NaNoWriMo Day 1

Word count: 3252

My favorite sentence: "The prints were blood-red but sparkled richly; when I dropped my fingertips to the liquid, it was viscous and stuck to my hands, burning the skin."

Ugh. I feel tired. It's been a long day.

On the way into the writing event, there was a car accident near the Burwood shops. A motorcyclist had been knocked off his bike, which was in pieces. A red car with the bumper hanging off was parked in the lane in front of the crumpled motorcycle. A man in shorts was sitting on the curb, his head in his hands, and a crowd of people surrounded the motorcyclist. His helmet was cracked; I drove within three feet of him. There was no blood, and the police got there as I was driving by, but it colored my whole day. For that guy, that particular intersection will always be the place he was knocked off his bike. He was alive, and moving, and it could have been so much worse.

I was there for maybe 45 seconds total, but it was as if it happened in slow motion, and I was crying before I even knew it. Wherever you are, motorcycle guy, I hope you're okay. I'm thinking of you today.

On to happier topics. Last night I had some great quilting company: Sel and Claire came over to sit and sew! It was wonderful. Mr Poppleton took Piper for a good hour and a half and it really rejuvenated me to have adult time without the baby. (I love the baby, but I do see her all the time.)

I have been wanting to make a Bear Tracks quilt for a few weeks, but I was unsure what fabrics to use and how to use them. Claire and Sel helped me become brave enough to open my Sophie FQS and decide what to do! I am usually forcing poor Mr Poppleton to play "quilter's helper", holding up fabric and asking, "What do you think about this? Or is this one better?" (much to his, er, disinterest), so it was AWESOME to be able to ask other quilters! And my quilt was planned lickedy-split.

The small colorful prints will be the paw; the white with patterned blue petals will be the relief of the claw blocks; the red with white and green petals will be the skinny border, and the white with large floral prints on the far right will be the big outer border! Now i just have to sort out what colors go where.

I even had time to make up a block with the extra small prints we decided were too pale to use in the quilt.

See how the print is the paw and the petals are the relief? That's how the whole thing will go, only with blue petals as relief and all the different prints. I'm very excited to see it. It looks so good here!

Mr Poppleton "helped" me with the block. He is ever so obliging!

At 6pm it became "No-Buy November"*, so I had to run errands quickly after the writing event in order to get the fabric I need for my Sophie quilt. Today was the first day of the fantastic Craft Depot November sale (a sale I will be VERY SAD to miss) so Sel and I dashed up to Pennant Hills to check out the fabrics. I found some pretty basics for $7.95 a meter and got the rest of the Sophie yardage I needed for the quilt. I'm not buying any more fabric for November, and I'm even secretly hoping I can make it to the new year! I have a trip to the States coming up in February so I've got to save my pennies so I can fabric shop with my beautiful Sarah!

Today's haul.

Don't you just love that blue, pink, and brown? The brown and the pink match one of the fabrics I bought yesterday at Material Obsession...I've had my eye on this one for a while! (It's the fourth from the left, in case you were wondering.)

I've been eyeing that turquoise Lou Lou Thi for awhile and was happy to pick up the pink too.I'm on a real crosshatch kick as well; it's such a great modern blender. I've also been following Sel's lead and picking up Reece Scannell cottons whenever I'm at Material Obsession. They are just so vibrant and beautiful! This time I got light pink and light blue.

Tonight I managed to finish the Bear Tracks practice block.

I really like the way it looks, and it's satisfyingly LARGE (between 14 and 15 inches I think, I haven't really measured it). I just need to organize the colors and then away I'll go: snip snip and sew sew!

So, today was a big day. I wrote a thousand words while wrangling a squirming, squawking baby. I said a prayer for a stranger in a car accident. I planned and began executing a quilt with my favorite fabric range ever. I even got to take a little nap. I'm hoping tomorrow is calmer. I want to bang out another two or three thousand words in the café in the morning, then spend the afternoon sewing blocks and playing with Piper. Here's hoping it is nice and cruisy without any car accidents! Drive safe, world.

*As in 1 November, Pacific Standard Time. With the last-minute decision to make that Sophie quilt, I didn't have enough yardage for the border so I thought it would be a little bit okay to bend the rules! I'm done now, I swear.