Saturday, February 24, 2018

Pat’s flight home was an hour late last night; I was late to be by the time we ordered a pizza and ate it. We were up early and even though we sat around with our coffee we still managed to be out the door before 9:30. Pat had to pick up a parcel at the post office and I told him I’d take him out for breakfast. We were seated at Magpie’s before the Saturday morning rush; a meal at Magpie’s does me for the day so there was not need to stop for lunch and, therefore, I’ve managed to get a lot done today.

My fourth week of my online sampler series was released on Friday so that was my first task of the day. And with the end of the month drawing near I wanted to finish a few more of my monthly UFO Challenge – Bloom. I’m already looking forward to the announcement for next month but I may still be able to get a few more blocks done before then. Even if I don’t, I’m well ahead of where I was at the beginning of the month.

I was looking for a quilt pattern this morning and decided I needed a better spot for storing my quilt patterns. I had a basket that would work very well but it was full of cross stitch magazines and leaflets that I didn’t think I wanted any longer but wasn’t ready to send them all to the thrift store. I sorted them and added a few to a pile for the fibre people; I took some photos of a few of the leaflets and have them posted for sale on one of the cross stitch groups I belong to. I have a stack more to go but I’ll add them a few at a time and see how it goes; I’ve already passed along three of them to a local friend.

Once that work was done I reloaded the basket with my quilt patterns but, so far, I still haven’t come across the pattern I was looking for. I suspect it is in a bin or a bag somewhere because I know it was sone that I had fabric picked for. Someday all my baskets and bins will be empty but, for now, I’m on the hunt for just one more bin to store my Bloom blocks in.

I have more hand stitching to do for the evening, and if that gets finished I have more knitting projects!

Friday, February 23, 2018

The snow arrived this morning, as predicted. It started earlier than I thought it would and it has been snowing off and on all day. During the early part of the morning the snow was sticking to the road but that seems to have cleared up some. A couple of cars were sliding down the hill and it was slow-going for the cars coming up the hill, but I think they’ve ploughed and sanded since then. I ran my car for a bit while I had lunch as the battery has sounded not-quite-right on my last couple of trips out; mechanic says it is charging fine so I guess it is the cold weather it doesn’t like.

Thursday sewing got a little more interesting yesterday. We have another quilter joining us; I knew Jessie from my first year at the Guild but I think she dropped out the following year. We had some good laughs yesterday and decided that we’ll stitch every Thursday rather than taking the day off when we have a Guild demo or meeting. We’ve picked out a new project and I’ll try to get some fabric for it pulled out over the weekend. The pattern is called Supernova; I think Gail is going to do it in colours from dark to light radiating out and Jessie says hers will be scrappy. I haven’t decided yet what I’ll do, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be scrappy; it is made up of 6.5″ half-square triangles and my scraps aren’t large enough for those measurements.

And speaking of Thursday projects, I have my Scrappy String Star quilted. I wasn’t sure how I would do the quilting but a friend sent me a link to an on-line free-motion quilting challenge so I decided to try a couple of her ideas – the meander and the echo with a meander in the middle. I wanted to try some more feathers but even when drawing them roughly with the Frixion pen I knew it wasn’t going to work out. So I dug out a couple of books, did some online looking and got some ideas. I’ll add the border and, hopefully, be stitching it down tonight.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

What did I do today? A bit of sewing, some errands, and a bit more sewing. I used to lead a more interesting life but I guess as long as I’m enjoying myself it doesn’t matter if I’m entertaining anyone else.

I spray basted a couple of projects this morning – a wall hanging (my Thursday project) and some coasters (for the Cranberry Hall members event). I thought the coasters would be quicker than they were so I didn’t get started on the wall hanging. I talked to my Thursday partner this afternoon and she had problems with hers, took it all apart, then started over so I guess no matter what I get done before we meet tomorrow I’ll be ahead of Gail.

Remember that bed frame I was so excited to get for free? It sat in the spare bedroom and I finally measured it on the weekend and realized it is about 14″ to narrow to fit the mattress. The frame is an Ikea item so I guess their queen size is different from our queen size. I called one of the thrift shops early in the week and they came and picked it up this morning just before lunch. As it started to snow mid-morning as soon as they were gone I headed out to do some errands in case the roads got bad. They look pretty clear now even though it snowed through most of the afternoon.

The snow has changed a few of my plans – had I been able to follow through on them I might have had a more interesting post tomorrow. Tonight is the first night of our Cinematheque series but with a bit of snow on the road and the temperatures below freezing I think I’ll stay home and watch something on Netflix. If the weather improves tomorrow I’ll be able to go Thursday night. I was looking forward to heading over to Texada tomorrow but the roads over there are reported to be nasty; I don’t like our driveway at the best of times but with snow I don’t even want to attempt it. It is too bad as this is one week where I would have had an extended bit of time to spend. Oh well, Spring will be here sometime.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

As I do on most sewing days my first stop was at the post office. Our last performer left a shawl behind and I wanted to mail it off to her while I still remembered. I had a bank deposit ready to go as well as a parcel card for something that couldn’t be delivered for Pat yesterday. From there it was on to the bee.

I had a good day of sewing today – not too many seams had to be redone but still a few. I have another border added to the “mother ship” on my Circa 2016 project. I think I’m understanding the on-point concept better but hopefully I will never have to do it again. I’m ready now to move on to the next border for the project – it involves 120 half-square triangles so it will keep me busy. I admit though that it is nice to see an end in sight.

Pat warned me that yesterday’s parcel at the post office might be very large and I’d probably need to lower the back seats to get his keyboard to fit. Since I had much of the back seat covered with my sewing machine, bags and bin I thought it would be best to come home and empty the car before heading out for the rest of my errands. But when I checked the mail there was another parcel card; I can’t pick that up until tomorrow afternoon so I decided to wait and get them both at the same time. Hopefully the second one isn’t as large and both packages will fit in the car at the same time. I’ll do the bank deposit tomorrow as well as some other shopping that needs to be done.

I’m tired tonight so I think I’ll finish off my knitting project and then find something else to start – that won’t be a problem as I have projects-in-waiting.