Bicameral Legislature, Indeed

So, I'm a billion months pregnant and we've just bought and moved into a new house.  The toddler is going strong, exerting her tiny little will on the world.  Nearly every organization we've dealt with has been unable to find its own ass with both hands, and the ones that aren't mostly useless have been thwarted by the other ones (e.g. propane company sending us a letter that gets returned to the sender because the post office is pretty sure our house doesn't exist despite numerous assurances to the contrary, as well as the profound physical evidence in the shape of a house at the coordinates at which the address would suggest). 

With the dryer people showing up unexpectedly on New Year's Day (happy New Year, indeed!), the logjam seems to be breaking up.  We can dry clothes using electricity for the first time in over a month.  Yesterday, we received mail.  Today, oh my stars and little garters, we may be able to access the internet and receive phone calls at home.  Yesterday was the first time that we haven't heard from various cable companies that they will not be able to come install the cable because of ice storms, aliens, mysterious internal problems that somehow result in a delay, holidays, etc.  (My favorite -really?- moment of all of this was when the cable company called our phone number to let us know that our phone number was disconnected and they weren't going to be able to re-use it.  We did not get that message until we called the cable company from the cell number that, oh, look, is also in their records.)  (Oh, wait, that's tied with a different cable company telling us that we just shouldn't have moved, given the problems it was creating with our account.) 

Given all of this, I'm sure you're wondering why I'm not working on a five-color sock in non-superwash wool right now.  That's what I was wondering, as I was sifting through a gigantic pile of boxes and came across the Apirka kit from Knit Picks that I'd bought on wicked sale and then forgotten about. 

Oh, haha.  I kid.  Now is not the time to cast on a ridiculously complicated and impractical project, with months' worth of pent-up nesting to do, a late Christmas present (the ONLY knit Christmas present) on the needles and begging for attention, and a house that looks like someone pulled the roof off of it, backed a dump truck up, and poured out everything we own. 

No, now is the time to make a baby quilt for Baby 2.  CLEARLY. 

I got some fabric months ago for this quilt, when I had the insane idea that it would be good to throw the toddler in the car, drive two hours to a quilt store, and make a fabric decision in the 2 minute and 30 second window I had before the toddler started acting like a rabid monkey who wanted to leave the fabric store.  It dawned on me slowly that I didn't have to do exactly the same thing as for the first baby quilt - charm pack, two borders, flannel back - and that freed me up to rethink the whole project and then conclude that this quilt needs 42 5" squares, two borders, and owls on the back.  (Owls.  Instead of flannel.  Groundbreaking.) 

In 5th grade, we had a school project for which we were supposed to imagine up the best system of government.  Surprise of surprises, most groups' Ideal Governments consisted of three branches that looked strangely familiar.  Electoral College, anyone?  I actually think that maybe some groups branched out and went with the straight popular vote, although we wouldn't probably have understood the nuances of state size at that point.  At any rate, I'm reminded of my feeling, after finishing the project, that it had been kind of silly and we hadn't been all that creative, and there were probably other directions that nobody had explored. 

But look how pretty! 

There's this greenish-blue fabric that I love, and that I've been trying to sneak into projects for a long time, and I thought this was my chance to actually use it.  Alas, no.  It's too green for the blue and too blue for the green.  Someday, greenish-blue fabric. 

We did get the internet back, and so instead of actually sewing this top together, I knit and looked at the internet.  Tonight I will try to sew; found the thread I had in mind and was pretty sure I really owned, and my sewing machine is going strong despite taking a fall (and serving as a cushion for other boxes) during the move - it was packed in its original box with original form-fitting styrofoam, thank goodness. 

It may have been rather foolish to get back into quilting, because now all I can think about is possible patterns to use and quilts to make and bare spots to fill up in our new house, at a time when my free time is about to be severely limited again.  But, you simply can't make a quilt for one baby and not the next.  If nothing else, preventing future guilt trips is great motivation to get off the internet and quilt, already.