Down on the Farm - Block Ten - DONE!!!!

You are right -- 30 years is NOT old for a house, but the electrical stuff in the house is old! Many of the plugs were outdated or broken. That is not good news for safety and for our environment! Yet again!!!

OH MY -- I never thought about the QUILTsocial blog posts and AI. But you are right—you cannot tell it is AI. The voices and conversation are super smooth and sound just like two people casually talking - literally the way you would have a conversation in a podcast. DH says, I should be happy that it's NOT my voice talking. The feature only seems to be available on the Android phone. 

I'm still dealing with the aftermath of the electrician - pulling garbage from the boxes and flattening them for recycling. I wonder how many screws that are made are never used? All kinds of hardware come in anything you buy, and many times, they don't get used. Yep -- I could keep them, but what will I do with them? 

Then I have five boxes of stuff left over from when M's friend helped her clean the room, and I need to deal with those since I found someone who will come and pick up the books. So that is all in the hallway - either upstairs or on the main floor. And I'm trying to pack at least one box for my SIL, who wasn't able to get everything in her car. I should have checked her car before she left, since I could have packed some of this stuff in there. Take it out of the boxes and tuck it in the cracks! 

The house is in an uproar, and it needs to be tidy by Tuesday when the cleaning people come. I haven't told you the story about why we have cleaning people rather than a cleaning lady. But that will have to wait for another day. 

And it was only last night, when DH said, " Put the chicken in the oven," that I GASPED. I had completely forgotten to get the door fixed on the big oven. How long ago did that glass shatter? Goes to show that we do NOT use our oven often. Instead, we use the toaster oven. And it works for us. 

On top of all that commotion, I'm trying to get the Down on the Farm quilt finished!! I finally have the tenth block complete. My computer is having a hissy fit this morning and will not let me open email. So, before I finish, I'll try rebooting to see if that helps. 

As I've mentioned, I'm not only making the quilt, but pattern testing it at the same time. That means checking the sewing instructions against the diagrams and the cutting instructions. I almost got it right. I am out by two pieces, so I've requested an updated copy and will find those two missing pieces. When each block has 100+ pieces (don't panic - they are big blocks at 13½" by 20½"), it isn't a big deal to be missing a couple of pieces. It's the darn grass -- there is so much of it!!! But since the pattern is being sold, I know that if people find a discrepancy like that, they will not be happy, so I'll find it! 

The first two blocks on the final row.

And I have the next block cut out. This one should be much easier! I need to move on to other things, so I need to get these last two blocks complete ASAP. 

Block eleven is cut out.

Although you can't tell, I was out in the garden on Friday. I spent my half hour or more and did some more weeding. Yep -- as soon as I get the weeds out, they start to grow again! And that darn creeping vine -- you just can't get rid of it, and I didn't do a good job last time because I had run out of time. 

The creeping vine also grows between the rocks at the back of the pond. I don't have a picture for this, but imagine me playing Twister on the rocks as I attempt to pull out the vines. I had my little knee cushion and was facing head down towards the pond. One slip and OOPS - I was going to take a bath. Thankfully, no one got wet, and the weeds are gone! 

The rocks on the pond are free of weeds.

I never see all the fish at once, but they seem to be thriving, and once we get new outlets in the backyard, there should be no danger of them dying this coming winter. I have a new aerator and the heater still works. 

I am going to try to stick to my 30 minutes once a week to maintain and repair a few things in the backyard. If I'm in a good mood and the weather is decent, I may spend more time. I also need to find one of those hand-weeding tools -- it has a curved blade and looks mighty dangerous. I could buy it online, but I want to buy it in person. While I hand-pick the weeds, some have tough roots, and the tool will help pull them out so they don't start regrowing immediately after I yank off the top. 

I am also trying to clean up the bedrooms, which are in a bit of disarray after the electricians moved furniture to access the outlets. I decided to start in Studio U, which is quite a mess, because I had cleared a table for my SIL to work on. OK -- so she did jigsaw puzzles! But all my quilts have literally been stacked in heaps in that room, and it is time to get it organized. 

