Gutless. And a Quilt-a-long!

I am slowly putting together my first knit frog dissection (!) I had the pattern for a while, so long in fact that I think there is now a pattern for a dissected fetal pig and a lab rat (can we get a dissected worm? Please??). After storing my downloaded pattern for a good year or so, I finally knit the frog up, and then puttered around waiting to find a dissection pan to put him in. I think I thought I'd find one at a yard sale or something. But then I thought I'd check out the supply companies that I get stuff for school from and, sure enough, they have dissection pans that don't cost and arm and a leg. I put dark cork in there for the backing because I had some lying around. I'd love to have something that is the color of the blue wax that you usually see in those pans, but I want to get this done in this lifetime, and I think the dark brown is a good background anyway. I need to snag some pins from the lab at school and then needle felt some guts. Of course I will need to do some research because we need to have anatomically correct frog guts. I don't do dissections in my classes so I'm no expert at this. The male and female human reproductive systems? That I could render in felt. Frog innards? Not so much.

I have gotten together the fabrics to have the baby quilt I made OVER A YEAR AGO finally quilted. I'm just going to have it sent out because I don't want my first quilting project to be a quilt top that is really special to me. Quilting is a funny craft because there's this large part of it that I don't feel I can do on my own. Sucking it up and handing it over to someone else to have quilted is proving to be a challenge. But babies grow up fast, I'm now realizing, and I need to get this done quick before she's too big. That, and the last bunch of fabric I had for the backing and the binding turned into her Easter bonnet before I realized what I was cutting into, so I can't have the stuff lying around for too long. It may turn into a sundress.

Getting all of this ready to go has me thinking about quilting again and so I am thinking of joining a quilt-a-long. I wasn't even going to entertain the idea because I work on so very little sleep these days and time in the craft room requires some planning to make sure that Bean is looked after. I'm much more of a spontaneous creator, so planning time to be in the craft room doesn't always work. I just might not be wanting to make something at that time that was set a few days ago. But the fact that this project is jelly-roll friendly AND that I happen to have a jelly-roll lying around means that I'm going to try to give it a shot. If I do it, it'll be the first twin-sized quilt I've made! Stay tuned. Or better yet, join the fun over here!