mitraillette of getting herself to dig back into work

• Fun! just heard from my brother that we are doing a gift exchange (him, Kare, the girls and I) which eliminates about 50% of my Christmas puzzlement. I had started a kinda big (in size not super elaborate or difficult technically) project that had Leah's name all over it. This even tho I couldn't think of anything comparable to make for Dyan (even if I had the time to do both, which... yeah right), much less any ideas yet for P&K. But in the exchange I got Leah! woo hoo! Here's a picture of the project in progress (I'm relatively sure Leah doesn't read here and tho Paul does sometimes I am trusting him to keep the secret), a couch throw:

 This is part of one swatch - it will consist of four of these sewn together. I love the colors. I decided to do random switchbacks stitch-wise to make it more interesting but I'm not crazy about the idea now. I think when all the pieces are together it will look fine but it doesn't necessarily add much.

As usual the colors aren't true except in the natural light shots (the 1st and 3rd). It is delightfully light and fluffy, tho, and you can kind of tell that here.

I'm also playing a bit with the sequence of the stripe sizes. The pattern has you do two panels each of a certain sequence but this one is going to have each of the four panels slightly different.

• Have about 2 hours now to get another chunk of work done before our departmental meeting, which of course I am SO looking forward to.
• Back on my plant-based victuals, having finally finished all the Thanksgiving fare. I never got my pumpkin pie made tho so I will be having some dairy and egg intake one of these days here...
• Tonight a few pieces should be out of the glaze fire and two more should be ready to glaze. Thursday is our last official class but after that I'll start attending Wed. eve open studio instead of doing classes. Erin is leaving the center for another job plus in spring I really can't have two whole evenings per week tied up (even for fun) and I need to save money anyway. (For OS we buy our own clay from the center and pay $12 per studio session; glazes and equipment all at our disposal.)
• Sad I won't have time to make anything to snack on (we usually have a mini party on finished-item retrieval night).
• I really hate doing recs.
• I especially hate doing recs for people who are not rave-worthy. Nothing harder than making someone who is pretty intelligent, pretty diligent and/or pretty motivated sound like someone with whom no qualifiers would be necessary, much less someone for whom you could replace "pretty" with anything stronger...
• End-Sem whining has already begun and I don't even have all their grades up yet. Braced for more.
• TC is going to pop, I swear. I don't want to stop putting extra food out for whenever Beau happens by, but she seems to get up and have a few more mouthfuls almost every time she changes position as she naps and lolls around all day. She is quite the Tub at present. I still think there are worse things for a quasi-feral than to be too fat, but it's kind of worrying me. There's pretty much nothing for it tho.
• Have been more or less productive all day til now. (Most of you know that "more or less" productive is pretty danged good with my easily distractible brain.) That's even factoring in 20 minutes of Christmas cookie recipe internet surfing.
• We sounded great with our extra little group piece last night after our normal SSAA rehearsal. It actually sounds way better - I think - than the piece the group at large is doing this Sunday at UU, but oh well.
• For some reason I'm only scheduled for 4 classes in spring. Of course the paranoid side of me thinks it must be because I'm not doing a good job. Hopefully it's b/c there are less sections. And in truth it is probably good for me to have a slightly lighter schedule for once, even tho it means lighter paychecks, too, which I'm not happy about, especially leading up to Paris which I always have to save and scrounge for beforehand even just for day-to-day expenses...
• Oh I know, standard eyeroller applies: poor you having to go to Paris!
• Whatever. Perspective matters.
• This is what I got my grand-nephew for Christmas, been saving it since summer. Of course I think it is incredibly cool (sure, in general due to its Frenchness and traditionalness, but also did you know that Sophie has -and always has had- completely non-toxic materials, including plant-based dyes?) but I'm a little nervous that it is so little/simple compared to (a) the piles and piles of other toys he has and (b) all the bells&whistle&otherwise tech-y stuff that is out there for kids these days, even little ones. There's also the fact that tho we do have some French genes in our family they are pretty sparse, and might not be enough to make Andrew instantly bond to Sophie the way French kids seem to even nowadays. Hmmm.

Image purloined from this site where you can read about Sophie, si vous voulez.