The show MUST go on

 So I had a presentation last night at 7:00 PM. For some reason, I thought it started at 7:30 PM, but when I double checked, I was wrong. That knocked off a half-hour of last-minute prep time. Trying to sneak just one more sample into the presentation. I like to open my calls a half hour before the presentation to give people time to get settled and chat. 

Well, my laptop did NOT want to log into Zoom. I rebooted TWICE, and nothing. I still had internet, and I could log in from my iPad, but not the laptop. Now it's 6:40, and I KNOW that people are going to be trying to log in. 

ACK! Plan B - thank goodness the portable design wall was empty. I grabbed it and flew up to the office and installed the wall behind me. No time to put things on the wall - it was blank. Thankfully, the two presentations were on the shared drive, so I had easy access to them. I grabbed my iPad and my paperwork, and I was OK. Holy -- that was a wee bit of scrambling, but it WORKED. 

The lighting is terrible in the office for Zoom, but thankfully, most of my stuff was on the slides. And THANKFULLY, I had transferred EVERYTHING to the slides. I decided to NOT do any live demos last night, and that worked out just fine! 

Of course, when I went back after the presentation, I was able to log in. Go figure. Well, I'll try to not leave it so late tonight to test that link. It all worked out, and everyone was OK with it. 

Thanks for the WONDERFUL suggestions about that picture. On my morning walk, I was very tempted to let the entire thing go, and it was garbage day yesterday. We had only one small bag of garbage, so I didn't bother putting our cart out. The frame is still sitting here, and I hope to deal with it today. I did get rid of all the other boxes and software that were sitting here. 

There are a few more things on the floor to deal with, and I MUST deal with those before I add anything to the pile. That's been part of my problem in the past. OH - this won't take long, and this won't take long, and soon I have an insurmountable stack that - well, I never get anything done. I'm learning!

I ran around the house like a crazy person yesterday as I prepped for the Group Quilt presentation. Oh boy - I dug stuff out that I haven't seen in a long time. Guess what? I've found EVERYTHING - well, almost. I did find the article on the lost quilt - that was neatly filed in the filing cabinet. Gosh - filing things works - imagine that!!! And it took less than five minutes to find it in the filing cabinet. 

When I went to pull out a group project, I realized that the fabric and notebook are in the box, but the blocks are not. Shoot - now where could they be? I've no idea where to search, as in my mind, they were in that project box. I think I have that one in EQ8, so I'll dig out that picture and use it. 

I still have a couple of quilts to photograph this morning, and then I can assemble everything. As I was doing this and putting ALL my group projects together, I had this urge to compile the photos and stories in a book. And then I realized - OH MY GOD -- that's what my mother would do! OK - so I confess, the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree!

Now let me find some pictures for you. I took so many pictures, and they are all sitting in my e-mail. I must sort from Group Quilts to blog posts. OK -- I got half of the group quilt photos edited, and I found the pictures for today's blog post. 

I didn't get a lot of sewing done - I did work on trimming the arcs for the double wedding ring, but I did spend a good part of the day making samples for the presentation last night. I've become very good at taking photos. I have learned how to take screenshots of the sewing machine screen with ZERO reflection. Did you know that you can use voice commands to take a picture with an Android phone? Oh yes - I do it all the time. 

By the way -- I would say that most of what I've learned over the years has been because of playing, reading, and doing. Yes - I've learned some stuff in class from a teacher, but I'm so not good at that. And then I get to pass along the knowledge to those that do learn better from a teacher. My brain is about to bust with all the new things I've learned. 

Here are some crazy things that I unearthed in the office yesterday. I found the brown paper from a package sent to me by The Quilt Patch, which was in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Sadly, they have since closed. I LOVED that store. The date - 2013! Yes - I saved the stamps; Kathleen would have killed me otherwise!!!

Packaging 

OH MY GOD -- why oh why do we hang onto this stuff. I wrote a lengthy letter to my phone service provider about some crazy situation with a service change on my home phone. Of course, they would never respond to me, but I still had the letter. Why? It's gone. But I got a good chuckle over what seemed like a life or death situation. 

A letter to Bell

As I was cleaning out the embroidery software box, I found the little container for the Dongle. That was a security device to make the software work. Hmmm - the container is there, but no Dongle. I wonder where that is? So at least, I can say that I did use this software. Whether I got my money's worth from it - I don't know. I suspect that I used it for some lettering purpose and probably had no clue what I was doing. Anyway, the little container is gone. 

The empty dongle box

I grabbed a handful of receipts from that box and went through them. Some of the stuff got filed (well put in the "to be filed" pile, some got tossed in the shredding box, some of the paper got recycled. What a hoot to go through the receipts. I found this one for our Christmas Day movie - in 2013!!! I think this was the FIRST Christmas Day movie event. There were four of us, me, DH, M, and her boyfriend. If you have seen this movie, you know it is NOT the best movie to take your teenager to. It was pretty racy with the wild times of the 80s. Now I know where we went wrong!!!!  But what a laugh I had as I sorted through this stuff. And now that handful is gone—time to grab a new one for today. 

A movie receipt

I found old notes that brought back some good memories with our sewing group that is no more. And I found this bag of friendship stars marked EXTRA. From the variety of names, I wonder what they were for and how can you have friendship star blocks with NAMES on them classified as EXTRA? We must have done a project where we made multiple blocks, and they went into various quilts? I sent a couple of notes to people yesterday to get a feel for what they thought those blocks were for. A couple of ideas surfaced, but no one remembered exactly. 

EXTRA signed friendship blocks

I think they had been made for people we knew who had gotten sick, and we made them a quilt. So now I'm sitting with a few extra friendship blocks with people's names on them. Two names I recognize, the rest I do not. That's hilarious! I guess next time, instead of saying EXTRA, I should indicate extra for what!!!!

Anyway --- that was loads of fun, and that's the reason why I can't just dump the entire contents of some of these boxes in the recycling. Nope - I'm going to enjoy the process of getting rid of it!!! It makes sense that I'm the one doing the sorting. No one else could appreciate the memories! 

I hope you realize that I think of you when I go for my walks. What am I going to offer up for a cleaning task tomorrow? I often think of it the day before. Today, the task is to pick ONE thing that you are on the fence about - like my picture. You know you don't want it or even need it, yet you feel compelled to hang onto it. If you need some advice, send me a picture, and let's see what the others think about your item. I won't publish your name, so no one can judge. I got two EXCELLENT suggestions for the picture which I'm going to see if I can pull off. Both are great. 

On that note, I'm off to get started on a busy day of prep. I have two presentations tonight, and I'd like to get some sewing done, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. My Group Quilt presentation is tomorrow morning, so I have to be ready for that by tonight - or at least take the last few pictures. 

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!