first quilt finish of 2012

At long last, I have finished the quilt for my niece, Averie!  Originally meant to be a Christmas present last year, I had to put it off as I realized just how much work was going into a (almost) twin-sized quilt especially since she and her brother are young enough that I'd need to have both ready for an event like Christmas.  Her birthday is in March, so that was my new deadline.  Of course, I thought her birthday was March 15, and it turned out to be late last week, so I didn't make her birthday like I intended...but I will make the deadline that I thought it was, as it will be shipped today.

I've spent the last two weeks watching TV/movies and sewing down the binding, and I finally finished it on Monday night (while watching Black Swan, which is an incredibly creepy and crazy movie).  Yesterday when I got home from work I added the label and tossed the quilt into the wash to see how it would finish up.

The final dimensions stayed very close to the pieced dimensions, and the quilt is about 54" wide by 92" long, give or take a bit.  I was targeting 54" x 90", as that's what I had found for twin quilt dimensions when I searched for them back in the design phase, but apparently I found incorrect measurements as most twin quilts are at least 60" wide.  I'm a little sad about that, but there was nothing I could do at that point as I'd already completed the quilting and was about to put on the binding, so it is what it is.  It's definitely long enough, as Chris had to stand on a folding chair to hold the quilt up for a picture!

I did end up with one minor problem on this one, which I didn't really parse until it was too late.  While sewing down the binding, I came across about an 18"-24" stretch where there were apparently tension issues when the binding strip was machine sewn to the front of the quilt.  It didn't seem like a problem, so I went right ahead and hand-stitched the binding down...only to find when I rotated the quilt that you could see similar tension issues on the front.  If I had really thought about it in time, I could have re-stitched the machine part before the hand sewing was complete.  At this point the way to fix it would be to rip out the handstitching, resew the seam, and redo the handstitching, so I decided to wash the quilt and see what happened.

The problem is much less noticeable after washing, hurray!  The binding is very securely sewn in place, so as long as someone doesn't grip that edge of the binding and try to rip it up, I think it will be just fine.  The location of the weird area is down at the "bottom" of the quilt, so if it's kept on a bed it shouldn't be used as a grab point very often, and if the quilt is used as a lap or play quilt then it probably won't be gripped by just that spot all the time.  And worst case if it does come off, I know what to do to fix it.  :)

Yesterday marks six weeks post-surgery for Curzon, or 42 days.  He is continuing to be his own normal and awesome self, being loving, cute, playful, energetic, and a pain in the ass just like nothing happened.  I did manage to make him yelp a bit the other night while messing with his scar tissue, but he forgave me quickly with some belly scratches.  At flyball practice this week we moved up to full recalls over all four jumps (set to 7"), and also started the bounce drill for equipment respect and made it to 3 jumps set at 18" by the end of our first session.  Curzon REALLY wants to go hit the flyball box though, so I don't think we'll keep him away from it for very long - hopefully we'll start some wall work with him either this week or in three weeks.  Next weekend will be hard on him as we're going to a tournament that he's not going to race in - but he'll run in the May tournament, so it won't be long!

I think I will take him swimming at the therapy pool another time or two, and then we'll transition back to the regular "dock diving" sort of pool exercise so that I can take Ezri and Jadzia along with us.  I've really enjoyed swimming with him, however, it's very nice to spend time with just one of my dogs upon occasion - and being able to submerge in 75F water in the middle of winter isn't bad either!

In closing for today, this was posted up on Facebook and it really struck a chord with me - this is exactly what the rabid religious right is trying to say with all of their attacks on women's rights.  It truly disturbs me that a woman's right to contraception and abortion is being questioned in this time, and it disgusts me that Senate hearings about these very topics don't include any women, either giving testimony or making decisions.  Santorum is definitely living up to his redefined name (thank you Dan Savage) with his continued insistence that women are fit only to bear children.  Oh, he doesn't use those exact words, but his actions and beliefs that contraception is unnecessary for "good women" and that all of our country's problems are due to women not staying home with their children are more than enough to send the message.  The other candidates for the Republican nomination are spewing the same sort of vile, bitter hatred towards women that is just astonishing and depressing.

