Quilter War! Who's with me?

(Okay, I probably ought to say this again since I think there's a bunch of new readers: I curse. A lot. Don't read this if a potty mouth gives you the vapors. And for the love of all that is good and holy in this world, don't email me and tell me not to. Or I'll be forced to write a column about you.)

Oh, lordy day. Have you guys seen some of the latest kerfuffles in the world of quilty blogs? (I'm not linking to them; it just encourages them. Plus, they might come after me.) It amazes me that with so many quilters out there, so many blogs, so many things and people in general, that there are some who feel it necessary to pick fights and get all uppity and shit over nothing that actually concerns them. Over stuff that they can ignore. Easily. I mean, not to get all deep n' stuff, but have you looked at the world lately? Does the way one person chooses to blog or to spell her name merit all this nonsense? Cheezy crackers, y'all. I get on my blog to RELAX. To open up and have fun and interact with people who share my sense of humor. Not to get into a turf war over how I wind my bobbins.


HOWEVER. I bet these people are getting LOADS of site traffic out of this! I mean, come on. Who doesn't love a good brawl, right? But, you see, to me, these people are really missing out on the real fun. Sure a blogger can say something and get people all het up to defend someone else, but what the quilt blog world is truly missing out on is a real, honest-to-god Quilt Blogger War. Something that goes on and on. That devolves into personal insults and veiled threats. That makes the comments section look like the censored outtakes from a Jerry Springer show.

For example:

You know what I hate? Quilt bloggers who get all Photoshoppy with their quilt pics and do that soft-focus fuzzy thing around the edges. What makes you think I want to see your quilt shots looking like somebody smeared Vaseline all over the lens? Huh? What else do you do with that Vaseline? Like this blogger, Earlene from Cutie Patootie Quilty-poos. I used to love her blog, but now I am NEVER reading it again. She obviously does not care about her readers OR her quilts OR her jumbo jar of Vaseline which she OUGHT to be using for all that BUTTSEX she obviously has with her sister's husband. 

And then Earlene would put up a post called "Oh, No You Di-in't"

Oh, you think that just because my baby is a redhead and the only other redhead for MILES around is my brother-in-law, that I was somehow ANALLY IMPREGNATED by him? Haven't you ever heard of RECESSIVE GENES? And ADOPTION? And FALLOPIAN TUBES? You are obviously a sad, sex-deprived old hag and when you stop photographing YOUR quilts with that tired old Polaroid you got in the NINETEEN FIFTIES before everybody on earth was even born and start using an iPhone like the rest of us, maybe people would start reading your blog instead of using it as the first example in their class on HOW TO BLOG LIKE A BIG STUPID WHORE.

That is how you have a blogger war. Anyone wanna have one with me? C'mon! We'll hurl insults at each other over blog posts and see how much site traffic we can get and how many people we can get coming to our defense! It'll be fun!

My Crib

So over the weekend, just before the 600-pound rock of death settled on my head, I put two quilts that I have finished recently up on my sewing room walls and took a picture. I put the picture on Facebook, because I was feeling quite proud that I finally have a sewing room that looks like a quilter's room:

And everybody on Facebook was all, "That can't be a QUILTER'S room! It's too neat! Where's the dog hair? Where's the piles of scraps? Where's the mound of empty ketchup packets from McDonald's that you open and suck all the ketchup out of without even any french fries because you are hungry and it's midnight and you are too lazy to go down to the kitchen and get a snack like a normal person? Huh? Where's that?" So, in order to maintain my reputation as a Quilting Slattern, I had to promise that I would reveal the REST of my sewing room, not just the part that I keep neat and tidy so that when I am exhausted from writing yet another AWESOME COLUMN for GenQ (I have no shame. None.), I have a place where I can fall down in a swoon without getting ketchup on my pants.

So, here is my desk. WHERE THE AWESOME HAPPENS:

Please note the ice pack for my head, the dirty socks on the floor, and the paper with the tattoo design I am working on next to the computer.

This is the area next to my desk, where the printer resided along with half of the crap my kids leave in my room:

That pile on top of the printer is where I keep all of my important papers. It's crucial to have a good filing system. Also, that little kitty on the chair in the bottom right corner is wearing a white felt dress that I made. It looks like something a prisoner of war would wear AND it took me several tries to figure out how to sew it so that it had armholes and a neck hole and wasn't just an oddly shaped sack.

