Thursday, January 20, 2022

I had quite a few decluttering tasks on my list today but I managed to get them all done. Well not done, but they each had thirty minutes of my time.

Somewhere about this time last year I made a note to myself to clean my filing cabinet. When I cleared my unfinished reminders at the end of the year I brought the task forward to today. I managed to get through a number of files and I’ve cleared up a lot of space in my filing cabinet. I’ll carry on and maybe I’ll be able to combine my two filing cabinets into one.

I was on a scrap mission today. I try to sort through my scraps every Thursday morning. My thirty minutes and more were over before I even got to the bottom of the scrap basket on my cutting table. I’m pretty good at cutting scraps to various useful sizes but I’m to the point that I don’t have enough space to store them all. My declutter guru would say I should be getting rid of them but I’m not quite ready for that yet. So I started two new bins, sorted by size and colour and I’ll see where that takes me.

And the decluttering task for the day was dealing with fabric. Again I went well over my thirty minutes but didn’t get through it all. I’m working on the fabric in my glass cabinet and I was able to sort quite a few fabrics into my fat quarter basket; larger pieces (but not yardage) went into various bins sorted by colour. By the time I was finished I really couldn’t say that I had achieved anything or made much progress.

I finished up my January piecing challenge this afternoon – four placemats made from the Guild Challenge fabric. I went ahead and sandwiched them but I’ve no idea when they might get quilted. They are due at the Guild’s year-end party but I’ll likely miss it (in favour of sewing in Panorama) so I don’t think there is any rush.

I haven’t made any cards for a couple of weeks so I got started back at that today. I’m still in plenty of time for February dates but I like to keep ahead of the calendar.

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

It was an intense two-day session with Stacia and Deloise and I was so tired last night I went to bed shortly after eight. I managed to stay awake and read until almost ten and then slept right through to this morning.

The first day of sewing was a group project. Stacia gave each of us a pattern for Christmas last year and we had decided to work on that together. I worked a bit ahead but was quite happy to know that this was a project we’d be continuing together in the next few months. We already have a three-day session planned for February. I accomplished more than the one basket but the rest are in bits and pieces; I put this one together mainly to see how it would look.

My second-day project was also courtesy of Stacia. The last time we stitched together I was looking through some of her magazines and found a pattern I really liked. Stacia said I was welcome to take the magazine home with me. When I was going through magazines in my decluttering mode I found the magazine and still very much wanted to make it. Although I have started checking my pots for signs of my crocuses I know it is too early. Hopefully it will still be crocus season when I finish this one.

Today was a cross stitch day and I feel like it has been a good break. I didn’t get as much finished as I would have liked because I kept winning lives on Candy Crush and it is so hard to turn it off when you are on an eight-game winning streak. I’m enjoying this new Peppermint Purple stitch-along and the cross stitches in the pattern make it a bit different from last year’s. I thought I’d have enough of the border done on last year’s model to move my hoop and take a photo but I didn’t get there today.

Sunday, January 16, 2022

My decluttering tasks today were minimal because I’d taken care of my kits yesterday. I remembered a few more UFOs that I needed to add to my list. Two of them are projects I’ll be working on with Stacia and Deloise over the next two days but I already know neither of them will be completed. I’ll be behind on the decluttering tasks next week because I don’t intend to even attempt them while we’re sewing.

I had some Guild work to attend to this morning as well as my own decluttering task – clearing off my desktop. Can you believe I spent half an hour at it and still didn’t get everything done? I managed to wrap two packages for the mail; I put a letter into one of them and was able to easily pull some notepaper from the drawer I sorted out yesterday. I have all the important things taken care of so I guess that’s all that counts.

I’ve been quilting most of the day. Both Stacia and Deloise had the same advice for my three “odd” blocks so I finished them and a couple more up before a late lunch. I’ve done a few more blocks this afternoon but I’m still only half-done. I’m going to put it away for now and do some set up for our stitching day tomorrow.

If I have time before supper I’ll walk up to the mailbox to post a letter.

Saturday, January 15, 2022

I have a lot of computer tasks that happen in the middle of the month so I started my day working on those. I had a sewing room declutter task as well as a general declutter task so they were next on my list.

I knew this week in the sewing room declutter wouldn’t be easy – we hadn’t dealt with any fabric yet. Today’s task was to go through our UFO’s and decide if we still wanted them. I decided my Wild Geese Wednesday project could go; the flying geese I had already made went into my Community Quilts bin for use somewhere. I’m not sure how it happened but I had two bins with bits and pieces of the same pattern – I combined those. One bin had some pieces for my scrappy quilts but I had moved those projects to some drawers so I put those bits and pieces together in one place. I should have set the timer because I know I spent way more than thirty minutes on the task.

Tomorrow we are dealing with kits so while I was sorting my UFOs I took note of anything that might be considered a kit – patterns and fabric picked but no sewing done yet. I’m not as organized as you might think after all this because the only piles I looked at were those on top of my table and the ones on top of my fabric cabinet. I made a list of all the UFOs and kits and I’ll see where I’m at with them in six months time.

My other declutter task was to clean out a drawer. The drawer I picked was fairly empty but by putting things away from that drawer I ended up cleaning out another drawer as well. I set the timer on this task but after thirty minutes I had papers all over so I had to continue. While I waited on the dishwasher after lunch I cleaned out a drawer in the kitchen as well.

It wasn’t until after lunch that I was able to get started on my quilting. I ran into an issue with a few of the blocks on the quilt so I had to take some photos and get some help from Stacia and Deloise. Still lots more blocks to do so no reason not to continue.

Back to it!