This isn't quite the before picture, but there was batting all over the room, quilts and samples everywhere, and well, I need to get it organized. It's been a long time since I've done anything in that room. 

An uproar in Studio U.

The sewing table looks marginally better, and I've started pulling samples for my upcoming trip; the items on the left are the ones I'm taking. 

The after, which still looks messy.

The cutting table needs to be put back in place. I've moved a fair amount of stuff to its proper place in the guest room where there is a big black cubby bookcase. I have sorted the table runners, and they are in their proper case. I found some linen storage bags at the thrift store, and they work perfectly for table runners. Now I need to assemble all the small wall hangings, and they will go in another linen case. Hopefully I can find space on my rolling cart, which has resided in the upstairs hallway for a year. It needs to be put back in the guest room, but I have to finish packing my SIL's stuff first. 

What I need is to sort the samples into what I want and what I don't, and find homes for what I don't want. It sure would make life a lot easier. I'm going to have to do that with the quilts. There are so many that I will never use for anything. I've got to get that under control and soon!

All the batting bits got stored back in the closet. I swear that I emptied a lot of that out and was using it for that group of community project quilts, but more has come in!

The batting closet

I store my trimmed HSTs in that room. And there were stacks of them strewn around the room. So I gathered them up and put them away. 

HSTs to be sorted and put away.

I'm not going to go into much detail because I'll be covering this in my scrap class, but this is a tin of trimmed HSTs. 

A tin of trimmed HSTs

I got a chuckle because the box is so full that some of them seem to be exploding out of the bottom. 

HSTs trying to escape

Others that no longer fit in this tin are in plastic bags, stored by size, and yes, they are labeled. I found another tin while going through some stuff, so now I have a new space to store those HSTs. WAIT -- I also have a couple of tins in the basement, so I could easily pull one of those back into duty. 

More bags of HSTs

I am determined to get those triangles under control - just like I have with the rest of my scraps. It's the final frontier of the sewing space! So I sorted the triangles on the tray by color, and I'm working my way through them. 

Triangles ready to sew into HSTs

There was one basket of unsorted triangles, and I'm slowly sorting them and adding them to the tray. 

Triangles to sort 

I also found a basket of triangles, along with two other containers, in Studio U, and my plan is to sort through them all. Can I deal with them by the time I touch on this in my scrap class? Time will tell. 

Another basket of triangles to sort

Every day, I spend a bit of time dealing with a bag or a handful of the triangles and sorting them. 

Sorting triangles for HSTs

BUT --- this is the question. How small is too small, and that's all I'm going to say about this. 

How small of a scrap will you keep?

The tray looks a bit fuller now, although I've been sewing, so it looks much different this morning. 

Lots of triangles on the tray, ready to sew.

And when I got bored of sewing, I would press and trim a few. It doesn't matter what you keep, as long as you have a home for it, or you are working on it, or have plans to work on it. Hmmm --- could someone define that phrase - "plans to work on it!"

Trimming HSTs 

I have had to ban myself from going to the thrift store. The lure of finding some amazing puzzles at reasonable prices and having coupons to use is just too much! If I take two bags, I can bring home twice as many puzzles. Sigh.................. My name is Elaline, and I'm a hoarder. Let's just face reality. 

BUT - I am working on them, and my intent is to give them away. I now have three in my giveaway box and gave a couple to my SIL. All were ones that I had finished. 

I spotted this little gem, which looked intriguing. It wasn't expensive, so I bought it, and it only has 100 pieces. Thank goodness for that. 

An IMPOSSIPUZZLE

The pieces were fairly large and cut into two different shapes. Hmmm -- the shapes were the same, but the orientation was different. Each piece had two holes and two knobs, but half were horizontal, and half were portrait. I'll take a picture so you can see what I mean. 

Anyway, there was no way that you could identify which parts of the candy cane fit into another, so this is one puzzle that I tried every piece in every place. I started by making the border and then worked row by row. And yes, once or twice, the piece that fit was the LAST one I picked up. 

