What’s Hot, What’s Not #7

Uh oh, Wednesday snuck up on me. Usually I spend some time thinking about what’s hot and what’s not in advance, but I’m really going to have to wing it this week.
What’s Hot
– Finally (almost) finishing an on-going project. I started buying vintage pillowcases a while back, and I eventually decided I wanted to make a quilt with them. A year or two later, I started the patchwork, and now, about six months after that, I’m nearly done with all the quilting and everything. In addition to the pillowcases, I also used some handkerchiefs I got at an estate sale; that’s where the little embroidery above came from.
– Clever ideas. Instead of paying $6 for a little jar of Mod Podge (and having to truck back to Michaels to do so), I got a bottle of all-purpose white glue for about $1.30 and watered it down. So I was able to make my map canvas last night, and it was ready to hang this morning. The sheen of the dried glue is just perfect; I’m really happy with how it turned out.
– Unconditionally loving cats. Forget dogs; Beany has got this down. She was a bit too full of beans this afternoon and kept messing up my carefully-laid-out quilt, so I locked her in the basement and proceeded to forget I’d done so. When I opened the door again, about an hour later, she was all, ‘Hey! You let me out! You’re the best!’ She really only gets cross with me when I’m getting ready for bed or on my way out the door; she melodramatically runs to the opposite end of the house, because she just can’t bear it. At least that’s how I choose to interpret her behavior.
– Community education. I’m super psyched about my French class, and acting starts next week (will I be any good at it? We’ll find out!). I love that I can learn stuff for not very much money. I was thinking earlier today that free education is wasted on the young, but then I realized that’s not really true at all… except in the sense that I appreciate being taught things more now than I did during those years of my life that were dedicated to getting an education.
What’s Not
– Hand tying a quilt without a thimble. I’ve never tried using a thimble, because it strikes me as fiddly and awkward, but I almost wished I could be bothered to go into the other room and get one today. There was a certain point where I decided to finish the job, even though my fingers were quite sore, because they were also a bit numb, and I knew they’d only hurt more if I stopped and started again later.
– Envy. I hate that feeling of seeing what somebody else has or is doing and thinking, ‘Why not meeeee?’ It’s sort of the same way that I despise competition. I’m happily doing my own thing over here, enjoying life; I don’t need that feeling of wanting what somebody else has. Be gone, undesirable emotion!