You can't handle the truth?

When I was little, my mother told me never to lie to her because she'd always find out. Having all of the characteristics of a type A first child (even though I had an older half-sister, psychology says our age gap of 13 years made us both only children), I took that to be gospel. I can't recall ever lying to her or to my dad, although there may have been times when it would have been easier for him, my surviving parent, if I had glossed over some of my teenage escapades, mild though they were.

Although she seemed to me a truthful person, my mother wasn't beyond some self-delusion. When she stepped on the scale, for example, she would hold onto the towel bar "for support." The fact that the scale reading was five or ten pounds lighter as a result never seemed to register with her. (like mother, like daughter: I insist the nurse is standing on the scale with me when I'm weighed at the doctor's office.

I've been working on some new quilt blocks that I imagined would be good at scrap-eating. The pattern is from a book called Quilt Mavens Perfect Paper Piecing. I really enjoy paper piecing for its precision qualities, which allow me creative exploration I would never attempt otherwise. Remember "Elvis?" He/it was paper-pieced, and inspired by the same book.

(Because this quilt was started the day Maurice Sendak died, it will be called Wild Things. Seems appropriate.)

As I was pulling fabric out of my bins, where the contents are divided by color groups, I realized there was a lot more room in them. So much so, in fact, that I probably could combine the blues and greens with the reds, oranges and yellows, freeing up an entire bin. I told myself, you are doing an amazing job of sewing through your stash! You'll achieve your goal! Pretty soon you'll get to fabric shop again! (Wait. What?)

Except ... I have a 7-pound bag of scraps that will be cat bed stuffing. I have a new bin overflowing with pieces that are large enough to be sewn into something else -- in the old days, I would have crammed those pieces back into the color bins. Oh, and I remembered that I had removed from the bins anything that looked like yardage and put those pieces on one of the closet shelves, separating them for a day of pillowcase sewing.

In short, it was just an optimal illusion.