Wednesday, March 2, 2022

I ended up with extra time today after all my tasks were finished. Of course I had an early start so even before breakfast I had finished with some web updates. I had a couple of monthly decluttering tasks that took some time. I cleaned and oiled my sewing machines and changed the needles. I also put a new blade in my rotary cutter after spending half an hour cutting up more 1.5″ scraps. I did some more transcribing from my journal that covered our East Coast vacation; I’m enjoying this more than I thought I would as I can see in my head some of the things I’m talking about and it also jogs my memory on things I had forgotten. Pat helped me connect my iPod to a set of speakers (the ones where the water jumps in time to the music). One of my decluttering tasks was to remove one thing from my sewing space that didn’t belong. I find I can’t use earbuds or ear phones so this will give me some music on Texada in my sewing space.

Because I’m caught up on my Botanical Garden project I only had one section of my Peppermint Purple to take care of today. I could have gone on to my Roses and Lace project but I decided I’d rather come back upstairs and start the quilting on my crocuses. The next instructions for the Botanical Garden project will come out on Friday so next week I’ll have a section on each of them to work on.

I had a lovely surprise in my mail today. Along with some tax documents and some sashiko thread that I had ordered I had a nice thank you card from Taylor. She also included a DQ gift card. On the next sunny day (definitely not today) I’ll try to persuade Pat to go for a drive and stop for a treat on the way home.

Pat has an online session tonight. I need a new knitting project for my evenings so maybe I’ll use that time to figure something out.

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

As of this morning I had more than 20 reminders on my task list – that can’t be right. Sadly it is; all of my April card reminders appeared on the list and then I had to add my UFO challenges for March. Then the UFO challenges I didn’t finish in February had to be added back into the list for some day when I have nothing else to do – LOL. I managed to clear off a couple of easy computer tasks but I failed to get all of my decluttering tasks done for the day. I’m not sure how that will affect the days following but, as far as I know, there is no limit to the number of tasks I can have on my list – just how many I can get done.

I had to go digging to find my UFO projects. My quilting project is a fun one – my Farmhouse quilt. I purchased backing for it awhile ago but then found some fabric I like better and I just may have enough for a backing. I’ll have to wait for a nice day to do the spray basting because most of my pins are already in use in projects waiting for me to quilt. The weekend is when I get a good stretch of time for quilting so it will wait because I have something else I want to quilt before I tackle that one.

My piecing UFO is also one I’m happy to get back to – That Fairy Tale Quilt. I had problems with one of the blocks and I can’t remember if I fixed it or if I just took it out in order to start over. I dug into the bin but there were no notes so I’ll have to study the pattern before I see where I need to start.

My scrappy UFO isn’t one I was really looking forward to but it is certainly one that I have enough scraps for – in fact I have bags and bags of strings. I wasn’t sure I would even remember how to make the string blocks so I put one together this afternoon. I’m going to need 42 of them and even by doing one every day I’m not going to be finished by the end of the month. When it is finished it will be a donation quilt.

Pat went out this morning and came home with two rhubarb plants. He saw someone selling them online. I’ve not had much luck with my rhubarb but I’m willing to try again. We will plant them on the deck where it is nice and sunny. He also put in an order for a bunch of strawberry plants which we will also put out on the deck. I said no to the raspberry canes – I have enough scratches from the blackberries I try to keep under control.

I have a couple of cards ready to have the binding stitched on so I’ll do that before supper. I’m in charge tonight – good thing it is Shrove Tuesday because I can handle pancakes!

Monday, February 28, 2022

I can’t really say it caught me by surprise but I still have a few outstanding projects on the go for February. My quilting UFO was finished with time to spare (I’ll get it posted to my website tomorrow) but I didn’t do so well in some other areas. Oh well, they will get added to my task list and maybe before the end of the year they will get done. If not, they’ll be added to my 2023 UFO Challenge list.

I managed to get a couple of things finished up over the last week. Taylor’s blanket was sent off and apparently she is enjoying it. I also got caught up on my Botanical Garden stitch-along.

I enjoyed our weekend on Texada. We got my Thunderbird hung in my stitching room.

I finished a couple of books and we did some re-arranging. Now that Pat has moved most of his equipment back to Powell River we were able to expand our living room.

I haven’t been idle today. I dropped off several bags at the thrift shop and finished a long-standing task to get the Guild blogs archived. The posts dated back to 2008 and I finished them up to 2020. I’ll present them to the Guild at our meeting on Thursday; I’m not sorry to see that particular reminder removed from my list.

I didn’t have a lot of sewing time today and I had neither my piecing challenge nor my scrappy challenge done for the month. I thought I might have time to finished my scrappy challenge but I’m quitting now with four small blocks remaining.

Wednesday, February 23, 2022

How can it be that I stitch all day long and have so little to show for it. I’m keeping up with the weekly designs on my Peppermint Purple project but so far today I’ve only managed to finish two blocks on my Botanical Garden project. I’m not enjoying that one as much but a lot of it is my fault; I’m using a larger-count fabric than is ideal and I’m not sure the colours I picked are going to show up well. I can blame the designer for a couple of things though; the layout from block to block isn’t done well and she gave no hints as to colour choices. I look online to see what others have done and very few are following her patterns. And overall, there is so much green but I guess that should be expected in a garden.

The power on Texada is going to be off all day Friday. We originally thought it was going to be Thursday and Pat was thinking he might go across to keep a fire going and the place warm. Because I had already committed to my Thursday sewing group I wasn’t going to go along with him. We realized at lunch that the outage is for Friday so it was possible that I could cut my sewing time short and we could catch an afternoon ferry. We had pretty much decided this when the phone rang and Gail (the hostess) was cancelling as she had been called about a long-awaited appointment.

So we’ll go across tomorrow, get everything nice and warm and keep the fire going on Friday during the outage. We have pretty much given up on the internet over there so I’m not going to take my laptop. I’m looking forward to more hand stitching and some long sessions with my book.

Pat has an online session tonight so I’ll have time for a little more work.