Well, I didn't clean house last night. But I did work towards finishing a couple of stalled projects.

First, I finished the pillow for the AAUW gift exchange. Machine quilting is neither as easy nor as fast as it looks, and that's all I have to say about that. I do have to get a couple of big snaps this afternoon to close up the back of the pillow (I prefer to do pillows where you can take the form out to wash the top if necessary).

and second, I finally dragged out the pieces of the Landlord cardigan and started sewing it up (I finished knitting this in what, October? Shows how much I like finishing...). I was mostly intimidated by the need to crochet an edging, and what color to use (the pattern used a cream color but that seemed too bland to me). I wound up going with Wool-ease in "Grape Heather". I wanted to use some fuchsia Tapestry I had, but I've heard that the color runs in the wash, and I didn't quite feel up to delaying the project further while I did colorfastness tests. And the "grape heather" woolease does look pretty good. I have to get buttons for this one this afternoon. Well, actually, I also have to finish the neck and left front edging and sew in the sleeves, too.

There's been a lot of furor on the knitting lists about a Staples commercial featuring an inept knitter apologizing for knitting her gifts rather than buying them. I've not gotten really bent out of shape about it because:
a. the purpose of advertising is to make people think stuff that's bought is infinitely preferable to stuff that's handmade
and
b. I will not shop at Staples anyway for any reason. I used to order stuff from the Staples about 1/2 hour away from me - they would send it out by courier. Until one day, I received a duplicate shipment that I had not ordered. I called them and explained. It took 20 minutes on the phone long-distance to convince someone to take the stuff back. And at that, I had to drive to the store with the stuff. And I had to call them back later and threaten them with legal action because they didn't take the charge off my credit card. A friend of mine had a similar experience, and my father had a similar experience with a (now-closed) Staples in a different state.

so for me, it's Office Depot or Office Max.