grammardog

I did it. I have survived two 70+ hour work weeks! I could still work some overtime hours from home today, and I might yet, but right now I think I will curl up with some knitting and some stupid, undemanding television. It is awesome to see some daylight... there wasn't much at 5:45 this morning when I was trudging to work.

There's supposed to be a huge snowstorm coming today. Should work be closed tomorrow, it would most certainly be the happiest day of my life.

I have decided that I am an incredible person. I must be, because my friends are the absolute tops. Below are the contents of the most amazing care package anyone has ever sent to anyone, but in this case it was sent to ME, from brantastic:



There were many special surprises in there, including that mindblowing Golden Girls tote, and a special guy in very special Crizmas form:



its really he body! I laughed so hard at this ornament that I stopped making noise.

There was also a homemade Leoncie boxed set, which I cannot wait to really get down with.



Last night I got to hang with my favourite 60 day-old kid, Mr. Sully Joe. He's having a bit of a rough time - who knew babies could have acid reflux? I guess that's what they used to call colic. We had our first active two-sided communication last night! I wiggled my tongue out at him and he WIGGLED HIS BACK. I guess I knew that babies mimicked pretty early on, but it sort of blows my mind that he understands that he's like the rest of us, that he sees my tongue and knows he has one, too. Oh, babies! Why you gotta make me want you? Here he is with a smile that belies his acidic belly:

Back from London! We had a lovely and very busy and exhausting time. My basic observations:

- Londoners do not eat ketchup, nor do they take it very seriously. And is it any wonder? There isn't a bottle of Heinz to be found anywhere. If Sally had realized this in advance, she definitely would have brought her own.

- As a general rule, everyone in London looks better on a daily basis than I ever have on a single occasion in my life.

- Public nosepicking seems to be an acceptable social norm. We encountered what seemed to be a disproportionately high number of people in up to their proximal phalanxes.

- There is SO MUCH COLOGNE.

- There really aren't very many fat people in London. I felt a bit conspicuous!

- Londoners are very friendly to out-of-towners as long as you ask for help.

- It is totally the city that goes to sleep pretty dang early. If you don't want to hang out in pubs every night, we could find little to do after 6 pm, not that we had enough energy at the end of the day to do anything at all. One night we even went to the movies, which confirmed to us both that we could never move to London: the popcorn wasn't even BRIGHT YELLOW.

Anyway, we had lots of fun, and didn't have time for even a third of what we had planned to do, but it's a beautiful city and I would love to go back someday. Photos will come, someday.

New parents, please help me: I am trying to come up with a nice gift for my sister-in-law's baby shower on Sunday. I'm pretty dang broke, but don't really have time to make anything. I was thinking about maybe getting them a night at a hotel including my babysitting services, so that at some point, when the baby gets old enough and they get tired enough, they can escape for 24 hours? Is that something that new parents might want? Or is that impractical/not desirable? I need some advice... what do new parents need that they don't really get?

Maybe it's just because I have a raging yeast infection and I want to light my genitals on fire with gasoline, but I've had it up to HERE with Twitter. It's not that I don't care to read about the people on my friends list who are using it... I love you dudes. And I get that you're allowed to post whatever you want in your own journal, I really do. It's just that my eyes actually cannot absorb the Twitter. It's a completely unreadable format, a technology I don't use or give a crap about, and most of the blurbs issued from it appear to just be inside jokes I'm on the outside of. At first I hoped it would just go away, but now it looks like there are more Twitter updates on my friends list than actual posts using full English sentences.

Does anyone know how to filter Twitter off of my friends list? There must be some way of doing this.

In other news, I gave my friend larrylouise this quilt last night. I think she loved it. Here she is revisiting her earlier years:



Still just the same.

We had a great time... I always feel so comfortable with these friends. Here is a photo I took of my friends Barby and Matt laughing like crazy that I love so much:

Yesterday after work, I came up the stairs to the most hilarious scene ever. There was a parcel (YAY!) from corenrind (YAY!) leaning against the apartment door, and one of Bea Arthur's front paws was SLIPPED UNDER THE DOOR AND WAS GRIPPING THE PARCEL. I cursed myself once again for not carrying my camera around with me all the time. When he heard me laughing, he started pawing the parcel and meowing frantically. Once inside the apartment, he wound in and out of my legs as I tried to move to the bed to get the parcel open.

