Quilt Hell

I found this on Craftster this morning, and it seemed rather apropos.

Now, I love my machine dearly, and while it's not quite posessed, we're not exactly on speaking terms right now. Read on...

The Large Surprise that I've been mentioning here and there is a quilt. King sized. Yesterday, I got the back pieced together, made my quilt top - batting - backing sandwich, pinned and basted the hell out of it, and then tried to start quilting on my trusty little Kenmore.

Well.

I pushed and shoved and folded and squished and twisted and contorted and managed to quilt the center square in the rather simple pattern I've chosen. I figured if I could quilt the center block, I could quilt the whole thing, right? I gleefully extricated the quilt from my machine and brought it over to a table to inspect it.

First, the stitch length was WAY wrong...short here, long there...I figure that's a result of all the manipulating I had to do to quilt it. That alone I might have been able to live with. But...my wonderful machine got GREASE on my beautiful quilt!!

Long story short, it looks like it will come out. But, I have decided that machine quilting it is too much of a hassle and thusly I will be hand quilting the entire thing. I'm nuts, I know. But I've gotten a handful of squares done (out of 99 :-/), and while my fingers are majorly sore, it looks really nice. Vintage without that primitive/country look that I dislike so.

I am itching to post pics!! Alas, it's not up to me...but I hope it's soon. I am getting impatient. ;)

I'm still here...

...just busy as heck.

I haven't had much time to craft at all, and the things I have been crafting are top-secret. For now. :)

Here's a life update, so you don't think I'm sitting around twiddling my thumbs.
- Went on my first business trip this week... to scenic Bloomington, Illinois. I'm not a huge fan of flying, but it was overall a great trip, and it shows that very good things are in the works at my job.
- Ben is helping me build a new computer! Like, from parts! I am in awe of how cool it is to know how to build a custom PC. We spent a few weeks picking out the individual components, then ordered them en masse and spent a weekend putting it together. Unfortunately, the first motherboard we ordered was DOA, so it and the RAM needed to be exchanged for new ones. Everything is put together now, and he's coming down soon to bring it here. My new PC is going to be blazing! And I'm going to have Vista! Expect a lot more cool pictures, because Photoshop will run a thousand times better on Ben's amazing creation.
- I've lost 7 pounds so far on my exercise and diet regimen. :-D
- I'm signing up to do the Danskin triathalon in September. This is a little scary for me, because I'm not exactly 'athletic', but I think it's a great goal. And if I get in rockin' shape along the way, all the better! Bathing suit season is closing in...