Back to Work

I'm home from my travels and working on projects. The green lace dress is coming along beautifully. I have a few more hand stitches to take in the lace overdress and am starting on the underdress. The scallop is all sewed on and looks like it was born there. My goal is to have nothing but hand sewing left by tonight. Which begs the question "what the H E Double Hockey Sticks are you doing blogging"? What can I say, I'm a procrastinator.

I ordered the silk charmeuse for the underdress from a fabric store in Denver. I called and asked specifically "is it SILK"? Yes, I was told. Okay, DF needs to show their employees the difference between silk and 100% cheap polyester. This stuff drapes about as well as gunnysacking. But there's nothing to do about it now except be grateful it's under the lace. And, when I was pressing it to get it ready for the cutting table, my iron spit at it. Guess what? It left black dye on my ironing board. So I had to hand wash it and give it a good soak to get the excess dye out of it. It spent the night in my shower getting dry. Ordering fabric online is not something I do often as I'm a very tactile person and need to touch. The times I have done it the results have been pretty good. But this experience has me doubting whether I'll ever do it again. The real pisser is that I called to confirm it was silk and got bad information. Lesson learned? Doubt it.

All that said, the lace part of the dress is looking gorgeous. And I'm going to put this computer on the desk and get to work right now! But first you have to see a picture of Lily Grace in her University of Saskatchewan Bunny Hug. She is so hugable in it. She'w wearing my hat but she has such a huge head it almost fits her!

New Project Fails

Oh, I never change. My new "Julie and Julia" type project is pretty much a failure. I did drag out all my unfinished projects and make a list of them. I then took apart a lot of the unfinished knitting projects because I didn't like them or was so stuck that I couldn't imagine moving forward. The sewing projects are a little more complicated because you can't simply unsew them and roll the fabric back onto the bolt. But there are several that just don't appeal to me in the least. Grandma style dress pants for example. The only reason to finish some of these projects would be to donate them to a shelter or some such. So that begs the question, do I want to spend time working on dead end projects when I could be working on my quilt or any of the multitude of things I want to dig my teeth into? With my horrendous time management skills, I think not. So back to the closet they go. I had a photo of all my projects piled on my work table but I can't find it. Probably for the best.

I am currently working on this dress for the Respite Care Holiday Ball. It's gorgeous. The fabric is a fabulous french lace (Alencon for you fabric buffs) its a dark green re-embroidered with an even darker green. The underdress is a black silk charmeuse. Unfortunately I sewed a dart in the lace on the wrong side of the fabric and I'm having a heck of a time getting it out. Curses to thread that matches too well. The sun is shining today so hopefully I'll be able to see the threads good enough to get it undone. The past two days have been snowy and overcast. If I can't see them today I'm going to have to get Jill over here to be my "ripper". (Update: Sun = Vision = stitches out. yeah!) I'm trying to get the lace part of the dress finished before Oct 5th so I can take it with me on my Thelma & Louise trip. All the scallops need to be sewn back on by hand. There's about 300 inches of scalloped edge on this dress so I figure a month should be long enough to get it all done. I still don't know what I'm going to do for that strategically placed bauble. You can rest assured it won't be a giant peony! Maybe a neon flashing arrow pointing down. Whatever I decide on, it will have to be low profile and subtle.

Have I mentioned that I've been hiking the Colorado Trail this summer? Wow, what an endeavor. By Oct 2nd I will have done 303 of the 485 miles. There are 7 of us doing it and we're called "The Magnificent Seven" or "M7's" for short. I'm the youngest and the oldest is 68. If you want to have your Burly Mountain Woman ego challenged, go hiking with some 60+ year olds. These women rock! Mary Ellen is our fearless leader and has done all the work getting us organized. Marilyn did the trail about 10 years ago so she's our sage. Weezie keeps the whole thing FUN, Pat is trying to single handedly fertilize the National Forests, Sherrie is our scribe and Sue is the negotiator. Me? Well, I have the best damned bruise so far. I was trying to run down a 3 mile section that was..... downhill. It's less painful to run than walk so I decided to get in a tempo run. I was doing great until about 200 yards from the trail head. Then, of course, I caught the toe I'm in the habit of catching and went flying. I landed on my arm and it left one helluva bruise. Even two weeks later it's still many lovely shades of purple and yellow as you can see.