Inside were some items that made us both deliriously happy. A few months ago, Liz posted this great photo of her COLOUR-CO-ORDINATED bookshelf, and after examining it in the largest size and checking out all of her reads, I commented that she was forcing me to ask for Letters to Judy for Christmas. After learning that it was out of print, I didn't ask for it, but went so far as to look for it on Freecycle, and put it in my cart at Amazon, and then say to myself, "What are you DOING? You don't even have MILK right now." So I didn't end up getting it for myself. But Liz did!



Oh, man. I cracked it last night, as you can see by the Fabricville flyer bookmark, and it is just as brilliant as I remember when I was reading in secret under the workbench when I was 10.

Not only the book, okay? But there were also two hand-crocheted catnip toys for Bea Arthur, which he obviously could smell from underneath the apartment door, probably for at least four hours before I got home. I gave him catnip once when he first came to live with me, and he didn't react at all. I never bothered to try again, but clearly, things have changed, and we've both been missing out. When he finally got his hands on the toys, he went BALLISTIC.





Licking at the speed of light:



Look at that grip:



Here is a picture of the mouse toy. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of it before Bea Arthur had already thrown down on it, and so in this photo it is quite spitty and covered with cat hair and one of the eyes might be a little pulled out.



And look: a little cupcake! Nothing has warmed my heart quite as much as seeing Bea Arthur tear with crazy eyes into a crocheted cupcake.



I told you: crazy eyes.



And ears. And toe.







Going straight for the cherry on top:



After an hour of rolling, gnawing, snorting, and squeezing, Bea had finally expended all of his energy. He retreated to the package wrappings, which still smelled like catnip, to clean himself up a bit and just calm the fuck down already.



Then sleep took over.



This morning, the mouse is missing, to be found under the television or something when I clean up this afternoon. The cupcake is ever by his side.



I have no idea why he is sitting with both of his feet in the air like that.

Thank you so much, Liz. You really made both of our days, as you can see. xoxo

CJ received his quilt safe and sound! I'm so relieved. And even better, he likes it! Yippee!

So, remember how I was going to make slutmuphin a swastika quilt? Well, I decided against it in the end, and went for a less inflammatory layout. Here it is, all done! Don't forget, this is STILL A SECRET FROM CJ.



I'm pretty happy with it, but nervous as HELL to ship it off. I don't really know what the safest way is... and how do you get insurance on something that you don't have a receipt for?

I finished a Christmas gift for Sally tonight that I am SO EXCITED ABOUT! I converted a Guess Who game that I picked up from a thrift shop for two bucks into a Sopranos edition of the game! I'm super proud not only because I think it looks amazing, but because it was one of those things where I bought the game months ago with this idea, and in the back of my mind I didn't really believe I'd ever get around to it. But it's done!

Here is the whole game laid out:



I interneted the character photographs and resized them all to the size of the little flippy things on the game boards. This was a huge pain for me, as I'm not very computer-savvy and had to do each one manually. I'm sure there was an easier way, but I didn't know it. Then I took the files to a print shop to have them printed on cardstock, since I don't have a printer myself. I painstakingly cut each one out and wrote the name of the character on it. Then, because I'm too cheap for lamination, I PAINSTAKINGLY covered each one in a layer of packing tape to protect them from Sally's grubby fingers.



In retrospect, I wrote some of the names too low to the bottom of the face cards, so some of them are kind of hidden behind the little white frames. But if you don't know the names of these dudes, your license to play is REVOKED.





I also printed an extra copy of each character photo for the cards, and covered the cards with tape, as well. Another retrospective thought - I wish I had not used a Sharpie marker to write the character names on the cards, as it kind of bled through the cardstock, and if you really wanted to cheat, you could at least see the length of the name on your opponent's card. If I get a chance, I might add an extra layer of cardstock, and then, I GUESS, have them laminated.



The box is pretty much my favourite part of the whole craft. I'm SURE you internet-awesomes would know how to download a free font, but I definitely couldn't. So instead I Googled "Sopranos font", went to the alphabet page, took a screen capture of the page, and manually enlarged the letters I needed in Photo House. This made them all pixelated, but I just manually traced around the edges, and carefully handcut all the letters (check out that tiny gun "R" - it took forever!) I freehanded the big gun (SNORT) based on the gun in the font, and covered that S.O.B. with silver glitter. And seriously, folks, I am not generally a fan of gun motifs in crafting, but I am very proud of the way that one turned out. Also, it's The Sopranos... a gun is necessary, obvz.



