this elegy would love to save everything

Started stitching the Milky Way in. Slowly making progress on it as I am hiding the travelling thread so the back will look nice.

Progress on the constellation quilt has come along quite a lot now. Finished the binding on the quilt over the weekend. I prefer to machine stitch the binding to the front then hand stitch the back side. It gives such a nice finish to the quilt. Took the time to measure it also and it ended up being 72" by 72" (183cm by 183cm).

Behold the stars of the constellations of the northern sky! I love how this quilt has turned out. It was a lot of fun to work on and the effect is so cool in person. Overall I would estimate it took about 90-100 hours to complete. Give or take 10 hours if you want to count the time I spent custom dying the fabric.

I made sure to get a nice photo of it in daylight. For once I also remembered to get a quilt label on it. The back really shows the difference in readability of the quilting on the ice dyed fabric compared to the solid front. Thank you everyone that has followed this. I am glad you all found joy in it.

A couple I was helping earlier had two little ones, three and six, who were behaving in a rather saintly fashion for the average bored kid I see. I tried to engage them with remotes and things while their parents talked.

Eventually they were restless enough that I pulled out notepads and asked if they wanted to draw. The three year old quickly lost interest and I went over to ask her favorite animal. She told me “elephant” so to delight and amaze her I started drawing an elephant. Usually kids are into it.

When I was done she pronounced, “It looks like a giraffe.”

I staggered back melodramatically but actually laughing hysterically and said, “There goes my art degree!”

The parents laughed and said kids were harsh critics. When they checked out they saw my elephant doodle on the desk and both did a double take like, “Woah, that’s a really good elephant!”

The Mama Rule came about when we were in a very very busy faire and got separated from Dada. We were like 3 hours from home and in a new place with a crowd of thousands of people and she didn't want to hold my hand.

I picked her up and said, "Penny Rose I am not asking I am telling right now, this is a Mama Rule - you will hold my hand or I will carry you, your choice"

It evolved from there but when we found dada and were in a safer less crowded area I explained to her that she is so so important to me and holding her hand ensures that I don't ever lose her etc etc etc. she appreciated that I explained to her what was going on and she didn't fight about hands again.

If she is having like a ROUGH time and she's just all over the place (cause she's a 4 year old) and just not listening something else that has helped is "I've asked nice three times now okay? You can do it with help, or you can do it by yourself but you do have to do it."