LILY UPDATE

My granddaughter loves me. I get the most beautiful gummy smile whenever she looks at me. This girl is no fool. She's knows a happy grammy if a gifty grammy. She's growing way too fast and is so interactive these days. She a fabulous maker of bubbles and loves to give you the raspberries. We drove all the way to Utah and back in a 3 day span and she was perfect. She is trying so hard to talk. Sometimes when you're talking to her she's just staring at your face and is concentrating so hard. Then she starts trying to imitate you. It's just amazing to watch.

I'm a Failure as a GrandmotherAND My New Project

Oh woe is me. For the last week or so, Lily cries pretty much everytime she looks at me. This doesn't bode well for Jill. How can I be the go-to babysitter if I make the baby cry just by showing up? I'm trying really hard not to take it personally but I have to admit it's challenging the new softer kinder me.

I invoked this softer kinder me when Lily was born. (There's a good chance a lot of you probably haven't noticed this paradigm shift in my personality) Her entry into our family brought actual tears to my eyes that I was unable to squelch or explain! I know that Nescafe commericals and cars honking in the tunnel can reduce me to tears for reasons I can't really get into in this forum, but actual life events don't usually reduce me to a blubbering tearful idiot. So now we have a situation where the very person responsible for bringing about this softer kinder me is the same person challenging its' very existence. What are we going to do about that? Well, it just so happens I have a solution to help take my mind of the self pity that is beginning to create a sad cloud over my head.

A NEW PROJECT!

It's perhaps not so much a new project, as it is closure on a large number of ongoing projects. I arbitrarily pick Bob's birthday as the day all my UFO'S (UnFinished ObjectS) will be finished. Included in that list are going to be some as yet unstarted projects that have to be done in the interim. What better solution is there for bolstering the drooping self confidence of a failing grammy than sewing and knitting all winter? Yes, let us be clear. This is JUST my knitting and sewing projects. And before you start getting all up in my business about this not being a challenging enough project, come visit my loft. I have a sufficient number of unfinished objects to keep a medium sized sweat shop in work for several months. Never mind that most of them ground to a halt because I was stuck. I don't know who writes those f**k*** knitting patterns but they're clearly not left handed or visual learners. More on this later. I'm sure it's going to be much much more.

Every worthwhile project needs a plan in order to succeed so I guess the first step is for me to make a list of said UFO's. Then I'll need to priortize and set reasonable goals for each with the ultimate goal of 100% completion prior to my deadline of April 22th. (Ha, I didn't even have to look that up all you people who think I don't know when Bob's birthday is!) That said, my first dealine is going to be getting the list put together by noon tomorrow. Actually, let's make that 6pm because I have to go to a thing tomorrow morning. Can't be failing before we even start now can we?

I'm a Grandmother!!!

Yesterday my life changed. Jill gave birth to Lilian Grace Benbow aka Lily Grace. I had no idea a grandchild could steal your heart so completely. My friends had warned me but I thought they were all on baby crack or something. Turns out they were understating what transpires, most likely because it is just so hard to verbalize without sounding like you've lost your grip on reality.

Lily Grace was born by C-Section on May 13th. Jill and Dillon haven't gotten much sleep since then and Jill is still a bit woozy. She's banned everyone from visiting today so she can recover and it's probably a wise decision on her part. She may as well get as much rest as she can while she's got a nursing staff to take care of things. Sucks for me because all I want to do is rock that beautiful little girl. I suppose I'll get lots of opportunities in the future but that isn't making today any easier.

Bob and Tyler drove up from Denver yesterday afternoon so they could meet our new girl. Everyone got a chance to hold her and make cooing noises in her face. She slept through the whole thing and had to be nudged awake so she could have her dinner. So far, she's a great sleeper and doesn't react too much to noises around her. Of course, she hasn't heard Moly barking yet. Poor Moly knows somethings up but she can't quite figure it out. She's staying here with us and kept us awake most of the night with her crying. She's seems to think she's been abandoned and isn't too happy about it. Little does she know what's in store for her. In her confusion, she's taken to wearing one of Lily's little hats in the hope that it will help somehow.

So begins a new chapter in our lives. Stay tuned for more updates.