What time is it?

 I've been trying to re-adjust my sleep schedule by staying up and getting up later, since Paducah is six hours behind the UK.  The result is that I already feel jetlagged and don't know whether to eat meals with DH or try to move them later as well.  And then Friday night we have to get up at 3am for the two-hour trip to the airport, to arrive three hours ahead as it is an international flight.  I am fully expecting to breeze through Security in 20 minutes and then have 2.5 hours just hanging around, but there you go. If we took the risk of showing up later then maybe there would be traffic jams or big queues. The Chicago transit is looking even more problematic as the airline has warned that thunderstorms and high winds in Chicago could cause delays.  Yay.  At least I passed my pre-boarding COVID test, I was worried about that.

I made a push this week and managed to largely finish Month 11 of the Australian BOM.  It still needs a press, the spangles of the lace bobbins added with beads (which I will do after quilting) and it needs the tatting added in the corner coming out of the tatting shuttle.  The original has the tatting simulated by embroidery, but a clever tatter on the FB group came up with an actual tatting pattern to match the embroidery.  So I've been trying to re-learn how to tat the last few weeks, I had forgotten a lot more than I realised but then it probably has been 20 years since I last tatted.  I managed a practice piece with lots of mistakes, and now I have started the real thing.

I'm quite cross about my Tilda Cot Quilt.  My 3/4 of a yard of border fabric arrived, neatly and squarely cut, and I sliced it up into border widths and sewed it on.  It wasn't until I stepped back to view the finished result that I realised the apparently random shell print is in fact linear, and was either printed off grain or my fabric wasn't as squarely cut as it appeared.  The result is wonky lines of shells that look like they were cut by a drunk.  I don't have enough fabric to re-do it.  I suppose the future baby owner won't care but it's still annoying.  Hopefully the quilting texture will obscure the lines a little bit.

The transformation of DS's former bedroom is now complete, with the new carpet being laid on Tuesday.  Formerly like the black hole of Calcutta, the room is now a calming and restful sea of beige.  I said to DH that I would have hated everything about it when I was in my 20s, when I thought beige and magnolia were old-fashioned and boring. I would have wanted wallpaper and patterned carpet and fancy ballooned curtains and more more more.  Now in our late middle-age, we both feel the room is so peaceful and tranquil that we almost don't want to even use it for anything.  Maybe I should learn to meditate and it can be the meditation room.  I am looking forward to DS's reaction when he eventually visits, I think he is going to be pretty shocked.  We have put the furniture back in.  I am going to use the bed to spread out my entire quilt collection, to give the textiles a rest from being folded up in cupboards.

Well I am all packed, I hope I am taking the right things to Paducah.  I have a small shopping list, and I will try not to buy things just because they are cheaper than in the UK.  Wish me luck!