It all started with making the bed. Confession time: I’m not a bed-maker. I never have been. Why make the bed when you’re just going to get in it later and mess it up? ITMan doesn’t care one way or the other–he’s not a bed-maker either–so we get along fine. When we get out of bed, we just pull up the covers a bit, and go on about the day. Shadow loves that especially in winter since he can go burrow under the covers and sleep when he gets cold during the day, and Patches sometimes makes his bed there as well on top of the feather duvets.

Aside from the futility of making a bed in the morning just so you can get in it and mess it all up again in the evening, the other problem with making the bed on a daily basis for the last few years has been the featherbed that we have. If you don’t fluff the blasted thing daily, you have two person-shaped valleys in it, which just look ridiculous when you make the bed over them. There’s no way I can fluff the king-size featherbed by myself so that it will look right once it’s made, and we’re not able to afford a housekeeper type person to do that for me, so it just doesn’t get fluffed unless we change the sheets–and then it looks good until we get in the bed and make those valleys. My OCD won’t let me bother with making the bed if it’s going to look ridiculous anyway, hence no daily bed making.

I do occasionally think about the fact that the bedroom looks so much nicer if the bed is made though. I decided that getting to the root of the problem was in order. The root of it was that featherbed. If that wasn’t there, I’d be more likely to make the bed every day, and then the bedroom would look all pretty. I purchased a new mattress cover with some hoity-toity sounding TheraGel Isotonic thingy in it and ditched the featherbed. Yay!! Now I could make the bed, right?

Yes, I could make the bed, BUT I was missing one of the decorative pillow shams. It has been in my sewing room awaiting a repair since ITMan got a bit overzealous removing a pillow from it two years ago. Yes, I’m a terrible procrastinator when it comes to mending things and beside that, I wasn’t making the bed anyway, remember? Didn’t need the sham if I wasn’t making the bed! So, I visited with my Bernina for a bit to repair the sham, and I also added some velcro tape to both shams to keep them closed in the back better. I’ve only been meaning to do that since I bought those shams 10+ years ago.

Okay, so it was just a pillow sham, and it was about two feet of actual stitching all together. I even had thoughts in my head when I sat down to sew like “Why in the world didn’t I put the feed dogs down when I was free-motion quilting the last time I used this thing??” and “I obviously can’t remember how to do any of this stuff…” and I even had to take out the first thing I did and do it again because the thread wasn’t really the right color. Despite all of that, it was lovely to be sitting at the machine with hands on some fabric, doing something constructive–even if it was just mending. I recalled something my mother said to me recently when we were chatting about LittleOne taking riding lessons: “Horses are good for the soul.” I think the same could be said of sewing, and I need to get back to it more often.

The background is 2½” x 3½”, the same size as an Artist Trading Card—not large enough to be called a quilt, so it’s officially an Inchie Quiltling. There may be more coming…we’ll see…

Looking back on my design wall solutions in the past, I didn’t really want to repeat either of them. The Portable Design Wall was an utter failure for me when I bought it, and still doesn’t get used for the same reasons (and I can’t bring myself to put it up on ebay and try to fob it off on someone else since it’s just that bad).

In our Matchstick Manor house in Germany, I put up Block Butler on one wall in the studio, but honestly, I’m really glad that wasn’t my house (for many reasons, not just this one of course) because when I took it down as we were preparing to move out before the house fell down around us, it left an awful sticky residue on the wall. Eeeeewwww. And yes, I tested it before putting it up, but seriously, I’d have had to “test” it for a month in high summer and a month in the dead of winter to really see that it was going to leave sticky stuff on the wall. There were major temperature extremes in that room so maybe that affected the performance and removability of the Block Butler product, so take all that for what it’s worth. Still though, I’m not taking that chance with my freshly painted, brand new walls, thank you very much.

