today i decided that i have a love/hate relationship with my dyson. after neglecting the floors for about 2 weeks, without even a quick swiffer in between - between the two of us and the two cats, the floors - as you can imagine - were disastrous. i swear there was a thin layer of fur covering just about every floor surface. (okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but, there definitely was a layer of fur in parts.) never having hardwood floors before, i purchased this handy-dandy tool called a 'hard floor tool', which is supposed to attach to my telescope reach handle, so i could just vacuum the floors (from a standing position), rather than on my hands and knees, using the hose & an attachment brush. save our backs, shall we? anyways. obviously, the engineers at dyson do not have pets. or are really, really short or do not want to save their backs, because the telescope reach isn't tall enough to vacuum from a standing position. in fact, instead of holding the handle, i'm vacuuming while holding the hose. and i'm only 5'3". i can't even imagine the angst and frustration of someone taller than me trying to vacuum with this 'telescopic reach'. so, in my frustration, i called dyson. and they don't have an extender for the extender. instead, it was suggested to me to just attach the hard floor tool to the hose, and use it that way. i explained to them that, that would defeat the purpose, as i wanted to vacuum standing rather than on my hands & knees. sigh. i feel so defeated by my vacuum cleaner. and to think i loved her for so long...until hardwood floors came into my life...

but anyways. now for some quilty stuff:

i arrived to work yesterday, to find 2 packages waiting for me, one of which contained this:



8 fat quarters from riley blake's wheels collection, to make what? another crazy eights quilt, of course! this will be the 7th crazy eights quilt i've made. what can i say - i just love the pattern! but today, i had a revelation. previously, i've literally spent hours and hours separating the squares - a, b, c & d - into piles for each block - each which consist of one 'a', one 'b', two 'cs' and two 'ds'. so, instead of just wading through the whole pile of squares like before, i just switched up the fabrics - so, for each block, square a had fabric #1 on top, square b had #2, and so on and so forth. and let me tell you, it worked like a charm. only minutes instead of hours were spent separating the blocks into piles:



aren't they cute?!? i am really, really resisting the urge to start sewing, because of two things: 1.) i need to be at work in about 2 hours, and 2.) i know if i start, the other things that need to be done today (ie., empty dishwasher, declutter kitchen counter) will be neglected. but, on the upside, i will have a good start on my blocks... ok! enough already. i need to stop.

one last thing before i go for today:



on lululemon's website. i can't decide if it's funny. or if it's gross. or funny & gross. i'll let you decide.