The only addition I am hoping to make to the game is to find tiny little toy guns to use as score markers instead of the Battleship-type pegs that come with the game. Score markers aren't necessary, but wouldn't that be fun? The "barrel" of the gun would have to be super tiny in diameter, so I'm not holding my breath. Any ideas where I could get such a thing?

I wish someone was here to break this baby in with me! I can't WAIT to give it to her... she and her fellow are currently watching the series, so they are all newly excited about it, and I think she will be gleeful to get this.

P.S. Please don't report me to a) Hasbro or b) HBO!

I cannot keep up with the internet anymore.

Okay, so brantastic showed up out of NOWHERE last week and surprised the crap out of me, with the help and scheming of Sally. Brandi dreamed aloud to Sally that she would like to visit me since I have been feeling pretty crap lately, and the two of them worked out a plan. I was hanging out with Sally and my friend Nicole, innocently watching some Flight of the Conchords episodes, when I was snatched up, blindfolded, and driven to the airport. I didn't know what the bejeezus was going on until Brandi emerged from the international arrivals door. Seriously, it was the best surprise of my life. I don't really know how to thank them both for cooking this up for me... it just made me feel so loved and special.

Basically Brandi and I spent three days just acting the fool. We downloaded Vanilla Ice's epic film Cool As Ice, and uh, it was WAY more entertaining than we had expected... we laughed SO hard all the way throughout, and there was even one GENUINELY funny thing in it. I don't have as much tolerance for awesome-because-it's-awful material as Brandi has, but I enjoyed every second of it, and a second viewing is definitely in my future. If any of you have seen it, can we please talk about the ice-dripping scene? Oh my heavens. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, gawk, or gag.

We drove up the Eastern Shore on a wet, chilly day. I took these two photos in Lawrencetown, still experimenting with my new lens:





We also picked up lobsters from a cute strawberry blond fellow in Jeddore, and boiled them for dinner. SLOWLY. An inch at a time. The lobsters we bought were pretty fucking huge, as we realized when we got home and looked at my pots. We ended up cooking them in separate pots, and they were still too big to fit in them comfortably. I'm now going to tell you about one of the worst moments of my life. The water was boiling, the lobster was wiggling, and when I attempted to drop it in the roiling drink headfirst, it FLEXED and the only part of its body I could submerge was the CLAWS. I was SLOWLY BOILING IT STARTING WITH THE EXTREMITIES. I can't tell you the horror I felt realizing that this creature was not going to die a quick and painless death. I shouted for a cramstick, and ended up using a slotted spoon to cram the rest of the flipping lobster's body into the pot. I then I had to force the cover closed for several agonizing minutes while the lobster flipped around and basically it was horrible and that story is over now because I can't go on. Oh, also, Bea Arthur bit one of the lobsters in the swimmerette. That is everything, now.

Here are some shots from the cutest photoshoot ever:







Below, Bea Arthur and Brandi re-enact The Great Lobster Boiling Fiasco of '08. Bea Arthur snaps his tail wildly as the lobsters did, and flattens his ears to express extreme discontent. Brandi's face perfectly captures my experience.



Sally and Brandi and I went to Thursday night bingo together, and I TOTALLY WON! It was pretty awesome yelling out my victory, and even though I only won $59, I couldn't follow bingo hall protocol and pretend like I wasn't excited. I felt sort of bad taking the money from all of those elderly people who go every single night and maybe never win. But not bad ENOUGH.

Anyway, those were the highlights/lowlights of my surprise visit from Bran. There were a million other tiny moments and huge laughs, stuff that I wish I could have just recorded so I could watch it all again (Bran, today "Lady" came on the telly and I sang the whole thing at a 45 degree angle, and laughed so hard and wished you were there so bad). I was terribly sorry to see her go home. I just love her so much, you guys.

So, NEIL YOUNG! It was so awesome. I admit, I partly expected to see Neil phoning it in to some extent at this late stage in the game, but he fucking ruled. As moxieholic put it in his review, his first tune sounded like what would be a finale for most other performers. Also, Wilco! So much fun... I really hope to see a full show at some point in my life.