So, what to do? I decided on a semi-permanent installation, since it looks as though I’ll be in this front room of the house for quite some time and I’m not concerned about portability at all. I wanted flannel that was actually stuck to the wall somehow so it stayed firmly in place, but I still didn’t want to actually stick something to the wall with adhesive or anything like that. I decided on flannel covered foam core, and I purchased foam core with one adhesive coated side so that the flannel would stay in place well. You can purchase foam core and have it cut to size if needed at the craft store frame department. The craft store also had the flannel and duct tape. Yes, duct tape, the kind that says Repair, Decorate, Color Code on the package, though who decorates with duct tape? Here’s the easy job, step by step:

Call ahead to the craft store to see what size adhesive coated foam core they have. Measure your wall space, and do a little math (only a little!) to figure out how many pieces you need, and if you’ll need to have some of them cut down or in half to fill the space. I used two full 32″ x 40″ sheets plus one more sheet cut exactly in half. Calculate how much flannel you will need to cover each piece, including at least 2″ extra all the way around for wrapping to the back side of the foam core. Add an extra 1/4 to 1/2 yard for fudge factor. I decided on the cheapo flannel and didn’t prewash it, since I thought things would stick to it better that way.

Note that you can tape all of the foam core together to make one big piece instead of covering them all individually, but I didn’t do it that way. I wanted to be able to change the configuration of the design wall or split it in half or whatever later, so the smaller pieces worked better for me. Also, if you tape the foam core together and then cover it, it will be more difficult to work with and you might need to put a seam in your flannel to make it big enough.

Supplies:

Adhesive coated foam core (purchase enough pieces to make your design wall the desired size)
Flannel to cover one side of foam core, leaving at least 2″ all the way around to wrap to the back side (you can cut it a bit bigger so you have plenty of room and don’t run short on the edges)
Duct tape (comes in a huge variety of colors now apparently, though I’m boring and just bought white )
Fabric scissors
Utility scissors for tape
Small nails with 1/8″ heads (choose a type of nail that’s appropriate for your wall material)
Goo Gone

Cut the flannel large enough so that you have at least 2″ all the way around the foam core piece. Press the flannel with a steam iron to remove wrinkles. Decide which side you’ll use as the right side of your flannel. They should be about the same, but one side may have a line of fading or discoloration from being folded on the bolt in the store, and you’ll want to use that as the wrong side. Lay the flannel on a large flat surface, with the right side down and smooth out any wrinkles so it’s nice and flat. If your table isn’t large enough, use the floor! With the adhesive, it’s ever so much easier to do this if your work surface is larger than the foam core.

Remove the adhesive liner from the foam core and discard (okay, you recycling people can keep it, IF you can figure out something to do with it in the next two days and report back here; otherwise, toss it or you’re just a packrat like me! ). Carefully position the foam core straight in the center of the fabric. I placed the foam core on its edge about 2″ in from the edge of the fabric and then laid it down flat. It’s important to position this right the first time, because you really don’t want to have to pull the fabric off of the adhesive to reposition it! Press gently on the foam core to stick it to the fabric, then flip the whole thing over and smooth the fabric well across the adhesive side of the foam core. Trim the fabric at the edges, leaving 2″ outside the edge of the foam core.

Turn the foam core over again, so that the fabric side is down. Working with one edge at a time, fold in the fabric corners, and use squares of duct tape to secure the fabric to the back of the foam core as shown. (I know that it’s kind of hard to see the tape in these pictures–this is what I get for being boring, and buying white tape! Let me know in the comments if it’s totally impossible to see, and I’ll edit these pics to outline the tape or something. )

Fold the fabric over to the back of the foam core along the edge, tucking the extra fabric in at the corners and securing with squares of duct tape as shown. Be as neat as possible at the corners so as not to have too many layers of fabric built up there.

Repeat for the opposite edge of the foam core, and then for the two remaining edges. You can hit the corners with an iron to flatten them a bit more, but obviously keep the iron away from the tape!

Cover all of the foam core pieces in the same manner. Use nails to mount the foam core on the wall, positioning the pieces edge to edge so that there are no spaces in between the pieces.

