Monday, January 24, 2022

The quilting is done but I haven’t accomplished much else. All of the thrift shops were either closed or don’t accept donations on Monday so my piles are piling up – not a good look for my decluttering.

Last night when I talked to Christy she mentioned that Taylor was “into” beading. I had just sorted through my beads; some were to be sent to the thrift shop and some went back into the drawer. It was a delight this morning to get all the beads into a container and mailed off to Taylor. How did I manage to collect all those beads? I took a class on embellishing quilts with beads but to the best of my knowledge I never did anything except one little square that we used in the class. At one time I was going to finish off some of Mum’s cross stitch projects with beads and I was going to use the same method on some of Pat’s Mum’s embroidery. Neither happened but I had almost every colour of bead I might need for those projects.

I was off to the post office this morning and made a stop at Walmart. My list was growing and I thought since I was out I’d make a stop. I had a nice chat with Carola (my neighbour from down the hill); I don’t see her much now that she is working and no longer with the Guild. I noticed one of the gas stations had boosted their prices to $1.72 something so I stopped on the way home and purchased gas at one of the stations that hadn’t yet raised their prices; still pricey at $1.64 something.

I found it hard to get back to quilting this afternoon even though I knew with a bit of effort I could get it done. I need to trim the edges down and get the binding done but I’m glad I’m over most of the work. It is my quilting UFO for January so it looks like I will get it done before the end of the month. It is also an April birthday gift so it will be done in plenty of time for that.

Pat has an event online tonight so I’ll do a bit of extra cross stitching – that is if I can stay off of Candy Crush!

Sunday, January 23, 2022

As I’ve been busy decluttering Pat has kept up with the areas I’m going through. We both think we are able to see the results in the house – at least Pat is smart enough to say he can see the results!

Yesterday when I passed the filing cabinet on to Pat he was inspired to clear out one of the many boxes he brought with him from Port Coquitlam and has never unpacked. I gave him some file folders and he gave me back a 4″ pile of papers that need to be shredded. When I suggested we pay to have them shredded he said that was expensive and maybe he should just keep them. I don’t care if I wreck three shredders in the process he is not putting that stuff back in a box or in the filing cabinet!

I spent all morning clearing off my desktop. I reconciled some bank accounts (for myself and the Hall), paid some bills (for the Hall), and did a bit of work on one of the clues for the Guild mystery. Some of the papers I had to deal with needed to be filed and, since I was in the filing cabinet anyway, I sorted out a couple more files. I also wrapped three more packages for the mail and I still have more mail that I need to send out.

This afternoon I’ve been working on the final border of my quilt. I knew I wanted curves in the border but I wasn’t sure how capable of that I would be. I marked the fabric, changed my mind, and marked the fabric again before I finally decided what I was going to do. Once the marking is done the quilting goes quite quickly.

I didn’t want to have too many knots to have to bury but my design didn’t work out that way. I have half of the borders done and one of them has the knots buried. Another criteria for my quilting is that I don’t want it to show much – mission accomplished on that one.

Back to my knots now!

Saturday, January 22, 2022

I accomplished several thirty-minute jobs this morning and I’m happy that so far I’m able to keep up with everything. The first reminder today was some Guild work and I spent all of my thirty minutes working on our blog archives. They are almost ready to be proof-read and put on a thumb-drive for keeping in the archive collection. I’m debating about whether to make another copy for the library; if members take the thumb drive out can I be sure it will come back virus free?

A weekly task came up to clean out a drawer. I’m still working on a cabinet in my sewing room so I started on a small one. Then I moved to another small one and by the time my timer went off I was onto a third and larger drawer. I thought I’d find lots to donate but it turned out that a lot of it can be put to use or simply went into the garbage/recycle.

Cleaning out my bin of pre-cuts was an eye-opener – I had no idea I had so many. There are three large-sized fat quarter bundles, a jelly roll, four charm packs and way way too many mini charm packs. There were also a couple of batik collections; I must have won them or was gifted them because I rarely purchase batiks. I organized the individual fat quarters into colours and tied them together. In order to use up some of the pre-cuts I’ve decided that every six months I’ll repeat the process and find a pattern to use up one of the bundles. This time I’ve picked a pattern (that came from Stacia) that will use up the four charm packs. Two of the packs are the same fabric and I have two individual ones but for the pattern I’m using I’m pretty sure they will all go together.

Another task on today’s list was cleaning up the kitchen/living room. While I was wiping down the drawers in the fridge I found some apples that were past their best-before raw-eating date so I made an apple crisp for supper. It was after one before I got to my quilting but I’ve managed to get all the blocks quilted. I’ll wind another bobbin and I think I can get one of the borders done before supper.

Friday, January 21, 2022

Today was the last day of my sewing room declutter challenge. Many of the tasks I’ll be repeating every week or month until I have the tasks complete. Today we were to be clearing out our bins. The leader specifically said we were to take out our garbage bin and donate the bins we had set aside. My hallway is full of bags to be taken to the thrift shop but they are still closed so they will sit there for awhile longer.

For quite awhile now I’ve wanted to rearrange some of my bins so that’s what I was up to today. No doubt the bin I want will still be at the bottom of the stack but they are a bit more accessible now. I had a small filing cabinet that I stored “stuff” in but there was no way I could get at it even if I had remembered what was in it. I emptied it out, donated quite a few things and moved a smaller stack of bins into that space. There was no need for the filing cabinet; my initial thought was to put it out on the boulevard for free but when I asked Pat if he could use it he thought he could so it moved down two levels and it is in his storage area. Out of my sight, out of my mind.

We never dealt specifically with pre-cuts over the course of the 21 days so I’ve added that task to my list for tomorrow. I have my pre-cuts all together in a wicker basket but I think they can probably be better organized. It will be a quick task and when it’s done I’ll feel like I have put my hands on everything in the room.

I’m back to quilting this afternoon. It is going well but there is still so much to do. It is a big quilt with thirty blocks. I haven’t even started to think about the three borders I’ll need to work on next.