The Neverending Quilt (Part I)

I've decided not to work today. Okay, my boss decided that. Because it's cold outside.



It's cold enough to freeze your beard just by breathing.
My Midwest friends are saying, "Yeah, so?" My New Mexico friends are saying, "Holy crap! Frozen beard!" This may be in part because last week, we were wearing t-shirts outside. Thanks for catching up with the rest of this hemisphere, New Mexico. It's winter.
Really, the wind chill this morning was -27, so I decided to stay in today. After going to the chiropractor. And the bank, and the grocery store. And to take out the recycling. Okay, so now I'm really not going outside again.
Instead, I'm working on this.


It's one of five bajillion quilt squares I need to make. (Actually, it's #18 out of 45.) I've been working on this damn thing since last spring. As you can imagine, quilt squares have the potential to get boring. So I tend to project-jump.
If you don't do any crafting, it's possible you don't know what I'm talking about. Let me show you my knitting corner.
The wooden thing on the left is the sewing cabinet my great-grandpa made, inherited from my aunt Linda. Underneath it is a plastic bag full of alpaca yarn goodness. The bright blue yarn next to it (which is actually purple) is for half-finished ear warmers. Then we see a hot glue gun, used for wedding favors, and leftover invitations.

Immediately right of the sewing cabinet is the pile of yarn I'm using for the Neverending Quilt (Caron Simply Soft, for those interested - yes, it's acrylic, but it's cheap, and this is a summer quilt). Beneath that stack are several skeins of yarn for The Sweater the Universe Denied (don't worry, if you don't know that story, I'll share it soon enough).

On top of that stack is a Finished Project - a scarf with no destination, at least yet.On the far right is my stash box. (My stash is also all up in the sewing cabinet's biznass.) On top of that, we at last see 17 of the 45 squares I'll be using in the Neverending Quilt.

But wait: there's more. You may also notice something silvery sticking out of the middle, and a deflated skein of pink stuff as the crowning glory. The pink stuff needs to be balled up - haven't gotten to it yet. The silver stuff is uber-tiny and gets knotted really easily. Before I can thread it through any other project, I have to roll that into a ball, too. It's in a skein. It's already tangled. I don't know where to start.

And so it sits there. Waiting for the day when it will shine in some lovely completed project. Just like almost everything else in that picture. Did you see how many completed projects were in it? ONE. And I'm less than halfway through the quilt.

The Neverending Quilt isn't even my focal project. I happen to not have one of those right now. But my niece's birthday is coming up, which means a hat. Then Mom's German Teacher has a birthday, which means... I don't know. Gloves? A pillow? Then my mother-in-law's birthday, which means some other project.

That's why it's called the Neverending Quilt.

The Neverending Quilt, Part II

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