Use the Goo Gone to clean the sticky gunk off of the utility scissors after cutting all that duct tape. Ick!

Do’s and Don’ts

(And btw, I have no idea whether the apostrophes are correct in the above; I Googled it and then wished I hadn’t, so I’m going with that whether right or wrong!)

Do realize that you can use whatever color of flannel that you like (and duct tape for that matter–go wild with orange and black tiger stripes you rebel!). Some folks are recommending grey for a design wall these days because it’s truly neutral where black and white are not. Whatever. I’ve been using white so long that I thought grey would make me nuts, so I bought white.

Do get the right sorts of nails–or screws if necessary–for your wall. I foresee a trip to the hardware store in my future, because I didn’t really have the right thing, but I’m impatient and wanted to get this done. It will do for now, but I really need to get some sheetrock nails so that they don’t pop back out of the wall due to the slight curvature of the foam core in spots.

Do look for a small roll of duct tape. No, I’m not convinced they exist, but it’s worth trying! My roll was 60 yards when new, and probably still has 59 yards on it…and will now be cluttering up my house for the next 20+ years.

Do consider using a separate set of pins if you ever pin things to the foam core. With that adhesive layer in there, you might have sticky pins which will be totally annoying for regular usage. And if you do pin, try not to go all the way through to the wall!

Don’t use your fabric scissors on the duct tape. Bad news. Move the fabric scissors away from your work area during the duct tape phase to keep yourself from grabbing them by mistake!

Don’t get a man involved in this. Honestly, resist the urge. He’ll just muck up the process, and this project is not that big a deal! Do it while he’s a work, and if you really need to call him to ask him where the hammer is or something, lie and say the neighbor wants to borrow it.

How about you? What are you using for a design wall these days? If you try this one, let me know how it works for you!

As soon as I was partially settled in the new house though, I started thinking about that table, and looking around to see what was available these days. Of course, the first thing I found that I was really excited about was a bit bittersweet.

Awesome table, but when I called the local Horn of America dealer to check on pricing, the conversation went something like this:

Me: Can you tell me the price on the Horn MultiLift 6000 please?
Dealer: Sure, just a sec. Hmm, yes, the MSRP on that is five thousand—something something something (she said exactly what the MSRP was, but I quit listening at the five thousand part).
Me: Oh, okay. (rather weakly…)
Dealer: However, we always sell for 25% off the MSRP so that would actually be three thousand, eight hundred—something something. (yeah, I quit listening again…).
Me: Ah, hmmm.
Dealer: But you know, I know someone who is selling an older but similar model, and she’s right here, just a sec.

Not holding out much hope that this would end well considering the prices that I’d half heard thus far, nevertheless, I stayed on the phone to see what would happen. Another person took the phone, and says she had a MultiLift 5000, but needs to sell it to make room for a storage cabinet, and only wants to make enough on the table to pay for the storage cabinet–which she was going to get a discount on from the dealer anyway because she works there! Not only that, the owner of the store would have two of his employees bring the table to my home and bring it inside and not even charge me to do it! I was stunned!

I’m not even going to tell you the price she quoted for the used table, because I’d like to remain friends with all of you, and I’m afraid you’ll hate me if I spill my guts about that one. Suffice it to say that this table was the steal of the decade for me! And I LOVE it! It’s perfect for what I do. You can visit the Horn website via the link on the picture above to see all the great features of this table, but here are my faves:

Machine quilting on this baby is sooooo nice. I can adjust the height with the touch of a button, and I can raise it up really high if I need to for rotary cutting or drawing. I have a clear insert for the hole where the machine sits, so I’ll be purchasing some lights to put under there to make a lightbox for tracing quilting or applique designs. Putting the machine down inside the table is really easy, and then I can use the entire flat table top to baste a quilt if needed. And all of this wonderfulness sits in front of a big window so I can see outside and have good natural lighting.

