Shameful mystery project

I would come right out and tell you what this shameful mystery project of mine is, so that we could all wallow in the shame together and so that you could maybe tell me that you, too, have completed similarly shameful projects that are also mysteries because I don't know of them which means you've not told Finny of your shameful ways (shame!), but I thought it might be more fun to let you guess what it is that I'm working on that is so shameful that even though I've been confronted with similar suggestions in the past, I've always ignored them because I found them to be, well, shameful.

And that was probably the longest and most grammatically horrifying sentence I (or maybe anyone else) has ever written. Sheesh. Slap me.

Anyway, my point is not to scare you with my shameful writing but rather to give you some shitty clues (including the not helpful photo collage) so that you can guess what shameful project I'm working on using the following materials:

(This is shitty clue #1) brown Kona cotton left over from a recent zippered pouch project, white muslin left over from some random projects I don't recall, red fleece left over from the scarves I made two Christmases ago, adhesive Velcro left over from a recent project during which I determined that adhesive Velcro was never to be used again for anything I planned to wear or use more than once.

Shitty clue #2: Just because I find this to be a shameful project, there are manyMANY people out there who think these types of projects are adorable, hilarious, necessary for survival and so on. So, you know, it's not like I'm making a fleece and Velcro dildo here or anything. Which might be painful rather than shameful, but let's move on.

Shitty clue #3: The final product of this shameful project isn't for me. Yes. That is correct. I'm making shameful things for others because that's the kind of evil giver that I am. Be my friend?

Shitty clue #4: I don't know. See - that's a pretty shitty clue.

I went home from work last night with the premise for this shameful project just acookin' away in my mind, but had to temper the shameful inspiration with a condition. The condition was that I could only make this thing if I could source all the materials from stock on hand in Finny's Closet Stash of Horrors.

Part of me *knew* I didn't have everything I needed, so I think my secret inner self thought that it was saving me from my evil outer self by making this condition with my whatever self so that I wouldn't go home and create this abomination, but as it turns out, having that many selves bouncing around in one's head means that there's not enough room in there to recall exactly what one has on hand in the Closet Stash of Horrors and WHOOPSY I did have everything I needed.

It also means that one's head is Crazy.

Oh.

I guess I *will* make this shameful thing that will have Bubba rolling his eyes at me for the foreseeable future, even though he agreed that, so far, it was being executed expertly and that my skillz were sharp for such shameful applications.

Some people can build houses, I can craft shameful things. We aren't all dealt an even hand, friends. Sorry to tell you.

So, I set out to start this shameful thing last night, after we'd finished dinner and during the Monday Night Massacre known as the Broncos play the Chargers. Oh, L.T., what has happened?

Thankfully, I had The Shame to distract me. And, ironically, while crafting The Shame from scratch and without a real pattern (shitty clue #5), I realized I was having one of those rare and blessed sewing moments where everything I sew does not turn to shit.

I'm not going to go as far as saying that my sewing turned to gold, because this is The Shame we're talking about here, but the usual events that mark my Everything I Sew Turns to Shit moments were mercifully missing.

So, you know, the thread didn't fly out of the needle every other stitch, my bobbin didn't start balling itself up in a big nasty temper tantrum, I didn't cut on the wrong fold or sew something inside out or, like, sew my sleeve down to the table.

I felt, at one point, like I should pull some of my other WIPs out of the pile and put my good sewing juju to work on unshameful projects, but alas, I was shoulder deep in red fleece and making muslin ruffles using that handy trick I learned from Amy Butler when I made that tunic, so I forged ahead - wasting my Everything I Sew Does NOT Turn to Shit time making The Shame.

I'm sure this will come back to haunt me when I'm making that jacket from Chic & Simple Sewing, but for now I'm just grateful that cutting up semi-big swaths of stash fabric (shitty clue #6) for a final project that, while shameful, will not be useless or a horribly executed waste of time or trash can fodder.

Tonight I hope to get on to the final details of this shameful business, which will turn its Shame level up to 10. And for those of you who haven't had to turn a knob on a radio/stereo/receiver in this lifetime because you're younger than I am and have only had audio equipment with touchwheels or buttons, I have two things to say to you:

1. Fuck you

2. In the olden days there were big knobs on stereo receivers that went from 0 - 10 (or 30 or 40 or whatever depending on the power of your particular device) and "turning it up to 10", for us kids, was, like, the most extreme way to express something. We also said "rad" a lot and "hella", but that's another story for another day.

Also, I still say, "rad" a lot.

Also, if "turning it up to 10" wasn't extreme enough to express the radness of something, like, say, a TV show or song on the radio, another popular phrase which we (Bubba and I) still use frequently today, was "break off the knob!"

As in, "This radio station is so rad, you should just break off the knob!" Usually this was followed by the DJ exclaiming the "Hundred thousand watts of music power!" or some such nonsense, but since this is a lesson in Shameful Crafting and not in Finny's An Old Lady, let's just focus on you entering your guesses in the Guess The Shameful Project Contest.

Go.