Six seams to go!

Here are the 7 strips!



I'll need to do a little bit of trimming (probably on the kitchen table?) before seaming these guys together. And I'm getting awfully close to needing to figure out batting and whether it will be possible to quilt this.

Regarding quilting, I'm sort of torn. The intense quilting (and the oddly stiff, oddly puffy result) is so much work, difficult on the machine that I have, and really not that attractive to me. YET, people (on the internet, my source of all information) really do seem so happy with and proud of the results. What to do? The cheat answer is to just use knotted embroidery thread to hold everything together. Compelling, but I would like to say that I've quilted something. Another thought is to just sew the exterior of some of the squares -- easy, not fussy, but not particularly impressive, and I'm concerned that I'll like the pristine pieced top more than the half-heartedly quilted one. I'm just not a fan of prissy things, and too much of the quilted things I see fall in that camp. It's like knitted things from the 80s -- no appeal. Can anyone offer a good guide to (machine) quilting that's a little bit more modern?

In other news, Larry gets into WA tomorrow. I'm so excited. And I think I need one of these:



It has been SO GRAY here for the last two weeks, and I (never the up-and-at-em type, even under the best of circumstances) am running out of ideas for actually waking up and getting to work at a respectable hour. It's funny, the culture out here makes a lot out of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and espresso as a mood disorder treatment during the low-light months, but I don't find the grey season(s) depressing. The moss and the clouds really are beautiful, and I love the January full-day glimpses of mountains and blue sky. It's just very, very difficult to get up in the mornings. The cat option makes me laugh. Too bad Kevin's allergic.