Of course, the cats love it too:

They don’t love it so much when it moves up and down though! At least there’s room for both of them if they want to lay all over the table while I quilt. I’m off to do some free motion machine quilting! Happy weekend everyone!

Augusta is an interesting place. So far, we really like it here, high pollen counts and high temperatures notwithstanding. We’re not actually in Augusta, but in a smaller town just outside of it. It’s a nice area, and most things I need or want to do are within a few minutes from the house, and I very quickly embraced the idea that anything over ten miles away is “too far” and even five miles is pushing it. The Augusta area is big enough to have a nice mall with a Dillard’s and a Macy’s (which is almost “too far” it must be said), but not big enough for a Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus, and I’m okay with that. If it was that big, it would be too big like Atlanta, and I don’t think I’d like living there. Augusta seems just right.

Our house is an interesting place. For that matter, so is home ownership. You see, I’ve never owned a house before, and it still feels a bit…strange…somehow. It’s all ours, and we can do what we like with it, and we don’t have to put up with strange landlords or worry about what issues or faults might become evident as time goes on that perhaps weren’t apparent when we moved in or that the landlords didn’t want to tell us about. The house itself is wonderful, and I’m still amazed that I found it. I think I fall in love with it a little more as each week passes. We love the neighborhood, all three streets of it, and our neighbors are nice and quiet and nearly invisible, just the way we like to be. Every once in a while though, I still stop and think about how weird it is to have our own house, and maybe have a few roots starting to set themselves into the ground finally.

My studio is an interesting place. It’s on the small side, but so much more doable than the last one. There’s a lovely window that looks out over the front lawn, and lets the good light in. I can’t fit everything I need into it at the moment, so I have quilting stuff spread all over the house, but eventually that may change. I may move into the room over the garage when GuitarGirl moves out (which could happen sooner than we thought it might), but then again, I’m not sure I’ll like it up there either. It’s a huge room since it covers the entire three-car garage and then some, with a lovely window seat on the side, its own built-in surround sound system, separate HVAC unit, and there’s a full bathroom and a big walk-in closet up there as well. Sounds perfect right?

It might be, except for those slanted ceilings under the roof…I know, I know, I’ve probably reached a new level of picky here. It’s just that it’s a bit difficult to hang quilts up there, which is what I do like about the smaller room downstairs. I can hang my favorite quilts in my workspace which I think is really important as an artist. Perhaps I can come up with some alternative, like room dividers to hang the quilts and a design wall on or some such thing. We’ll see what happens…

My website has been an interesting place lately, and probably will continue to be so for the time being. If anyone has stopped by—though why would you, when there’s been nothing to stop by for, I know—you may have noticed a bit of weirdness going on with the layout. This is what happens when you shoot yourself in the foot ahem, you update WordPress which then requires an update to the ridiculously complicated theme set (which is really two different ridiculously complicated themes combined into one, and then duplicated three times over for a total of four different colorways). Yes, I did it to myself. Sometimes my grand ideas don’t stand the test of time too well.

Anyway, it’s still not pixel perfect and 100% fully functional like it was before the update, and I really need to just start over from scratch and rebuild the entire thing (eeeeewwwww…), but that’s on the back burner for now. I’m really trying to ignore the fact that it’s not perfect and just move on for the moment (but I’m sure you can tell that I’m starting to twitch about that over here…). It is what it is, and if you’re looking for something between now and whenever it gets “done” again, let me know and I’ll hunt it up for you.

My work is in an interesting place. I didn’t really mean to have a hiatus of over a year after I got back from the big teaching trip to the States, and I’m quite sure I used up any allotted time that might have been covered by the “I’m burned out” excuse months ago, but obviously I needed the break! I have a hard time with balance it seems, and for many, many years, it was “all quilting, all the time” and then suddenly it was “no quilting”, and instead it was “all Warcraft, all the time.” I do love that game and I really have enjoyed playing it with my family, but I am going to try for a little balance in my life for a change.