Working row by row

Thankfully, each piece clicked properly into its rightful place, and I could then verify the pattern. It didn't take that long, but it's the first time I've had to do that with an entire puzzle. 

Just the middle is left.

And there it is -- done!!

The puzzle is done!!!

And there's a random picture of Lexi sleeping. This is one of her favorite places. WAIT --- where the fan is sitting is her favorite place, and I think she is making a point - move the fan!!!

MOM - move the fan!!!!

I'm well on my way with the next puzzle. This month's theme for the Canadian Jigsaw Puzzle Association is wild animals. I bought this one because it reminded me of the safaris we took last year. It's only 500 pieces, but the shapes are very weird - a lot of circular ones with four holes, and ones with four tabs. It's good to have variety in shapes, pictures, and the number of pieces.  

The next puzzle

Do I have a technique? I usually start with the border (one piece is still missing) and then by color, but after that? Well, I will go piece by piece if necessary. 

The weather is totally wacko! Yesterday morning was cool but humid, so it felt clammy. Today it's cool and dry, so it feels cold. And then it heats up in the daytime. I'm OK with the weather, but it changes so frequently, and one day it's very humid, and the next day it's dry. I prefer dry over humidity. I think the girls do as well. 

We tried to keep Miss Murphy in the house last night, but she wasn't having anything to do with that. So we let her out, and she slept like the dead. I went out at 11 to bring her in, but she was dead weight, and I couldn't lift her up, and she wasn't moving. She came in about 6 AM and is fast asleep in Lexi's raised bed. I hope to take her off the meds on Tuesday, so we'll see how she reacts at night then. 

I'm madly listening to audiobooks while sewing, tidying, and cleaning. It's the e-books that I'm struggling with. That requires some dedicated time, and when I try to read before going to sleep, sleep comes quickly! Perhaps today, I can spend some time in the gazebo. 

On that happy note, it's time to get moving!!!

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!!!

When plans go awry

 Yesterday did NOT go as planned. Where have you heard that before? I would be embarrassed to check the date the box of long-arm supplies arrived at my house (Nov 21, 2021), but let's say it was a few years ago and it's been sitting there in pristine shape ever since. 

So imagine my surprise yesterday when I opened the box to pull out the leaders, only to discover that I had bought ONE leader, not a set of three. Good grief!!!!! 

Here is the situation with the long arm. You can see that the bottom leader is in bad shape, as with 20 years of repeated use, the right-hand side is badly stretched. The quilts still load OK, but the leader has seen better days. 

The bad shape of the leaders

Thankfully, I had only pulled one leader off the machine; otherwise, I would be in trouble while I waited for new leaders to arrive. I've already put in a request for TWO new leaders. I pin my quilts to the leaders - I do NOT float them. At first, everyone used to pin; then people floated because it took less time. But I think people are moving back to pinning (or attaching the bottom of the quilts somehow) because it is way more accurate than floating. 

But what I found under the leader wasn't good news. Those things are glued on with an inch-wide swath of glue. Oh joy!!!

The leaders are attached with a wide swath of glue.

That means the glue has to be removed somehow. I was going to use my GooGone to make that happen, but when I went to the laundry room to find the bottle, it was GONE! Seriously? I can't even blame anyone in the house for that because DH probably doesn't even know what the stuff is. Obviously, I was using it for something and never put it back. I still haven't figured out what that was. 

As I was sewing in the morning, I decided to try scraping the glue off with my screwdriver. I was changing the stitch plate on my sewing machine and had a screwdriver in my hand. That will work, but I need a wider tool. I opened the door to the cold storage room under the stairs, but it is filled with boxes for the sewing machines, and I had no desire to wade through them to reach the paint supplies and tools at the far end.  

Scraping the glue with a screwdriver

Did I mention that I was exhausted even with a nap and had zero desire to do anything? I contacted my friend and said I had a problem, and we settled on a plan where I went to her house to reload TWO leaders for her! 

