{PHFR} Tom Kitten's Quilt

Joining the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter.

{Pretty}

I finally finished Tom Kitten's baby quilt.  It looks quite {pretty} I think, with the pictures above his bed from Peter's Old House.  We had picked up a used copy of the book from a book sale a couple of years ago, but some of the pages were scribbled on when we bought it (it pays to check children's books thoroughly!) and so I used what was salvagable here.

{Happy}

The quilt's usual place of residence, if a term of less than five days placement can be ascribed the term 'usual', is on the feeding chair.  That would be the feeding chair I found on Gumtree following Sukie's living room post from last week.  Not that Tom Kitten will be fed on this chair, he apparently prefers the pillow and the bed setup we have had going for the last 9 months.

{Funny}

Tom Kitten the climber!

In her post last week Sukie alluded to the sofa she chose on Craigslist not having the upholstery she quite expected.  Well, this chair did not have the upholstery I expected.  I had thought it was a particular IKEA rocking chair (the slant of the wood looked right), but Mr Provincial had to go and pick it up because we had to take the carseats out of the car to get it home.  When it came home it was fake suede, not cotton like the IKEA ones, and rather dirty suede at that!

Dirty to the point where I would probably not have taken, had I been there.  But, what's done is done.  So I hunted around on line and found a recipe for washing fake suede.   It called for half a cup cheap shampoo and half a cup white vinegar.  And, you know what - it worked!  Rendering us a nice, clean, if useless, feeding chair for Tom Kitten's room.  Hey, at least there is a place to store the quilt.  Because, well we live in the tropics so it's not likely to see any use any time soon.

{Real}

Well my original {real} was this photo which shows when I started the quilt, oh May of last year!  Giving the project a gestation period of 9 months just like Tom Kitten.

But, my current real is the ridiculousness of  service life which sees my husband called in for work at 4am following four phone calls between the hours of 3am and 4 am which have rendered me wide awake at said ridiculous hour of the morning and writing this post.  The reason for this early start - a practice call-up followed by a pack march.  One would have thought one phonecall sufficient for that, wouldn't one?

And while it is apparently perfectly reasonable for the rest of the unit to start at 6:30am for the SAME task, my husband's company has a (truly struggling to keep an even tone here) interesting commander who has decided that his company needs to be ready to go at 5:30 for the 6:30 task and that the officers need to be in at 4am.  Why, is unfathomable.  Coming on the back of a series of similarly inane finish times for no legitimate reason in the last fortnight, I am feeling supremely cross.  Not to mention the fact that Tom Kitten actually slept through the night last night so I could have had a reasonable night's sleep!  Grrr.