Now that we’re fairly settled with things mostly unpacked and as normal and quiet as they’re likely to get, I’ve been working in my new studio. The ideas and creativity are flowing again, beautiful things are being produced, and fun is being had. I’m not sure where I’m going with any of it, but it promises to be an interesting journey! “May you live in interesting times” indeed. Stay tuned!

Despite all those fears, I still wanted to be back in the States, I just wasn’t looking forward to getting there and the whole moving process, and it was easier to stay here of course. We shouldn’t have stayed so long really, but some things seem to have worked out for the better, like the location that we’re going to and the housing market right now being a buyers market.

Even so, there are just so many things about living here that I’m tired of, and have been for years (some of which, in all fairness to Germany, has to do with the US Army and all it’s idiocy). It’s a nice place to visit, but I don’t want to live in Germany any longer. I won’t go into the laundry list of stuff that annoys me on a daily basis here; suffice it to say that I’ve groused enough over the years about all of this stuff that ITMan is now saying “Okay, we’re headed back to the States finally. It’s what you’ve wanted for years, so I don’t want to hear any complaints from you when we get there.” Hmfph.

Okay, I’m not sure I can do “no complaints” at all. I’ve said for years that there were maybe three things that I would miss about Germany when we finally are back in the States: the Autobahn, the windows and the rolladen, and … um … yeah, I guess that’s it. Of those, the only thing that will elicit actual complaints is missing the Autobahn. Even after just that one week in Georgia for house hunting, I can already tell that it’s going to be painful to drive at 55-75 on the highway instead of 95-105. On the highway between Atlanta and Augusta, there’s nothing there for heaven’s sake, and it seems to take forever to get from one to the other.

I kept my car in Germany for as long as possible, only giving it up to the shipper yesterday, two days before I’m flying out myself. That way I could have a few more trips on the Autobahn in it. I wasn’t in the States when this commercial came out from Ford, but I saw it on the Internet and I still love it. So appropriate, even though I don’t have a Shelby:

ITMan is sure that I’ll be the first one to get a speeding ticket, and though I’ll try to be good, he’s probably right. I’m not placing any bets on him being wrong, for sure! I have that Sammy Hagar song in my head: “I can’t drive 55″! I probably need to buy a different car that’s not so muscle/sports car-ish or something. Maybe that would help.

Even disregarding the whole speed limit issue, driving on American highways is going to make me nuts. Once you’ve driven in Germany with the “slow traffic stays right, only use the left lane to pass” laws—that people actually follow—you are forever changed. You spend all your time bopping back and forth between lanes getting out of the way of the guy behind who is trying to crawl in your trunk, getting strange looks because you’re doin’ it right, while you are surprised and baffled by those folks who pass on the right constantly at high speeds doin’ it wrong. I’m just sayin’. It’s a totally different way of driving in Germany than it is in the US, and it makes more sense and seems safer actually, despite the whole “no speed limit on the Autobahn” thing.

So there it is, my one complaint—or soon-to-be complaint—that I have about not living in Germany. It’s all about the Autobahn. I’m headed for Georgia tomorrow! Over and out…

Yes, I know, this doesn’t look much different from the last time I checked in with all of you readers oh, so many months ago (if any of you are still here after months of radio silence). But you’ll just have to trust me that it did look different in the interim because I did organize and arrange my studio so that I could use it, though it was never really “home.” How could it be, when it was a sardine can compared to what I had before? Sure, there was a very small bit of quilting going on in the last few months, but my heart wasn’t in it for various reasons. One of the biggest reasons was that I had a hard time finding anything when I needed it, and I’d get irritated when creativity stopped because I couldn’t find whatever it was I needed at the time, and I’d turn the lights off and head down the stairs to do something else. There’s only so much organization you can do in a sardine can with low slanted ceilings…

Anyway, enough about the past few months and onward to the exciting part! We are finally moving back to the United States! Honestly, it’s well past the time that we should have been headed for the next chapter of our lives. ITMan has a new job in Augusta, Georgia, and we’ll be there in less than a month. Things happen fast when they finally happen, especially when the Army is involved.