 

These men want nothing more than to remove women's rights to control their own bodies.  They want to spread a culture of fear under the guise of religion, they want to give more money and control to corporations (whom they consider "persons" unlike the very women that birthed them, married them, and were born to them), they want to deny legal protections to anyone not like them (i.e. white, straight, and "Christian"), and they want to take away support and rights from the very people they are trying to win the election from.  I hope that the American public wakes up soon, because if this loss of women's rights happens, our country will be set back decades and it may never recover.

a day to remember, part I

Today is September 11, and it is the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that took down the two World Trade Center towers in New York City.

At the time I was working at the Bothell location of my company, and so my alarm didn't go off until around 6am. Instead of the music that normally accompanied my alarm, I heard the morning show hosts talking seriously talking about planes and buildings. Figuring it was a joke, I got up and turned off the radio to get ready for work. Once out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to make my lunch, I turned on the TV out of curiosity and found the news showing the towers burning. As I stood there and watched in shock, the first tower fell. I went to wake up Chris to tell him that the WTC had been attacked and one of the towers had collapsed, then I went to work. By the time I got to work and turned on my computer, the second tower had fallen.

Soon after the towers fell, it occurred to me that my father-in-law took the train to the WTC station every morning to go to work. I called my mother-in-law and she had heard from him - he had missed his train and been on the one after it, which stopped well before the WTC due to the attacks. As I understand it, missing that train probably saved his life as he would have been stuck under the WTC when the planes hit the buildings.

We were lucky to have not been personally affected by the death and destruction that the attacks created, but we like all citizens are still dealing with the aftereffects in the financial and military sectors to this day. I hope as the years pass and the scars begin to fade, that we will all be able to put this event behind us and move forward into a brighter future where we can use education and goodwill to ensure that such a tragedy will never happen again.

the ethics of pregnancy

I've been watching the story of Nadya Suleman, the woman who gave birth to octuplets a few weeks ago, with a sense of horror growing with everything I hear. In a nutshell, this woman has six children as a single mother, all by sperm-donor IVF, and decided to have an IVF session to have more. One IVF doctor had already told her no, so she found another one that was not only willing to do the procedure, but break established protocol and implant more embryos than the clinical standard. And so she wound up pregnant with septuplets that turned out to be octuplets when they were delivered by Caesarian section at 30.5 weeks gestation.

This woman has no job, has been accepting disability for back problems for years, lives with her parents after they lost their original house because they bought one for her, has no husband or partner, and STILL had IVF to have another 8 babies. She is also apparently a fan of plastic surgery and has had several operations to look more like Angelina Jolie.

This situation is so far beyond the line that it's not even in the same timezone. I find this woman morally repugnant, I am disgusted at her waste of public resources, and I am appalled that any doctor would feed her insanity. Ms. Suleman is far more interested in attempting to get onto talk shows, start her own reality show, whine to the press, entertain offers to become a porn star, and generally be a self-absorbed wretch than she is willing to parent any single one of her fourteen children. I firmly believe that she lost the right to the octuplets when she had to have a team of 46 people to deliver them, all paid for by the state as she has no insurance, and could not be bothered to even stay in the hospital with them. I have one acquaintance who had a premature baby recently, and she and her husband are at the hospital with their child from 8am to 8pm every day. I doubt Ms. Suleman has spent more than an hour per day at the hospital with her octuplets unless there are cameras involved. I feel that the state needs to take all fourteen of her children away from her, sterilize her, and leave her to support herself completely on her own. While I am encouraged by the tide of public opinion being very against her, I somehow doubt this will happen and all fourteen of those children will grow up poorly cared for and with a low chance of success in life. What a waste.

As idiotic and narcissistic as Ms. Suleman is, I am even futher appalled and upset at the doctor who would give this woman IVF at all. I have a feeling that there is going to be a significant backlash against IVF centers after this situation, and I believe it is high time for that. It is highly irresponsible to implant multiple embryos at one time, and I think it should be illegal to implant more than three - and if any splits occur, the pregnancy should be reduced to three, no questions asked. There is absolutely no reason to try to have quadruplets or higher order multiples, and anyone who has a moral problem with selective reduction should also have a moral problem with undergoing IVF in the first place. I am actually quite impressed by the Roman Catholic Church, who recently stated that they are against IVF for the same reasons that they are against abortions and birth control.

