Weekend in progress, with home improvement

First, here’s the finished quilt top. I can’t believe I finished it. My motivation was to get it out of the dining room for M’s party:

I’m pretty happy with it.

Apparently now I have to go get the batting and a backing for it, sew the backing together, make a sandwich and then baste it together and then, either by machine or by hand, quilt it. I think then I put the edging on.

I’m thinking about a red and white (or sort of a cranberry and white) toile for the back. That seems to look okay, based on the tiny piece I have.

So that’s good.

We had M’s birthday party, which went well. 8 kids came over (surprise!) — 3 of them had taken M to the movies, the other 5 came while they were out. They ate pizza and cake and hung around and played music and apples to apples. Two slept overnight, and were still here at 10:30 the night after (by which point I was ready to kill them). But it was a success. N made the cake, M’s friend SB made the frosting, I frosted it, and N and I decorated it. I think the action figures added a lot — we had Poseidon, a roman soldier, a pirate and a viking.

Yesterday, which was Sunday, my brother came over so I could help him make some bolsters for the garden show. He had this very odd basketball fabric (by which I mean, it looked like the surface of a basketball.) It was cool, and his garden is going to be quite something — sacred geometry and outdoor beds with fireplaces — it’s going to be amazing. These shows are always this huge stress for him, but this year it seems like he’s just doing it because he really likes doing it. I’m not sure he ever gets much business from it (although maybe he does), but he really likes having this place to stage some elaborate thing, and really I think that’s as important a reason as any.

Talk to me in a month when he’s completely overwrought and hasn’t won a prize and has fought with his boyfriend and his contractor and my sister, and has spent all his money.

So –

N had been cleaning her room (a larger undertaking than you’d guess) and she plotted out all her pieces of furniture and placed them all around a scale model of her room, and she concluded that she really did have room for a foldout couch (and a hammock chair — more later). So we went to the futon store, and bought her the least expensive model, which still looks pretty nice, and brought it home and put it together, and her room does now look pretty okay. Its like she’s finally moving in, 6 months before she moves out. She has a fairly large room — it faces on the street, and extends the width of the street, with two big windows onto the street. We painted it a pretty salmon pink color, which is pretty, but possibly a little overwhelming. So now there’s a couch, and she’s finally started putting stuff up on the walls (and the pink looks a lot better around the edges of things rather than in vast expanses). Her friend W came over and figured out to turn the stereo bookcase diagonally in the corner. It looks great. It looks, in fact, like a dorm room. A nicer dorm room than the one she’ll have, since she doesn’t have to share it with anyone.

And I managed to fend off the hammock chair, for now.

Okay. And now it’s quiet, although people will soon wake up, and Lucy the cat is lying here on the table (not allowed!) looking at me.

I’m nearly through with Great Expectations. What a great book — somehow I’ve never read it. N has to write a 6 page mystery story — too bad she’s never read it, because it’s a good one. M’s been waiting for me to finish, because she wants to talk about Estella, but I think it’s Abel Magwitch who’s more interesting. Convicts and convicts and convicts.

All right.

I’ve also done every piece of laundry in the entire house, and yet, as I look around, I see still more.

Hmph.

Today, I think, I will run errands. I’ve got things to pick up all over town.

Okay, then.

Happy Monday.