I was in Augusta a couple of weeks ago, and I bought a fabulous house. I had a HUGE amount of help with the house hunting; Dawn met me in Atlanta, and we drove to Augusta for a week of house hunting and shopping, eating out and getting to know the Augusta area. It’s a good thing Dawn lives fairly close to Georgia; I shudder to think about how this would have gone had she not been there for me. I’ve never bought a house in my life, and ITMan hasn’t bought one in 25+ years, so we’re clueless! Dawn knows how to do this stuff since she’s moved with the military many more times than I have. And for her to take a week out of her life to come and help me buy a house is just way above and beyond the call of duty for a friend, even a really good one. Dawn is the most awesome friend in the world!

I also had the help of two of the most fabulous realtors in the Augusta area, Drew and Christine May. When we got the word that ITMan had the job, I started looking at real estate in Augusta, and I spent a day and a half searching the listings at Drew and Christine’s site, which I randomly clicked on from a Google search for “Augusta Real Estate”. I finally decided to see who was behind this website, so I read Christine’s About page, and saw that she was German! Now, I believe in signs, and I took this as a sign that I should call and talk to Christine about helping us find a new home in Augusta. Truly, that was the best decision I could have made!

Christine’s husband Drew drove Dawn and I all over to look at houses in the Evans, Martinez and Grovetown areas near Augusta for eighteen hours over two entire days. Christine was in the office directing us by phone to even more houses when we found an area that I liked. Drew gave me a priceless crash course in house hunting, construction and finishing styles, and the Augusta area in general. The end of the second day led us to a small quiet neighborhood that I really liked, but the house wasn’t quite perfect. We drove around the neighborhood a bit more, and saw another house for sale, so we stopped in to take a look. After much looking and discussion, emails and phone calls with ITMan back in Germany, and lots of thinking overnight, we decided that was the one!

I have lots of pictures of the house (thanks to Drew for taking about 150 pictures over two days!), but for now, I’ll tease you with this one:

It’s up on a hill, and by the time I see it again, it won’t be yellow. The builder is painting the outside for us, since I didn’t like the yellow! I think the rocking chairs come with the house, and I know that this double swing in the back does, since it’s the builder’s trademark to put one in the yard of every house he builds.

There have been more of those signs I believe in throughout this whole process. The builder lives four houses down from our house, and he owns a Shelby Mustang! He even offered to let me drive it into the driveway of the house, because I was a little concerned about the slope of the driveway where it meets the street and how it would be with our cars. Since he had his Shelby up and down the driveway during construction of the house, I figured I didn’t really need to test it personally.

When I went to Verizon Wireless to buy a cell phone (since taking my Blackberry to the States was just going to be painful, and T-Mobile’s coverage in the Augusta area isn’t great anyway), the young man who helped me with all of the various issues we had with getting phones—ITMan and GuitarGirl not there to pick out phones, need a family plan but only the bare minimum right now since we won’t be there for a month, and how the heck does all of this stuff work in the States anyway?— was truly a gem. We finally got down to the contract part, and he asked me my birth date. Who would have ever guessed that his birthday would be the same day as mine, March 22? Another sign, I tell ya’!

I can’t wait to get on the ground over there, though the hard part is still coming before I can get there. We’re flying in three separate stages: first LittleOne and I will go, then the cats will fly (THAT’s the part that worries me the most!) and I’ll pick them up in Atlanta, then ITMan and GuitarGirl will fly last and I’ll pick them up in Augusta. Our furniture and household goods will take 45 to 60 days to get there, which will be interesting of course. Stay tuned for more pictures when I get a chance, but I’ll sign off for now, and say “See you on the other side!”

The new house is truly a gem. We’re a bit hesitant to be very enthusiastic about it all just yet considering that we thought Matchstick Manor was pretty great when we moved in there and it was only after living there for a month or so that its faults, some minor and some not, started to become apparent and it went steadily down the smelly drain from there. It’s hard not to be happy with the new place though since it’s got so many nice extras and it’s built so well, so we just keep adding “so far” to all of our glowing compliments about it. I think we’re subconsciously waiting to discover some awful flaw that will tarnish our shiny new find.