From a strictly evolutionary point of view, I am firmly against IVF as a concept. More and more couples go through IVF to have children, because they are unable to have them on their own. Perhaps that is genetics telling you something, people! If you are unable to get pregnant or carry a pregnancy, as hard as it is I think that is a pretty clear sign you are not supposed to have children. It's not fair and it is very hard on many women, as our society places great value on having your own biological children, but that's the way it is. What are these IVF daughters going to do in thirty years? Will they even be able to get pregnant naturally? Or will they also need to have IVF to have children? It seems to me that you should just let nature tell you whether you can have children and accept the answer, whether that answer is yes or no.

And humans should never, EVER have litters.

surprise snow and shunning

This morning I walked down the hall to the living room, only to look outside and see about 2" of snow on the ground. This startled me enough that I actually jumped a little, I was certainly not expecting to see snow again this winter! I took this picture with my iPhone after letting the dogs out to potty, as there is also a full moon out right now and it looked really gorgeous with the snow. Amazingly, shortly after I took this photo the snowplows came through, which is not a normal occurrence but was welcome nonetheless. The snow apparently started late last night, as Chris had left me a note telling me he had no problem with me taking the car to work. The weather people are calling for more snow tonight, so we'll have to figure out what to do about that - perhaps I can go pick up Chris' work computer so he can work from home tonight.

In other weirdness, last night nearly all of 228th street was closed off for police activity, from 9th down near the Extended Stay all the way up to Meridian. We had to go out and around Country Village to get home. Nothing is showing up on the internet as to why that much of the road was shut down in clear weather, so I am rather curious.

I found a story in the Seattle Times this morning describing how Abbotsford BC is using shunning to combat gang violence. This is a town just over the border into Canada, where we often travel for flyball tournaments and where many of our Canadian flyball friends live, so that makes it more interesting to me personally. However, the real value is in the fact that a whole town is using social pressure to convince the gangs to leave. I firmly believe that shunning and public shame are woefully underutilized tools in this day and age, and that much bad behavior runs rampant because nobody is willing to call the wrongdoers out. It used to be shameful to behave poorly, now it is practically a badge of honor amongst certain social groups and that is such a toxic thing for society, it's unreal. While lifting the stigmas against needing legitimate social help or having a mental illness are excellent things for society, unfortunately too many people have taken this too far and now feel no shame about gaming the system for as much "free stuff" as they can get. In this case, I hope that the public social pressure does indeed convince these hoodlums to leave town, which would be a great success and example for many other such towns across north America.

new President, new world

On Tuesday, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America. His campaign strongly referenced the simple ideas of "Change" and "Yes We Can," positive messages which have been sorely lacking in politics for quite some time. I found it refreshing to watch a candidate who was eloquent, well-educated, and clearly made his own decisions about policy. I voted for President Obama, and his election brings me hope that the next four years will see improvements in many areas of American government and policy.

In Obama's inaugural address, he stated the following:
"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over ocnflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

Those statements sum up, in a nutshell, why I feel that President Obama is the right choice for this country today and why I think he will do a very good job. He has risen above the petty muckraking that so many other politicians indulge in, and he seems to be truly humble and accepting of the great responsibility -before- the great power of his elected position. When watching the inauguration on CNN Tuesday morning, I was struck by how serious Obama was, as he radiated calm and gravity from his very person. This is in sharp contrast to other politicians who have come to office with a huge "shit-eating grin" on their faces, as if to highlight that they have only been given their due and now have all the world to play with.

President Obama is clearly his own man and while he will take advice, he will make and own his decisions on policy during his presidency. I firmly believe that once a leader is elected that they should be left to lead as their position dictates, and that at the end of their term they should be judged based on what they have accomplished. This has been difficult to do with President Bush, as he has not made his own decisions so it is difficult to judge him based on any firm track record, leaving him appearing to be a simple puppet who has done nothing but break things. If nothing else, President Obama will be his own man and will be judged upon that, which is a powerful thing.

Many people are unhappy with President Obama and are letting their unhappiness ring out in varying degrees and methods. To all of you, I say this - let the man do his job before you bury him. Let there be open and honest discourse, untainted by vicious personal attacks and hatred. And let there be hard work put into the country by ALL of its population, no matter what color or creed, so that tomorrow will be a brighter day.