Monday, March 12, 2007

Hey Awesome! Not only was my childhood difficult and painful, but I can look forward to it adversely impacting my health over the course of my life. Out of 10 possible adverse experiences that people can have as kids, I score 9. I love scoring high on tests!

Info courtesy of the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study:
http://www.acestudy.org/
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/ace/index.htm

The questionnaires are particularly interesting. Now I just want to know about the adverse effects of religious upbringing...

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Craft Corner

So I made a quilt for some friends who are having a baby. Their baby shower was today. It was nice. They went through a really rough patch recently and I'm glad to see that they're doing well, and are happy.

I'd never made a quilt all by myself before so it was a bit of a challenge, but it turned out really nice, and they seemed happy about it. I did some of the applique by hand, and I can see the appeal of hand quilting things. I did this one by machine, because it was just straight lines, and I didn't have a lot of time, but I can see how hand quilting would give a perfect result, and that would please my perfectionistic self. I even managed to put a new binding on it, after I accidentally cut off the self-backing fabric with the rotary cutter. Note to me: get a bigger olfa mat.

It's nice to have enough sewing skills that I could just decide to make a quilt, and research some techniques, and then just make one. I've been enjoying learning all different crafts this year - crochet, and knitting, and quilting. In some ways it's an odd part of female only culture that I'm not always part of. Today I went to a baby shower, took a quilt I made, and talked to other people there about sewing, knitting, and crochet. It's like everything else, in that most things simply require attempting them. Even if I don't get it right the first (few) times, then at least I can get better at it, and learn some new stuff, and the next time I will be more competent.

I realize that what I like doing is learning. As long as I keep learning new things, I'm happy