The differences between this house and the last one are both amazing and huge. This is the kind of house we should have been living in all these years, but we couldn’t find one that we could afford to rent. I could go on for a few posts about it all, but the thing that’s uppermost in my mind today is the awesome separate studio I was supposed to have in the small house. Yep, you read that correctly: supposed to have. My shiny new studio has morphed into a much smaller attic type room in the main house that currently is so full of boxes that it’s going to be difficult to unpack and get organized. Easy come, easy go.

It’s not the perfect solution by any means, but here’s the thought process: GuitarGirl is in college now and has a job, and of course wants her own apartment. We’re willing to help out financially as much as we can while she is in school, but why on earth should we spend another $700-1000 a month to put her in an apartment closer to her job and her classes when there is a perfectly good separate apartment here on our property that we’re already paying for?

It’s not that I hadn’t thought about giving her the little house before, but it always felt like I was losing out on both ends: I’d have less studio space and I’d still be at her beck and call for transportation so where’s the benefit for me? It finally occurred to me about three weeks before the move that GuitarGirl will be 18 at the end of April, and at that point I’m no longer required to be her taxi. It’s called public transportation folks, and it seems pretty reliable here in Germany from what I can tell (and no, I don’t know that from personal experience, but the majority of the population uses it at some point so I figure it’s all pretty good).

As I said, it’s not the perfect solution, but I’m willing to go for pretty dang close at the moment. And just so I don’t erase any lingering doubts that some of you may still have that I’m a pretty mean and horrible mother, I’ll confine myself to saying that it’s well past time for that kid to be out of my house. I’m much more relaxed in my own home now than I have been in the last ten years. I traded beautiful studio space for peace and quiet and cleanliness in my own home. Good trade. Very good trade.

Predictably, GuitarGirl hates the house and the situation, but it’s all she’s going to get right now and she really just doesn’t realize how good she has it. Dishwasher in the kitchen, washer and dryer in the house, free rent, internet, satellite TV, and telephone, and so far all we’re asking her to pay for is power (though I may add the water it she gets excessive with it), and she will buy her own food. We’ll see how much her tickets are to ride the public transportation to and from work and classes are before we decide who is paying for that. Yeah, and she thinks she’s abused. *sigh* And oh, by the way, we’re “just going to have to” get her a car and pay for driving lessons and insurance, since we’re so far away from everything she does. Rrriiight. I’m going to run right out and do that.

So here’s the current status: the computers are set up so we can all play WoW and LittleOne can do her schoolwork (though ITMan, LittleOne and I have our desks in one end of the living room instead of the studio now due to space constraints), the kitchen is unpacked so we can have decent meals (I’ll let you imagine which of those two things got done first! —more on the fabulous kitchen later), the cats have decided that as long as mom is here and the food comes on time, it’s all good and they can relax in their new home, the furniture in the main parts of the house is mostly where it belongs, and Guitar girl is in her own house whether she likes it or not. Unfortunately we have a garage half full of “stuff” and boxes that needs to find a home in the house or in our limited storage area before ITMan can park his truck in there, and my new studio looks like this:

Well, that’s the part I can get to easily anyway, because it’s right at the top of these interesting stairs:

Yeah, those are going to take some getting used to. There’s a smaller space on the other side of the stairs too, but it’s full of boxes… *sigh* It’s going to be a busy month or two. But hey, my taxes are finally done and ready to file on Monday after I get one more answer from my friendly investment guy, and not a moment too soon. Life is good!

