April Stitches

This month's blocks for do.Good Stitches are a variety of scrappy/bright/low-volume/HST options.  Steph wanted us to pick the way we put together the Half-Square Triangles, so here are my three blocks.

The Job Search Marathon

I was looking back and it occurred to me that it's been over a month since I gave a job interview update.  I meant to write a post before we left for vacation, but when you have 4 kids the preparation it takes to vacate the premise is almost as long as the vacation itself, so the post never happened.

Joel was gone all last week on interviews, so I'm going to back up a bit and take it from where we stood when we left on vacation. 

Oklahoma City said they would get back to us within a week of our initial visit, and Joel and I both felt pretty sure they were going to offer him a second interview, but a week went by and then another and we still hadn't heard anything.  Silence had, to that point, been a very negative thing for us, so we started to doubt that there was going to be a second interview.  For that reason Joel went ahead and applied to 3 more job openings.

During that waiting period he interviewed in Columbia, Missouri.  The people were wonderful and he had a good experience, but the hospital was so tiny and he would have been 1 of only 2 oncology doctors there, so we didn't feel like it was the right fit for him or for the family.  They were wonderful and offered him a second interview, but he turned it down.  It was really scary to turn down the only second interview offer he had ever received, particularly after the continued silence from Oklahoma, but we really felt like it was the right thing to do.  It was our little leap of faith in the process.

Meanwhile, Joel submitted his CV to Ann Arbor, Michigan and within an hour the BMT director was on the phone interviewing Joel.  He told him he would meet with his committee and get back to him about a possible face to face interview.  With how slow this whole process has been going we didn't expect to hear anything for a while, but the very next morning he heard back from them on possible interview dates.

Detroit, Michigan also offered Joel an interview, and Rochester, New York finally set a date for an interview.  The real relief came the following week when Oklahoma City finally got a hold of Joel and offered him a second interview.  Scheduling was a bit rough, but gratefully it worked out, so that he could travel there the Monday after we got back from vacation.

We enjoyed our week together as a family, and then Joel left for his second interview.  He felt like it went really well, but still had a few questions about mentor-ship and exact duties.  This job is a general practice Oncology job with being in charge of the Survivorship clinic (long term follow ups for children who no long have cancer).  Joel felt pretty confident they would make him an offer, but they told him they would let him know by the end of the week. 

He got home Tuesday night/Wednesday morning at 1am, and then the very next day he drove up to Ann Arbor, Michigan for his interview there.  This is for a Bone Marrow Transplant job which is very different from the OKC job.  He's always had a lot of interest in BMT, but has lacked the experience necessary to really be considered for this type of job.  Gratefully, he had a few connections with the people here at Nationwide Children's who have a great working relationship with University of Michigan, so they took a good look at Joel's CV, liked his area of research, and decided to bring him in for an interview.  It was another round of grueling interviews, but Joel felt really good about it.  His presentation of his research went well, and he really liked the people in the BMT department there.  He was the first of 3 to interview there, so he won't know if they're going to bring him back for a second interview until the end of this week.  The other girl who is the real competition does her research in BMT, so that could spell the death for Joel's second interview chances, but you never know.  What is meant to be will happen, so now we're just waiting.

Joel drove home Friday and then that evening he got an offer from OKC!  (They email the offer).  It's a really great offer, and we are both seriously SO relieved that we know now he'll have a job!  The street corner was getting a little too close for comfort!  Joel went ahead and canceled his interviews in Rochester and Detroit, because he feels good about either OKC or University of Michigan.  We have 2 weeks to make a decision about OKC, and in the mean time we will wait to see where Ann Arbor stands.  It's crazy to think that we may actually have some semblance of an idea where we're moving by the end of this month.  Phew!  Much more of this and I'm pretty sure I would have gotten an ulcer. 

Scrappy Mess Up

Ugh.  For the most part, I consider myself a rational, intelligent being, but every once in a while all sense leaves my body and I do stupid things. 

I put a heat reinforcement on the back of the fabric that had the slices in it.  The only problem is that there were actually 3 little slices and I only saw 2, so 1 of them didn't have any reinforcement.  I was so irritated about it I started sewing it closed without thinking about the fact that the fabric is a dark red and my thread is tan.  Ya- they don't exactly match.  The even worse part is I missed part of it the first go around, so I had to sew over it a second time and make a bigger mess of tan thread on red fabric. 

I seriously just wanted to throw away the quilt, because I was so irritated.  Plus, it was for my cousin who is crafty and sews, so I knew she would know it was a major error right away.  I calmed down and decided to give it to her anyway, because it's the thought that counts, right?  Anyway, if she doesn't like it she can get rid of it and I'll never know.  :)  On the bright side, I did use a lot of scraps.  Even the back was left over from the previous scrappy quilt I made, so we're making progress in the scrap department.

Scrappy Slices

I pieced together the fourth scrappy quilt top this past weekend.  I basically did a mini version of this tutorial.

I was feeling all proud of myself for getting this quilt top pieced together so quickly.  Then I noticed the red block has 3 slices in it.  I'm assuming it somehow found its way under my rotary cutter at some point.  I'm just grateful I saw it before I layered the quilt, and that it's at the edge of the quilt.  It shouldn't be too hard to remove and replace it.  (Famous last words I'm sure).  It's just a slight bump in the road to finishing the quilt.

Scrappy Finish #3

Phew.  The 3rd scrappy quilt of 4 is done!  It's heading in the mail tomorrow to a friend.  I'm grateful it came together quickly since she's already had the baby.

 The flannel backing is the other half of the receiving blanket I never made, so this entire quilt came directly from my fabric stash.  Wahoo!

Scrappiness Quilt Top #3

I decided to make my own improv scrappy blocks for the next baby boy quilt.  They come together quickly, and I can use any size crap I want.  I trimmed each block to 8.5" unfinished, and then added borders.  My strategy is working, because I'm finally starting to see a difference in my scrap bin. 

This also happened this week:

The front of our house got a face lift:  A little power wash, a new front post (the previous one had some serious wood rot), and a new paint job on all the trim, shudders, and front door.  If I can motivate myself to clean out the house we should be getting the Realtor in here in the next 2 weeks.

Scrappiness #2

A friend of mine is having a baby girl next month, so I started this quilt with her in mind.  Then another friend's pregnancy snuck up on me.  I lost track of time and all of a sudden she was due to have a baby girl last week!  I wish my own pregnancies flew by that quickly! Anyway, I decided to make this quilt for her baby girl since I had more time for the other one, but then she ended up having a boy!  What?!  I suppose it was a good thing I was behind on making her the quilt.  The long and the short of it is this quilt is back to being for who it was originally intended, and now I still need to make another baby boy quilt.  And yes, it will be scrappy as well.  I'm on a roll with using my scraps.

Oklahoma City

On our second day in Oklahoma City I got a tour of the downtown.

I asked if we could stop at the Oklahoma City National Memorial.  We didn't have time to go to the museum, but I wanted to see the grounds.  The Memorial is very well done and very compelling.  Each chair is labeled with a person's name who died in the bombing.  They placed the chairs according to the floor of the building where they were located when it exploded.  The little chairs are the children.

Kathy, the woman from the hospital showing me around, told me some of her personal stories/experiences when the bomb went off, so I'm glad I went with her.  It made it more real and personalized.

The Survivor Tree

This is from the church across the street that was damaged from the blast

We went to lunch at the Museum Cafe that's connected to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and it was rather good food.  It's a nice restaurant.  Afterward, we went through the art museum.  It's small, but nice.  I really liked the Chihuly glass exhibit.  It has a cute activity packet for children that I know my kids would love.