Yesterday Sally and I went out to put up some posters for our "White Christmas" fundraiser, which is a week from today. It was a trying experience. I experienced my first tumble of winter when I wiped out on the icy sidewalk on Robie Street where cars were driving out of the car wash and leaving the sidewalk wet. I banged up my knee on the widewalk and wrenched my back a little bit, too. Very shortly after I got up and brushed myself off (so shortly, in fact, that I think he MUST have seen me fall), a man came barrelling up to me with his finger poking at me and shouted, "Do you know you're breaking a city by-law?!? You're making a goddamn mess! I'm calling the police!" and then started storming away. I was stunned, but called after him, "It's a FUNDRAISER for the food bank, sir", and without even looking back at me, he gave me the finger! I was SO ANGRY about it and still am. I'm just amazed at the kind of person it would take to, first of all, GIVE A CRAP, and second of all, behave that way to a strange woman on the street. It made me feel really, really deflated. The part I'm MOST concerned about, though, is that he actually WILL call the police, who will then probably call the charity we're raising funds for about the complaint. If they are complained to, I actually will have to go and take all five hundred posters down, which makes me feel just sick to my stomach and totally dejected. It just makes me crazy that anyone would CARE about some fundraiser posters on a pole, sandwiched between Steve-o-Reno's coffee barn, a four-lane traffic-congested street, and an Esso station on Robie Street - not exactly Banff National Park, or even a residential area. Argh... I just feel so mad about it, and mostly I feel mad about the way he yelled at me, in such an intimidating and threatening way.

Afterwards,we went to Clay Cafe to paint our frustrations away, which might have worked if it hadn't been filled to the brim with babies. So many very noisy babies! I did finish a potentially-disastrous Christmas gift though (word to the wise: don't try to paint perfect circles on ceramic bisque), and we also ran into iamom there, which was a nice surprise.

I don't really dislike babies. Proof:



They're just noisy, is all.

It's becoming clearer that my future at work looks pretty grim, due to a major restructuring that will take place over the next couple of years. It makes me really disappointed... I never thought I would still be doing entry-level work after 2.5 years, but that's just the way things have panned out because of some really bad timing . I was hoping to get a chance to try some other jobs out there, but it's not looking good. I would love to have some stability, and some challenge in my work, besides the challenge of "try not to weep from boredom today".

Otherwise, I have been quite busy but with some fun things in there, too, and any free time has been spent trying to get some Christmas gifts together. My no-buy Christmas is really going pretty well, and any money I have spent toward it has still gone into a handmade gift. I even wrapped some tonight, and realized afterwards I didn't take any photos of everything piled together, which I really wanted to do for my own satisfaction.

THE END. I'm so tired.

The most amazing thing in the world:

brantastic is at my house RIGHT NOW!

Hey, everyone... I need an opinion.

I put together these blocks with a dark and a light fabric for my quilt for slutmuphin, with the intention of staggering them. Now that I've put them down to see what it looks like, I feel like there might be the VERRRRRRRRRY slight suggestion of a swastika in them (look for light colours versus dark colous)! I know, it's far from a perfect match, but do I really want to make a quilt for my Jewish friend slutmuphin that even makes me think of a swastika?



What do you guys think...

Poll #1280981
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39

Does this quilt make you think of Nazis?

Any suggestions as to another way I could lay this out?

All that's left is trimming the stray threads, ironing out the wrinkles, handsewing on the tag, and wrapping her up.



I love this quilt so much. It's really hard to give this one away.

Last night, Dodie and I stumbled out of bed buck naked after a heavy session of gettin' it on, only to find my apartment door WIDE OPEN for anyone in the hallway to see/hear the goings on. Bea Arthur, who spends a great deal of his time wondering how he could possibly get out of the apartment and into the hallway, was lying on the rug right outside my bedroom door as if it was some sort of test of his will and he had just passed. GOOD KITTY! I'm a little embarrassed at the possibility that someone came into the hallway downstairs while we were smooching it up... it must have been quite the clamour with the door flapping away in the breeze.

Here is Bea five minutes ago, maxing & relaxing in the windowsill and wondering why he didn't escape while he had the chance. Awww.



I took a vacation day today to work on Roxanne's quilt, due to be finished for her wedding on Saturday. I'm working on the binding right now... almost there. My neck is totally ready for this to be over.