When I arrived, her husband had scraped all the glue off her two rails, and they were nice and clean, with a touch-up of Goo Gone to remove the remaining residue. I need a husband like that. I mentioned it at dinner, and I got zero response!

Between what she had seen on YouTube and my tips from Jenny at Quilt Canada, we quickly got those new leaders on!! Yep—it works best with two people, but as we were working, I had an idea, and I will share it with you as soon as I get all the glue off my rail. 

The new leader on the long arm

I brought home their scrapers and Goo Gone in hopes of getting the glue off my machine and then loading the new leader. This will allow me to get back to quilting. That will be my goal for today. 

I found scraping to be a very messy, hard-on-the-hands job. So I'm going to take it in baby steps. 

I managed to get this section done with my supervisor watching. I used the old leader to protect the stuff under the long arm from getting covered in little bits of glue. It's going to be a long slog to make that happen, but I have all day. Then reloading the new leader shouldn't be an issue, even if I tackle it myself. I have a secret weapon. Plus I have an extra pair of hands if I need them. 

MOM - you are doing a great job!

And I still need to sew the metal bits into a channel on the bottom edge, to help load the quilts. It will take all day, but I have all day! I'm OK with that. 

It's just the procrastination that shocks me. I'm happy to wait things out for a very long time. Why is that? However, I am happy in a way because I didn't know about the magnets when I got the new leader, and I was going to install channels for the dowels and plastic clips. So it was good to wait, but I didn't need to wait that long. 

This is how Murphy handles the heat. The second we came inside from her walk, she ran outside and plunked herself in her small pond. We have a larger one, but it's so unwieldy to handle, and she manages just fine in this one. I think she went in multiple times because when I came back from Lexi's walk, there was water all over the floor.

MOM - I LOVE my pool

And then she sat outside with me in the evening. It was beautiful outside, and I was really thinking I should tackle some weeds, but I did not. I had a decent sleep, so I should be good for the day. And when it cools down a bit this evening, I can tackle one section of the backyard and those weeds. 

Murphy and I hanging out in the backyard.

I managed to put together a scrappy quilt backing for one of those eleven community project quilts I promised to do for someone. 

I started off with this stack of fabric and ran out, so I grabbed a bit more from the stack for the next quilt. 

Making a scrappy quilt backing

And here is the scrappy backing. 

The scrappy quilt backing

I still have this blue flannel to use on the remaining quilts. It's the small stack of blue on the left, as I had to use the piece in the middle for the backing above. After this one, there are still four that need backings. I may or may not have enough blue flannel for them all. And if I run out, then I'll grab another color from the storage room. 

The remaining four quilts

My goal is to use up all the blue flannel. The small bits go in the white bag and will be used to make scrappy quilt blocks for another quilt. Then the blue flannel will be used up! I'm getting there, and there are still several baskets of flannel in the storage room. Slow and steady, and it will get used up. 

But as I was looking around Studio B, with no immediate project pending, I spotted this. Actually, I was looking for something specific, which prompted me to go into this laundry basket. 

Two laundry baskets of clothing for T-shirt/memory quilts

Actually, there are three laundry baskets of T-shirts for three different people. If I were smart, I'd start by hacking off the bits I want to keep and get rid of the bits that I will not be using. That would reduce those baskets to possibly ONE. That would be a good mindless thing to do. I may do some of that in between scraping glue off the long arm. 

One more basket of T-shirts

And this was my quote in my morning tea. Yep --- so true!!!

Quote of the day

Oh my -- I have a date with Brooke this morning, and I'd better get this post edited and scoot out the door. 

Have a wonderful day. Stay cool - however you manage and travel safe, wherever you go. 

Ciao!!!


PS --- There is a Virtual Retreat on Saturday (starting at 6 PM) and another on Sunday (starting at 3 PM). I'll post the links on Friday. 

