One Step at a Time

I own four pairs of Brooks Glycerin running shoes.

I own approximately eighteen pairs of Balega No Show athletic socks at nine dollars a pop.

I own five running skirts.

A gallon bottle of blue Gatorade is a constant in our refrigerator.

Laundry day routinely includes a load of dirty, sweaty, stinky technical fiber apparel.

So, if it dresses like a runner, drinks like a runner, and does the laundry of a runner, it must be...

A non-runner.

I know, I'm confused too.  See, I own all of the spendy stuff as a result of two years of participation in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure.  And the Gatorade and stinky, sweaty laundry belong to my husband.

He's a runner.  

I'm not.  I never have been.  Up until last fall I'd never run an entire mile without stopping.  Ever.  Even through years of gym class and the silly presidential fitness award.  I'd manage to make it around four laps of the track, but never without walking at least some of it, and I often came in last, barely making it in the 12 minutes allowed.

I've often told my runner husband that I don't understand running.  I think heading out and walking 60 miles is normal, but running 26.2 is certifiably crazy.  I just don't get it.  I watch him run and I watch him sweat, I watch him stretch and I watch him look uncomfortable some times.  It just doesn't make sense to me.

I may not understand running, but I am in love with a runner, and because of that, I'm going to strive to figure it out.

I've started the Couch to 5K program. I'm 3 workouts in, and Tuesday I'll do the first of three workouts in week two.  Week one had me running for 60 seconds followed by a 90 second walk, eight times, plus a warm up and cool down.

I walked in the door after my first workout and said "I didn't die!"  I was pleasantly surprised the morning after, as I wasn't sore and I wasn't dreading the next workout.

I covered two miles on day one, two miles on day two with a little extra running thrown in, and by workout three I ended up with an extra tenth of a mile or so.  I know a tenth of a mile doesn't seem like a lot, but knowing that I was moving a little faster overall was good to know.

While I'm still not a runner, I'm taking baby steps that direction and someday I'll be able to walk out the front door, put a bike helmet on j, toss e in the jogging stroller, and go for a run with my running husband.

I can't wait.

An Apple for Teacher

Last Wednesday was j's last day of kindergarten.  While I've known since, well, September that this day was coming, it snuck up on me some how.  I must have been too busy digging my way out from under a mountain of laundry to look at a calendar which is why I walked in the door from work last Friday in a panic.  While technically I had started j's teacher's gift, I was much, much, much closer to the start than I was to the finish.

Oh, did I mention that this gift that I needed to finish was a quilt?  Now not a queen size or anything, but a quilt none the less.

j had picked out fabrics with me a couple of months ago and I'd worked out the quilt design in my head and in excel.  I had one prototype block done with 4 full days and an evening ahead of me until the last day of school.

I sat down Friday with my sewing machine and the laptop side by side.  I needed to work with this open because I was terrified I would not pay attention and put a color in the wrong place.

Slowly but surely I got my blocks together and the scene at the kitchen table started to look a lot more like this.

I stopped taking pictures at this point, but I got my pieced blocks together and added some extra squares of the apple fabric between them.  I got my top together to match the plan I'd mapped out in excel and realized that I'd changed the dimensions from originally designing in excel to cutting fabric in real life and I wasn't happy with what I'd ended up with.  The proportions were wrong, as it ended up almost 4 feet long and barely 30 inches wide.  I threw three more pieced squares together, added more apple fabric and finally had a finished top I was happy with, as the quilt was now a very nicely proportioned 3 feet by 4 feet.

With a finished top I was back into unfamiliar territory, as I knew I wanted to have a couple of firsts with this quilt.  One, I wanted to piece some extra fabrics into the back, and two, I was going to try my hand at free motion quilting.

Sunday afternoon I pieced my back, ran to pick up some extra batting and cream thread and then gave myself a pep talk to end all pep talks.  I put my free motion foot on my machine, put the pedal to the floor and practiced both stippling and a loopy quilting pattern on a small 12 inch by 12 inch sample.  I decided to stipple.

I put the corner of the quilt on the machine, took a deep breath and stippled a small 6 by 6 area.  Then I took it off the machine and ripped every stitch out.  

I put it back on the machine and decided to do the looping pattern instead, as it seemed a lot more forgiving than the stipple.  I did the same 6 by 6 area and then I took it off the machine and I ripped every stitch out.

But, the third time was the charm and I was happy with that 6 by 6 area so I kept right on going.  Two hours, 5 or 6 bobbins, a bad stitch or two two hundred and I was done.  Quilting anyway.  It is just too bad the quilting isn't the last step.

Now, because making and sewing the binding to the quilt, and then hand stitching the binding to the back of the quilt would just be too easy to do on Monday, I let it go until Tuesday.  Yes, the night before the last day of school. 

11:53 pm Tuesday night I put the last stitch into the binding.  I said a prayer and threw the finished quilt into the washing machine with a color catcher all with my fingers crossed.  Nothing bled, no stitches broke so I jumped up and down, threw it in the dryer and fell into bed.

The morning of the last day of school I grabbed it from the dryer, hand stitched a label to the back and took the kids out front to take a picture or two before wrapping it beautifully in a Target bag and heading to daycare and school.

Here is the front.

Here is the back.

j's teacher loves it.  j loves it.  I love it and with a different print and different colors, I would do it again.  

Like next year for a first grade teacher.  But I'm starting in September.