hopefully something rhetorical

This week has been a difficult one. It seems that I have been surrounding by mistakes, some good and some bad.

…bad….

1. A student likened my class to masturbating (yes, you read that right) with something you would use in a wood shop on a public forum.
2. Another student emailed me a very questionable and aggressive email where he claimed I was technically illiterate.  (College students are getting way more ballsy than I ever was with my teachers!  Sorry, bad pun!)
3. I accidentally sent four emails to a complete and total stranger that likely now thinks that I am crazy or a stalker.
4. I just realized that completely forgot my grandmother’s birthday.

And, those are just the things that I can think of off the top of my head (ie: happened in the last few days).  However, in the midst of all the yuck, I have discovered two happy mistakes this week.  So, instead of dwelling on crap I can’t completely fix now, I thought I would share two happy mistakes that happened this week.

First, I already introduced you to the new baby at our house, Wilson.  Well, I may have mentioned that my bgf got his sister.  Her name is Dozer.  Unfortunately, the bgf didn’t check with her landlord first, so Dozer needed a new place to live until her mom’s lease runs out.  So, she is staying with us.

The interesting part of this whole thing is that while the kittens were at different houses we determined that they were twins, which apparently can happen with cats.  But, we really didn’t realize how closely they looked like each other until they were together again.  They look almost exactly the same, which is very rare because usually orange tabbies are boys.

You have to really look at them in order to tell which one is which (Dozer is on the left above).  So, we now have two kittens scampering around the house instead of one. Happy Mistake #1

Second, I decided to finally bind this quilt.  And, I have never really hand-bound a quilt before, so I thought that I would give it a shot.  I know that as a quilter I shouldn’t even be admitting that I have never done this before, but I am self-taught, so I don’t fully know what all the rules are.  I like to make it up as I go along.

Like most of the stuff I do, I just jumped in and started cutting fabric.  I have made bias binding before, so I had an idea of how to do it.  And, I had read something about french binding, and it seemed like it would work for me.  So, I just starting cutting strips of the orange fabric that I had planned to use.

However, once I had everything cut out, pieced together, ironed, and sewn into place, I quickly figured out that I hadn’t made the piece wide enough.  So, I had to decide whether to rip everything out or try to make it work.  And, here is what I came up with.  I decided to just leave the orange on and make another binding in another color to actually bind the quilt.

I still didn’t make the green quite wide enough (I now did some more reading and figured out what I did wrong), but I think the end result is really cute, and it made the front of the quilt more interesting(this is going to be a floor quilt, so the top is cozy flannel).

All in all, I am super happy with the way it turned out, and I will be keeping this unique little trick in my arsenal for a fun and easy way to jazz up the back or front of my quilts from now on.  Happy Mistake #2!