A Girl's Gotta Dream

Once upon a time I tore this picture out of a Pottery Barn Kids catalog.

Back when I was pregnant with Pork Chop and working as a lowly receptionist, one of the few joys of my job was the Pottery Barn Kids Catalog (the other true joy was the Frango mints at Christmas). The Secretaries and I would eagerly sort the mail awaiting the glossy pages of sublime kid stuff to arrive. Now, did you see the part where I was a lowly receptionist? Yeah. I couldn't actually afford anything in the Pottery Barn Kids catalog. But we enjoyed looking at the pretty pages of things and pretending we could afford to decorate our homes. It was a constant source of inspiration for things I wanted to do to my kids rooms. One day I was innocently flipping through its pages and there it was. Something so cute I simply had to have it. It was this quilt, this pretty little quilt. I simply fell in love with this quilt. I loved the gingham, the solids, the neat points of the stars, the bright white background, the diamond border. All of it. I loved it. And since I had taken a beginning quilting class the previous year I decided that forget buying it I could totally make that quilt.

Then I actually had my baby.

Reality is a harsh cruel place to live. I quickly learned babies take up a lot of time. In fact small colicky Pork Chop took up every waking moment, and lots of moments when I should have been sleeping as well. She was rocked and walked and sung to and carried and taken for rides in the car, and still, she cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. I didn't have time to eat, or shower, let alone be crafty. I gave up quilting, too many pieces and part and dropped pins on the floor, and it required a lot of brain cells that I just didn't have at the time. When she was around nine months old I took up knitting. She was sleeping more and finally crying less, so I felt I had a few brain cells I could devote to crafty endeavours. And I figures two knitting needles would be way easier to keep track of than the fifty thousand pins I needed for quilting. That last part is shamefully not true, two knitting needles are not as easy to hold on to as one might think, but doesn't it sound like it ought to be true?

Yet I still dreamed of those perfect points.

I've carried that torn picture around for a decade. Through all our moves I kept this picture. Through the periodic housecleaning purges where I threw out everything that wasn't essential this ragged page was considered important enough to keep. It has always remained on my list of someday.......

Over the weekend we moved Sweet Pea into a big girl bed. The true owners of our crib are expecting their third child, so they will be needing the crib back. Now seemed like as good a time as any to give Sweet Pea her eviction notice from the crib. She is very enthusiastic about her bed during the day, but not so much at bedtime. She cries no until she is exhausted, then I lie down with her while she sleepily repeats "no big girl bed, no big girl bed" until she falls asleep mid-sentence. And forget naps, there's no taking them in the big girl bed. But still, the ordeal is not without a few perks. She shares a bedroom with Bird, and it looks so sweet with their pretty white bed frames.

I've decided that someday has finally arrived and I am just crazy enough to be planning on making two matching quilts.

Pretty gingham star quilts on a pretty white background. Each with a different color gingham binding. Of course I have several other things I need to be doing right this very second, deadlines looming for projects that need done now. A big project for Knitpicks is in the final stages and if I don't get too sidetracked I should finish ahead of schedule. And the seven costumes for hula need to be finished by Saturday. And since they currently look like this

I really need to get sewing.

Still, I could not resist putting one block together

you know, since I already had the sewing machine and ironing board out for the hula costumes anyways.

One block closer to the dream. 159 to go.