• My gamer side. Yeah, like you couldn’t tell from my absence what I’ve been doing for the last two months! The addiction to World of Warcraft rages on. My Night Elf Hunter promptly took a back seat to my Death Knight at level 55, and I’m working on the slow journey to level 80 with the Death Knight. And along the way, I’ve made a few more characters, so I have my own small case of alt-itis. I don’t have the veritable army of alts that my mother has, but still, if I make more than two more new characters, I’ll have to make them on a new server since I can’t have more than ten on the server that I play on now. Then they’ll be the poor relations, since there won’t be any of my other characters over there on the other server to share gold. Gold makes it all so much easier…big surprise…
• My family more often, both the immediate members and the ones far away, as we play WoW together. I see my youngest daughter and husband more, since we all play in my studio together on separate computers. Sometimes we adventure together in-game, or help each other kill the difficult monsters. I talk to my mother, aunt and cousin more, though it must be noted that the conversations are mostly game related and take place in the in-game chat window!
• The taxes. Ugh. Big UGH. But it’s not like you can just not do them. (Though at the moment, it’s tempting to make a try for the “not doing them” technique, and see how long I can stay under the radar on that.) And I have all that business stuff to make it 150% more complicated this year too. Yes, I’m whining. It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to!
• My chauffeur side. I spend way too much time driving lately. GuitarGirl has graduated from high school, gotten a new job at the Commissary and started college classes, so my taxi duties have quadrupled (or maybe quintupled) in the last few weeks. Not that I don’t enjoy driving my car as I’m still in love with everything about it even though it’s over three years old. It’s just an awesomeness that I’ll never get over probably. In fact it’s the only thing that makes the taxi duties tolerable at all, but I still would rather pass on it and never leave my house unless I felt like it and there was good shopping on the other end of the journey, tyvm. On top of all that, it’s a bit freaky to have a child in college. I’m just sayin’.

But not in touch with:

• The pre-move insanity. Yes, we’re finally getting out of Matchstick Manor and moving to The Estates at the end of March. Pre-move insanity commencing any day now, if I can motivate myself to make organization a priority. Now where did my motivation disappear to anyway? Oh, yeah, it went the way of the dodo bird when I started playing WoW, and I’m okay with that. I was uber organized for the last move and it didn’t seem to matter one whit anyway; all of our stuff got where it was going either damaged or not regardless of anything I did or didn’t do as far as I could tell, and I was a crazy person for two months before the move. Maybe this time it’ll be the same, but without the craziness?
• My quilter side. Another “like you couldn’t tell” thing. It’s difficult to write about quilting if you’re not quilting if you see what I mean. “It is what it is”, in the immortal words of…well…whoever. I’ll quilt again, but not until I’m in my shiny new studio and the post-move craziness has calmed down. Or maybe not until I get past my WoW addiction, and it’s even odds as to which will happen first. Besides, WoW is soooo much cheaper than quilting, let me tell you, and considering what this move is costing us ($12K+), that right there is a huge bonus to the “not quilting right now” status.

There is a small amount of quilty news, so I guess it could be said that I’ve gotten in touch with you, dear readers (assuming that there is more than one person still reading after this descent into WoW addiction ):

I did get an email from Bonnie McCaffery yesterday, and she’s put the video that we filmed at Quilt Market in October on her website in the VidCasts section. The Inchie Quilts VidCast is really awesome. Bonnie did such a great job making me feel comfortable during our interview, and obviously the post-production on the video was well done too! You can see most of the quilts from the Inchie Quilts book, and there’s a bit of discussion about the design and construction process of each one. Check it out and let Bonnie know if you enjoy the video!

I sent Accessorize Me—with Inchies! off to the AQS Lancaster show yesterday. The quilts will be on display at the Lancaster County Convention Center and Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square complex and the Liberty Place Conference Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, March 24 – 27, 2010. For more information about the show, visit the AQS site. Do let me know if you go to the show!

Toodles for now! Though it’s Tuesday—usually maintenance day for WoW when I spend time doing maintenance and running scans on my own computers because the servers are down—Blizzard is only doing rolling restarts on all the servers, which means 15 minutes of downtime instead of 8 hours. So I’m off to play WoW before the daily taxi run. Yay!