Prime Quilting

My brother loves math, especially prime numbers! This past January he turned 29. So I decided being that he is a prime number this year the perfect b-day gift would be a quilt design using only prime numbers.

A few prime factoids about this quilt:
**The quilt is 47" by 67"
**It is made up of 7 columns
**Each column has either 11 pieces of fabric...except for the middle column which has 17 pieces of fabric
**There is a total of 83 pieces of fabric that make up the design
**Each piece of fabric has one of the following dimensions:
3" x 5", 5" x 5", 5" x 7" or 7" x 7"


I used my sewing machine to quilt a zigzag stitch in a spiral pattern throughout the quilt. This was difficult, my machine is small and the thickness of the front, batting and back of the quilt proved to be tricky. I broke a few needles in the process! I've decided my machine is great for sewing the fronts of quilts and machine quilting small projects but a lap quilt or larger may have to go to a long arm quilter in the future. Well, that is if I care about how nice the stitching looks :)

Being that this is my first "contemporary art" quilt, I am glad that I did machine quilting myself. I wanted it to be 100% by me and I wanted to learn a lot in this process. And I promised my brother that the next time we're both prime numbers again (which won't be for 12 years) I'll make him another quilt, and then we'll be able to see how my skills have improved! To the left you can see my embroidery work, I titled the quilt "29" in honor of my brother's b-day. Happy Birthday Carl!

Decisions, decisions

It's been almost a week since I last drove my car. Although I feel slightly frustrated by the feeling of being home bound on the weekends, I do enjoy the fact that I live close to the grocery store, bus lines and work so even though my schedule has been a bit different I'm not terribly inconvenienced. Today when I got on the bus, there were 2 faculty members riding and one of them said to me, "We don't usually see you on the bus." No, no you do not. I may become one of those bus folk though, I rather enjoyed my bus ride this morning.

I sway between the decisions of getting rid of my car altogether and attempting to live a life without a car for a while....or spending way too much money and buying a brand new car. In reality I will probably just bring my car into the shop eventually and spend a few hundred figuring out why the steering wheel won't turn easily and why I can't get my hood open.

When I will get around to doing this is a mystery. Life is busy, and when I have free time, like the weekends all the auto shops (like everything else in town) close down. Thus is life in a small town. I have next week off, thank goodness...it will be time to figure a few things out. Like fixing the car, looking at a few houses because I'm thinking about buying again...and deliberating over how many more car issues I want to deal with and whether or not buying a new car is the way to go. Decisions, decisions...I don't always like feeling like a grownup.

New Workout Plan

Do you know what is more frustrating than a little extra body fat? Being forced into a new workout plan because of your stupid car. Yes, I have a little more body fat than I would like, and a stupid car...so I should be about 5-10 pounds lighter very soon.

Yesterday evening as I was driving home from work I discovered my steering wheel was very difficult to turn. No big deal, my car is up there in miles and I probably just need some power steering fluid. Easy enough to buy and figure out how to fill thanks to Google.

Unfortunately, as I said my car is up there in miles...and oh about 40,000 miles ago my hood release popped out of its securely held position! Oops :0 So the hood release kind of lies loose on the floor of my car...it doesn't usually get in the way, sometime when I'm braking I have to push the hood release away with my foot...but overall not to big of deal. My Dad showed me how to pop the hood open, its pretty easy really. You simply hold the limp hood release and push this metal piece away from you with a couple of fingers and presto! the hood releases.

Today, I pushed and pushed and pushed and the hood would not release. Sadly, without being able to pop the hood I'm unable to fill my power steering fluid.

I finally have a problem with my car that easily fixable by me and yet I still can't fix it because of a different problem with my car. ARGH. Thus the new workout plan. I walked to work today, and will be tomorrow as well I'm sure. Maybe indefinitely.

I suppose the combination of me stopping by the local brewery on my way home (due to my increased thirst and hunger from my walk home) plus the inevitable loss of 5-10 pounds from walking so much may culminate in a new boyfriend...hopefully one who can fix cars. I like to stay positive.