarms (several times lately right outside my bedroom window), and I'm afraid of doing the wrong thing. Especially as the directions took the little guy about 5 minutes to give. At least I have an instruction booklet. It will take some courage to set it tonight. But first I have to make signs for all 3 outside doors saying, DO NOT OPEN. I may have to duct tape them shut the first day or so until we get used to it.

These are some neat things that Wilford of Wilford and Joanie and the Birmingham Quilt Show made, one set each for Sherry and me. He does wood turning for a hobby right now and hopefully as a business soon and turns out these amazing things.

I can't imagine how you can get something as delicate as those earrings out of a piece of wood!
The piece with the ribbon on it is a binding holder/winder - not sure of the official name. When you bind a quilt, you have yards and yards of a narrow strip of fabric that sometimes gets tangled and/or ends up on the floor, so what you do with this is slip the ribbon over your neck, wind the binding on the holder, and feed it into the machine in front of you. I can't wait to try this, but first I'll have to finish something.

The other piece is a little work of art in itself, but it actually has a use. It's a wooden iron. Sometimes, especially when you're hand piecing, you don't want to get up and go to the ironing board for every little seam you sew; with this little iron, you just press down each seam as you go along and it works beautifully. Or an alternative use would be to bonk cats on the head when they get too close to your needle.

This is a tentative layout of the first block of Elise's scrappy quilt. I think I do better with only 2 colors. You're supposed to just use fabrics at random, a light sewn to a dark, but I start getting too fussy and wondering if something will "go." Only the top row is sewn together. I want Elise to take a look at it first and tell me what she thinks. If you kind of lean back and squint, the bright pattern stands out a little, but is it enough contrast? I wonder if I should just use an off-white fabric for the lights and take out those busy prints. This is the look I'm aiming for, and they hardly use neutrals at all. I may have too much neutral. Opinions and criticism are welcome.

Debby and I went out for a nice lunch and (very little) shopping yesterday afternoon. We ate at Mimi's Cafe, a new restaurant at EastChase that hasn't been open long. I just now read the reviews on line, and they were pretty bad. I think only grumpy people write reviews anyway. I had citrus broiled shrimp and asparagus with red beans and andouille soup. Not bad at all. Debby had their famous chicken pot pie and a salad. She didn't mention if it was good, but she didn't complain about it either. We did notice how friendly the staff was, maybe a little disorganized once, but I can identify with that and don't mind it! We solved a lot of important problems during lunch and made the world a better place and also finalized our beach trip on the 17th. No planning really. We're just going to go with no plans and see what we get into. Both of us had had hard mornings with work stuff, so we're more than ready to get away.

I'm headed to work a little bit now, but first I have to make a phone call and complain about commas. I had an audit with 3 "comma errors" where the commas were removed. I'm not especially fast and not always accurate with every spelling, but you don't fight with me about commas. I emailed back and questioned the person, and she said the commas weren't necessary. I told her all 3 of them separated 2 complete sentences, and after a long silence, she wrote back and said, "I left them. It can go either way. We were both right." WHAT? I feel sorry for QA people because the hospitals expect perfection from us, but we have to listen to the most awful sounds coming from the doctors' mouths. The one who dictates with the piece of candy in his mouth that rattles against his teeth every time he takes a breath is going to put me over the edge one day. One female doctor just butchers drug names and other words too - instead of varicosities, she says variscosities in every physical exam, which makes me cringe every time. But we have to overlook all that and have every comma in the right place and every word spelled correctly.

End of vent. Keep repeating, "It's good to have a job. It's good to be able to work in my pajamas and no makeup."

Time to go argue those commas now. I don't look forward to it.