This is the cutting table:

This is also another area where the kids' stuff has taken over the available space, because where else are you gonna keep a princess castle, a makeup kit, a bag of plastic Easter eggs, and a homemade checkerboard? Please note that the stuffed animal on the ironing board is mine. It is an octopus, because I have some weird thing for invertebrates. Devon labors under the impression that his name is Octie, but I like to think of him as D'Artagnan.

A close-up of the cutting table:

You can see I purchased a set of plastic containers at Ikea, that I hoped would control some of the clutter, but now they seem to be as much a part of the clutter as the shit they contain. This is also a shot of the table in an unusually pristine condition, as there are usually half-drunk Dr. Pepper cans and bowls of potato chip crumbs or unpopped popcorn kernels littering the table as well.

And I have decided to save the best for last:

My crumb collection. Because it is too fucking hard to drag the vacuum all the way up the stairs, and besides, I have to take off the hose thing and jam on one of the attachments and I am usually WAY too tired from writing humor columns to do all that work. You know, I always say that I don't want to get a dog or a cat because now that Devon is FINALLY potty trained, I think I deserve a break from dealing with another creature's poop, but the crumb-cleaning capacity of such a creature might make the poop-handling easier to take.

So hopefully I have now restored my credibility, but I'm pretty sure we are now about to engage in a rousing game of "Oh, Yeah? You Think THAT'S Messy? Well, One Time, I Lost My Youngest Child In The Scrap Bin And We Still Haven't Found Her." So just remember, I spared you all by not showing you pictures of my bathroom. BUT I WILL IF MY HAND IS FORCED, SO HELP ME.

Oh, and, P.S. The migraine is gone today. I feel like dancing. So I think I will.

uuuuuhhhhh

Massive. Migraine. Can't. Form. Complete. Sentences.

New. Humor. Column. Is up. At GenQ. Click here.

And then? When you're done? Please. Get a hammer. And beat me. To death. With it.

A cool grand

Well, you did it, you crazy man-loving bunch of quilters, you. You helped me raise $1000 in just one month. eQuilter.com and LadyFingers Sewing Studio are carrying it. Luana Rubin, who owns eQuilter.com, has been a huge supporter of the project and has been encouraging me to send out press releases. "You could be in the Washington Post on on Good Morning America!" Yeah, I could see me on GMA or the Today show, vainly attempting to suck in my gut and angle my head so that it doesn't look like I have twelve chins and trying to engage in witty repartee. And I just know I'd get stuck with Ann Curry. I have issues with Ann Curry. Deep, abiding issues. She once did a special on George Clooney in Darfur - and y'all know how I feel about the G-man - and I could not watch it. Could. Not. The woman looks cracked out all the time and her questions are all vague and touchy-feely and she always has bad hair.

I would totally write a press release if I knew what to say and who to send it to. And if I didn't have fears that someone might want to take my picture. Being in a position where I might actually get looked at by another human being keeps me from doing lots of things. Like leaving the house. I like my sewing room. It has a bathroom and a bed and a TV and I keep snacks hidden behind the printer. If it wasn't for the kids I would never leave.

And yet. You know, ever since I did that piece for GenQ on quilty tattoos, I have been obsessed with getting one. And not only would I have to leave the house, I'd have to let some stranger - quite possibly a guy - look at me up close. And I'm pretty sure there would be no way to hide my chins. Not that I would get a tattoo on my chins. I'm just saying THEY CAN'T BE IGNORED. Anyway, I really want something on my arm, like a bracelet, and I've been looking up Art Nouveau motifs because I think I would want something kind of Aubrey Beardsley-ish. But I also kinda want my logo too.

I think the tattoo obsession has less to do with wanting a tattoo and more with the way my brain works when I get in a funk. I have just been so blah and unmotivated and feeling unfunny and lonely, and when I get that way I tend to get obsessive about something, like getting that one thing will somehow make it all better. Maybe when the Joel Dewberry fat quarters I cannot afford but ordered anyway arrive, those will make me feel better and I won't get the tattoo.

Nah. I'm probably still getting inked.

So, ages ago it seems. I got George Jr. back from the longarmer and I slapped a binding on that baby. I also sewed on a hanging sleeve, but the quilt is so damn big, I have no good place to hang it except my stairwell, and I can't reach the spot on the wall where I'd have to drive in the nail without some sort of pulley and harness system. But I could hang it temporarily from the front porch on the one day we've had sunshine here the last month:

Hard to be sad when looking at that, yet somehow, I manage.