Dickens

The cat's name is Dickens, not after the author, but because he is a little dickens!

Beside the washer and dryer in the back hall is a cabinet with a double sink.  Under the countertop beside the cabinet is a 10" wide cubbyhole.  Dickens was attracted to that nice little hidey hole, so I put an old rug down there to make a  bed for him.  That suited me just fine, because I keep the cat confined to the back hall at night.  He's got a bed, a water dish and a kitty litter box there, all nice and snug.

While I was working on my latest quilt top yesterday afternoon, Dickens went exploring.  I heard him somewhere in the back hall, but couldn't find him.  Even peering behind the washer and dryer with a flashlight didn't reveal him, but I could still hear him somewhere in there.

I opened the cupboard, and there he was inside!  He had crawled through the 3" space between the back of the cupboard and wall, found the hole in the back wall of the cupboard where the faucets come in and the drain goes out, and climbed into the cupboard that way.  When I opened the doors there he was with his head is the bag of cat food!  He didn't come out without a struggle!

I wrestled the bag away from him and poured the cat food into a plastic pail with a lid.  I think it's safe now.  He had fun with the empty bag.

Because I worked hard on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I had a day off on Thursday, and that meant, as usual, a day of sewing.

This is the beginning of a lap quilt.  I bought some remnants on Saturday, came home and started cutting and sewing.

But WHAT WAS I THINKING? I cut them into 1-1/2" strips and started sewing them together.  If I'd stopped to think I would have cut wider strips.  That would mean half as much sewing for a slightly larger quilt top.  But did you ever notice how, when you ask yourself that question, the answer usually is: I wasn't  thinking.

Exactly what I used to do when I was still in Junior High School, first making my own clothes.  I would take the bus downtown, buy some material for a skirt or blouse, come home all fired up and start cutting.  By the time Mom came home from her full-time secretarial job I was in a pretty hopeless bind, and she had to figure out an ingenious rescue--which she did.

Well, yesterday morning I was getting sick of all these little 3" blocks, so I thought I'd throw in a few, maybe 7 or 9, six inch blocks of another pattern.  The first one I made is the smaller one of the left in the picture above--turned out to be just 5".  That won't fit.  Second try is on the right: 6" for most of it, and about 1/2" short in the middle of four sides.

There just wasn't enough material to go on experimenting, and no one came to rescue me, so I went back to my original plan: all the 3" squares sewed together in rows, the area shown on the bottom of this photo. This is a basket weave pattern.  With a four inch border on all sides it will finish out at 47" x 59", which is plenty big for a lap quilt.