To Err is Human....

Thanks to everyone who wished me well after my bout with bronchitis! I'm much better, these four days (and a z-pack, thank the Lord!) later, but still coughing with Poise, if you catch my drift! LOL

Yesterday was my birthday!  Like my mother before me, I've started calling myself old before my time....I was born the year before Kennedy was shot, if that's any reference for you :-D, so I'm not technically old, but there are some days I sure feel it!  I started worrying about myself for sure earlier today!

I got in the mail (on my birthday, how cool is that!! :-D) fabric for the1st of a block-of-the-month I enrolled in a while back, so I thought I would indulge myself and just do that one little block (it's not really like starting anything new!! It's not like I can finish it because I don't have the rest of the fabric!!).

It's the cutest quilt! I love the designer and her quilts -- so darling, and such cool use of muted colors and primitive touches...just what a dark old bird like me enjoys!  I hadn't gotten very far into the pattern, though, when things were NOT going together like they should.

Did I read the pattern wrong? Did I cut something wonky?  Is it the first stages of Alzheimer's? How old am I?  What year is it!!!!???

No....I started going over the numbers, and there was no way mathematically the block was going together like it said.  So out came the seam ripper and thread started flying and I started fuming!  (All that self examination took its toll on my psyche!!)

I turned to the computer and started looking up contact information and composing a "strongly worded letter" (that's what Leo Decaprio says he's going to do when he's drowning in the North Atlantic in Titanic!  It always cracks me up! so I'm laughing out loud while I'm crying and croaking, "Live, Rose! Live!!!" Sheesh!!!).

I've done that before, you know.  A few years ago I did the Victory Quilt from Quilt in a Day and couldn't get my Nosegay block to go together.  I fired off a scorching missive to QinaD -- only to discover that I'd cut my template out wrong.  Can't you just imagine them....?

"Hey, Ellie!! We got another one here who thinks she's smarter than you!!!"
"Wonder how long she's been quilting?"
"Who's she think she is!?!"
"Moron!!!"

This time, though, the pattern really is wrong.  So I ran the numbers (a simple 4", 8" and 12" progression), and reassembled the block, step by step:

And Voila!! the block becomes all it's meant to be!! Happy birthday to me!! :-)

More often than not, though, the problem is with me and not the designer!

When I (as my mother used to call it) "act ugly" -- when I don't act the way I should, I wanna say, "Oh, God knows I'm like this.  He made me this way.  It's not my fault!"  As if He is to blame for my impulse control, or my quick, sharp tongue or my general sour demeanor that day. My first instinct is to blame the Designer. 

No, better to take a look to see if I -- yes, I! :-D -- have done something wrong.  When it comes to my Designer, yeah...it's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer, as the old children's Sunday School song says.  Thankfully, Jesus doesn't want to hold stupidity or perfidy against me.  John the Beloved tells us, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  (I John 1:9)

I like how the Amplified Version expounds...."He is faithful and just (true to his own nature and promises) and will forgive our sins [dismiss our lawlessness] and [continuously] cleanse us from all unrighteousness [everything not in conformity to His will in purpose, thought, and action]."  Whew!! That covers a whole lotta ground!!  Better to 'fess up and let Him put me back together, conforming me to His perfect image. So I can become all I am meant to be, more's the praise!

So no strongly worded letter, I think. :-)
I sure hope Ellie forgave me for being a moron! :-)
And I will certainly forgive the designer her error.  To err is human; to forgive divine.
Besides, it's too cool a quilt to give up on!!
I can't wait for next month (when I won't be starting another quilt all over again)!

Blessings,