Living in Waterloo, Reading about Napoleon

The quilt's coming along just fine, thank you very much! I will refrain from putting pictures up though because it's a huge mess and I don't know how obvious the stitching would be ANYway, so you'll have to wait until it's done, which will be... a while. In the mean time, my mom and I took on another big project: curtains!

We decided the decor in the family room was way too dark, and since everything my parents bought or chose in the last fifteen years was spruce green, the fabric for the curtains WASN'T ALLOWED to be spruce green. And as a second to the motion, my mom said that every house she'd ever lived in had had gold curtains, so we weren't getting any more of those either.

Equipped only with what we didn't want, I brought her along while I chose a backing for Willie's quilt, and we checked out some of the fabrics. I had been thinking that we needed some bright red or something, so as to let light in, but contrast the green, I didn't really know. We looked at everything, and had narrowed it down to two when, at the very last minute, we saw this and both liked it.

 Of course, a few weeks passed. We wanted the curtains to be insulated, because with such a big window, even though the glass has UV protection, there was no getting away from the sun. What's more, all of the electronics are in there, so of course the room gets very warm indeed. That's not a good environment for quilting. At ALL. But I'd never made curtains before, so I had some ideas and implemented them, and they worked just as I thought they would. But then I was stumped, and I cried, and the sewing room is in the basement with no windows and it was just beautiful out, so I gave up and started researching peony care. Turns out it's best to cut the buds off on the first year, to let the plant preserve its energy for the next spring. But I probably won't be around to see it next spring, so I let it bloom goshdarnit. And then of course cut the three measly peonies off and kept them for as long as I could. I brought SO many ants into the house doing this.

 But they're gone now, and my birthday begonias died, and my carnations finally wilted as well. I need new indoor flowers. I'm thinking a little rose plant, since I quite enjoyed one I had before.

Oh right, the curtains! Well eventually I got over my anxieties about not having perfectly crisp curtains, put on some TED Talks, and finished them in a couple of days. They're done now! And I actually like that they're a little rumpled. They look... comfortable. Which is great, because this room is the one we use for loungin'!

Willie says it looks like the 70's in here now. I like the 70's. Oh yeah he's back!!! I feel a great relief of some undefinable stress, which may have had to do with watching LOST and thinking his plane was going to crash and he would be stuck on a magic island for years, while a faked version of his plane was found at the bottom of the ocean. You know, the usual fears.

I've had my offer of residence cancelled. Which means I don't know where I'm going to live, or when I'm going to leave for Vancouver, or how easy this is going to be, or anything. I don't know what my classes will be like, I don't know if I have an entrance scholarship, I don't know anything about anything and it's maybe getting to me. Must just calm down and enlist some people to help me out. People do this. It can be done.

In other news, I'm reading The Last Cavalier, the latest in Alexandre Dumas' chronicle of French history. It's fantastic, and I'm  into all things Napoleon now (mostly brandy). We'll see how I feel once I'm done. Really this is just inspiring me to read all the books I have that take place around this time, such as Persuasion, although I've already re-read that and it hardly mentions the darn thing, or the one featuring the economic crisis in England caused by Napoleon's return... is it Bleak House? Yeah, that'd be good. Or Vanity Fair would be best, except that I can't find it and I'm pretty sure Katie has it. Right? Yeah?

In all, a few weeks ago I was complaining that even though I had so much to look forward to, nothing was really good then. But now, things are great :) And they will continue in this vein for a little while, before the Inevitable Autumn, which is what I will be calling it from now on.

Cheers!