It is SUCH a beautiful day today... warm and sunny, but breezy and fresh-smelling. Apparently there are forest fires raging today on either side of the city... reps from the Lung Association keep warning about keeping the windows closed and avoiding exercise. I'll manage the latter today, but my windows are open and the breeze is blowing in and sometimes the smell of bread baking from the gocery store will waft in, and as far as I can tell here, it's a perfect summer day.

I picked up some fresh cherries and Greek yogurt this morning for breakfast. It was gorgeous!



After running into bonjourananas on the street and talking about food for a while, I also picked up fixins for an olive oil pizza with goat cheese, spinach, mushrooms, and roasted garlic. I am going to eat like a king this weekend.

I finished my commissioned quilt in the wee hours of the morning today, and it looks a lot better than I thought it would. I am really happy with it, and I hope the recipient is, too. I even hand-stitched the label on the back. All I need to do is wash it (no idea how I'm going to do that yet) and trim all the stray threads and it's ready to go. I'm so glad to have that off my list! It was really stressing me out. When I told someone at work that I was making a quilt out of shirts that belonged to a friend's father who died last year, she said she thought it was really creepy. Imagine! It wouldn't have even crossed my mind that it was creepy... I think it's a wonderful way to hold onto memories of someone while still producing something beautiful and useful.

All of the fabrics in the top are from his clothes except for the red. I threw that in to break up the blues and greens, and also because I wanted to put something in the quilt that represented her life and her father always being with her. Or I made that part up because I wanted to break up the blues and greens.

Here are a few pics of the quilt still needing to be cleaned up a bit, but mostly done:









I'm really pleased with it. Some of the fabrics were really difficult to work with, so I expected a much shoddier product. It's masculine and kind of homey and cozy, all things I think the recipient was hoping for. I told her we would discuss payment when it was finished, but I really feel strange accepting money for this. Really, it was kind of an honour to be asked to do it for her... I think I'll ask her instead to make a donation to the Terry Fox Foundation in her dad's name, since he died of cancer.

Today I was planning to quilt, but since I finished early, I am going to attempt a major purge of my belongings. My closet is so full of Things I Just Can't Get Rid Of that I am actually unable to use them. Last night I spent a half hour digging for a quilting hoop that I knew I had in there, but couldn't find among all the other stuff I had crammed in there. Most of it is stuff I would save if I had the space, but I just have to acknowledge that I do not have the space. I'll be Freecycling a bunch of things today and tomorrow.

Bea Arthur and I might go out for a little while today. I haven't taken him outside since the first trip, but he's been so meow-y lately, we might give it another go. Right now he is flattening his ears and shaking his butt at some birds building a nest outside the window.

I have another date lined up on Monday with Dodie. Did I mention he brought me flowers on our last date? Yep! I don't care if it's the world's biggest cliché, fellas - just do it, alright? We got a little necking in, and it was just lovely! I was very happy to see that my libido made a very rapid comeback from where it's been gathering mould for the last little while. I was actually beginning to worry that there was something physiologically wrong with me, having never experienced any length of non-all-consuming-horniness in my life. It's so nice to be kissed again.

Looking through my journal for an old entry, I found this foreshadowing snippet from before I moved out of my parents' place:

Aaaaanyway, long story short, I am looking for a place that's as close to work as possible, and as cheap as possible. I'm hoping to live alone or with Bea Arthur.

I MADE IT HAPPEN!

This was the sunrise outside my bedroom window when I woke up this morning:



It made getting up to another totally WINTER DAY not SO terrible. I GUESS.

Sally's birthday is today! Happy birthday, pretty-pretty. I made this chocolate and GUINNESS(!) cake on javamaven1's recommendation, and it was SO UNBELIEVABLY DELICIOUS. I made 3/4 of the recipe which was ample, borrowed pans (I don't have cake pans, apparently) from nonethewiser and the downstairses, and topped it with a buttercream frosting instead of the ganache in the recipe, and it was just lovely. Here is Sally about to make a wish, and I'm pretty sure she wished for me to stop taking pictures of the cake so she could eat it.



Bea Arthur tested the buttercream before I put it on the cake. You know, to make sure it was alright.



