Tea Towel Challenge towel choice revisited

I know I said the choice was made but I was wrong.  I love that dachshund towel.  I love it so much I don't think I want to live without it in my kitchen, not even long enough to make a quilt of it.  Also -& I don't know how I missed this- it is bordered in rick-rack which I kind of LOVE & don't want to rip off.

So a new choice for the Tea Towel Challenge has been made.  No one who knows me will be surprised that it is all about birds. 

The good news is I had (still have) plenty of fabric that matched the dachshunds so I had not yet bought anything new.  Even better news I have almost nothing in the owl tea towel palette so a trip to the fabric store is definitely on the horizon!  In the meantime, I pulled some from the stash, just for preview's sake.

I really truly am not going to change my mind again.  I don't think.  So.  This is it:  the towel, the sort of dominating fabric that I have kind-of-almost settled on.  & now I am drafting different owls.  More on that next time, or not if I change my mind again. Which is not going to happen. Probably not.

Tea Towel Challenge towel chosen

I decided to join this year's Tea Towel Challenge because I have a surfeit of cotton kitchen towels.   Then I used the excuse of the TTC to acquire more towels.  This is how it went:

My original plan was to use a 2014 calendar towel I found late last year, but the more I thought about how long it would take me & how much I would rather just have the towel for the whole year, the more I thought I should keep looking. 

& keep looking I did.  I went through my cache of towels.  I have more than I realized but most of them are solid colors (& most of those are white).  If i ever go in for embroidering tea towels I am all set. 

There are others I set aside....for a bit, mostly souvenirs from places I have never been including one fantastic "Sheep of Great Britain" (I think) towel that the people who used to live in this house left behind in a drawer. 

I also looked on-line & found all kinds of towels that I liked (including a real-life-sized scrabble board, natural I ordered two & sent one to my mother) & a gardeners schedule towel (also got one for mom) that I would have used but it was linen & I didn't want to deal with linen.  Also it is a coarser weave, which I REALLY didn't want to deal with.

Then I found it.  The perfect tea towel.  Perfect for me anyhow because it has dachshunds.  I know this picture is shabby, but I wanted to get it in the wash so I could get started right away.  & by right away I mean maybe next week.

By no small coincidence (& by that I mean no coincidence at all), it is in a muted color scheme that I love.  I already have plenty of fabric for this, which does not man I won't take my new tea towel out for a drive just to see if anything else matches better.  After all, it would be a waste not to use that little polka-dot banner at the bottom to do some matching, right?

I've done it both ways

It is that time of year when people make all kinds of resolutions but I am pretty much not a resolution person.  I do things when I do them (I hand over what could be holiday/birthday gifts when I have them & I see you, if I remember making holiday gifts tricky to locate).

As for the usual resolutions:

I am already on a diet.  I can live with it, but I am not losing weight hand over fist.  It turns out I am built for famine.  Seriously.  I have often wondered what my evolutionary advantage might be:  I have life threatening allergies to things that are commonplace, my eyesight is poor, I am clumsy, & while I am not the whitest, most easily sunburned person I know I am the whitest skin person many people know (just last week V** said to me "This chick was WHITE, whiter than you even".)  The answer is I can cruise through my day on 500 calories with very little change in...well, anything.  So I don't have the resources & skills to fight for food, but I can live on a lot less.  There is more than one way to life. 

I am already exercising.  Okay, I was & I will again.  I stopped because...no good reason, I don't want to talk about it.

I don't smoke.

I already enjoy life.

There are typical lists of resolutions everywhere & mostly I already do them, I will never want to or they just don't apply (more time with my kids, for example). 

This year I am making a list of things to do this year, because this time next year we are hoping for a baby cow so by Jan 2015 my resolution will be hauling my ass out twice a day to milk the mama cow.  & if the next time is anything like the last time, that will last 18months or so. 

So this year's resolution:  get whatever it is out of your system in 2014 because 2015  is going to be BUSY.

To that end, I have joined the 2014 Cotton Robin. 

I have also already purchased my tea towel for the Tea Towel Challenge.  I could show you a picture, but it is on order.  I actually have a pile of brand new tea towels, because I have been acquiring them lately (& sending duplicates to my mom when I get those, because I have NO TALENT for saving gifts) & I thought I already had one in my hot hands.  & then I saw this other one...  It is entirely possible I will have the material for more than...two.  I might make two for 2014 because I cannot make one in 2015.

& there it is, already over extended.