On Easter morning, a bunch of folks were invited to brunch at my parents' house. A discussion was started about religion and the relevancy of it in our personal lives (I didn't start it, I swear), and my dad got frustrated and went outside to do yard work. That night, we were invited to dinner at one of the people's houses who had attended the brunch (AWKWARD SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION AWARD!) and when we sat down at the table, my dad had posted this sign in the center:



Laugh or cry, right? I love my dad.

Oh, Lord.

Here is what 90 hours of my life looks like:



It's just the top, it hasn't been basted or quilted yet. That's a project I'll have to start at home, as I haven't the space here to pin it on the floor, and even if I did have the space, you-know-who dives into quilts on the floor like it's going out of style.

I am feeling really satisfied right now! It looks just the way I wanted it to.

In very much related news: holy shit my back

Today I took a break from quilting (well, sort of) and made these coasters for Sally's Wednesday birthday! I hope she likes them.



I am also making her Karen Baccalieri's Last Ziti, a delicious chocolately cake, and we are going to veg out with Bea A. and watch a million episodes of Project Runway. Hooray!

I rarely post pictures of quilting work that isn't done, but I'm so psyched about this one, plus I know Sally will want to have a look-see. This is a wedding gift for a friend who's getting married in August. I am VERY nervous about giving this to her, as she's probably got the most specific tastes of any of my friends. Her house is all very neutral, and I know she loves green, so I chose fabrics in muted greens, yellows, taupes, and browns. I wanted something intricate, but also something that doesn't look overly fussy when seen on a large scale, since I'm pretty sure she wouldn't appreciate any traditional quilt designs. If she doesn't like this, it's basically over between us, is what I'm saying.

I have eight long (104") strips like these two, with the greeny-brown in between. It is taking forever to pin and sew, but I am SO happy with the way it is turning out so far.



The pieced strips close up. Each of those individual strips range in width from 0.5" to 1.5".



I think the reason I'm so excited is that nothing ever turns out exactly the way I imagine that it will. Usually at this stage, I'm storing away some large disappointment and moving on, accepting what I have screwed up as a fact of life. But this is exactly what I had in mind, and there it is in real life! SO FAR.

The most unfortunate way to find out that your cat is into alcoholic beverages is to find him facedown in the glass of rum and eggnog you were enjoying wholeheartedly before you left the room for THREE SECONDS. Don't call PETA; he didn't actually drink any as his face was too fat to get to the bottom of the glass. What kind of a cat likes the taste of alcohol?!? A breed apart, I tell you.

The lovely nonethewiser visited the other night, and brought me three amazing things: a stylish Bea Arthur carrier, a jar of homemade turkey soup which I ate immediately and in ecstasies, and a sweet little tree just the right size for my mini-apartment. I decorated it last night with some ornaments I've made, and a string of PINK lights which is all I had around, and don't ask me why I had pink lights around. The tree looks totally cute and has stayed upright for 24 hours without too much apparent trauma from You-Know-Who. Every time I walk back into the room, though, he's sitting next to the tree with his head tilted at a perfect 90 degree angle, and there's one ornament on the tree swaying dangerously. It looks exactly like this:



Note adorably pink ears.

Also, today when I came home from work, one ornament was on the floor and there were fake pine needles in his water dish, twenty feet away. What a weirdo.

Look, I live by myself now, and I'm basically becoming an old maid. I'm going to talk a lot about my cat, and that's about the long and the short of it.

As I understand it, you've all been gnashing your teeth waiting for the results of (and motivation for) my most recent poll. Well, gnash no more! The poll was born when a good friend of mine who shall remain nameless but you all know who it is accused me with her eyebrows of being hoity-toity when I asked her to pass me the colander. When I told her it was a very common word and I wasn't trying to be all "let's go to the FILMS", she called me "Martha" and then demanded I do a journal poll to prove myself. Well, here are the not-so-surprising results:

People who said Strainer: A weak 6 votes.
People who said Strainer AND Colander: 12 votes
People who said Colander: The hands-down winner with 54 votes!

I win, Sally. Now don't ever make those eyebrows at me again.

(Weirdos who said other various things: 2)

Here are some photos of Allison's wedding quilt, which I called "Red Square". (The edges look a bit wrinkly, as I hung it on the clothesline to dry but haven't pressed it yet.) I ended up tying it, which I didn't want to do originally, but was very pressed for time. I like the way it looks, in the end.