The aftermath of quilt retreat

OH MY --- I was exhausted when I got home. I had a decent sleep the night before, but it was short. Can you believe I went to bed at 6:30 last night and got up at 4:30 AM—that is a rarity for me. I had five minutes of awake time and 1 hour and 13 minutes of deep sleep! Phew --- I feel great this morning, and that was probably my best sleep score ever. Those sleep scores only give you excellent if the sleep duration is long. 

But let's step back and see what happened in the day -- it was jam-packed!

Instead of starting something new, I decided to only work on the scraps from the dog quilts. You know you are down to your last bits when this is what the final block looks like! And yes—those are tiny little seams along the top, but this is what I love doing. 

The last block of the red/white/black scraps

The one above is made from the brights/black/white fabrics. This one was the last in the muted tones, except for that bright blue. I had more blocks made just from that blue fabric, and they got moved to the other pile. 

The last block from the muted fabrics

That piece of brown was the only scrap left when I finished sewing. The rest of the scrap cutoffs were already in the garbage, as I was trying to keep the cutting table clear, even though I was the only one using it. 

Trimming the last block

I had planned to stop at 11:30 or whenever the scrap pile was done. I beat the clock - I finished at 11:26. I felt like I was in a puzzle competition!!!

Finished at 11:26!!!

And there was the entire bag of dog fabric scraps from the cutoff quilt backings prepped into 6" squares to be made into two more quilts!!! There were 56 muted blocks on the left, so I can make a 7-by-8 quilt from those, and there are 87 brights. I'll add something to those and will make a 9-by-10 configuration. I'll lay these out on the design wall before I go. I find the design wall at the retreat house a bit small (wide but not tall) and very hard to lay things out on. If the blocks are labeled in rows, it will be a snap to assemble them. I'll lay them and bag them later today. OH -- and there was a bag of brownish scraps from those quilts as well. They are with the panel that I'm going to design later today. 

The blocks from the bag of dog fabric scraps

One last thing I looked at before leaving was this project, which belonged to Diane. She had all those squares sewn and labeled for a quilt top, but she was going to use light grey for the sashing. I wasn't sure about it, but as soon as I brought it out, the light grey got poo-pooed, which echoed my sentiment. So that came home, and I'll dig out another fabric, and that can go to the next retreat. 

The light grey does NOT go with the blocks.

I had a scrap bag of blue flannel bits with me as well, but I decided to finish using the remainder of my blue flannel pieces for those community project quilts, and THEN I can assemble some quilt blocks, and all the blue flannel bits will be used. One must be sensible about this stuff. 

The bag of blue flannel scraps is with the blue flannel pieces.

So technically, there was ONE project that I didn't touch while at the retreat. Yeah, me for the amazing packing job. It is the Oh Canada scraps, and they are back in the retreat bag for the next time! I MUST work on those the next time. 

And when I got home yesterday, I unloaded the car, brought all the bags downstairs, and left them. I was too exhausted to do anything, so I worked on that this morning instead of going to the gym. I'll do that tomorrow morning. See the freedom I have by NOT being committed to that spin class? I might just have found the silver lining. 

This is my retreat bin, which sits under a table. There are two bags in it, along with a few scrap projects at the bottom of the bin. That pile of scrap projects is slowly decreasing, and there aren't many left in the bin. I added the two extension cords to the pile because we need them, given how we configure the tables. So if anyone said, "Do you want to go sewing today?" I could grab that bin or the two bags in it, and I could sew for at least four days without running out of stuff. I love doing these scrappy projects at a retreat!

The retreat bin is ready for the next retreat.

This was the mess before I went to bed at 6:30PM!!! There was also a huge pile of tubs and such on the floor, but there was no way I could cope with it. 

Unpacking from retreat

Here are a few other projects from the retreat that others were working on. If you think freezer paper paper piecing is new, think again! This is from a project dated in the early 2000's or even earlier - I don't have time to fact-check that. Nor the designer, but I'll dig it out later today. One of the ladies is working on this rose, and it's stunning!!!

 A paper-pieced rose

She also showed us her Love Entwined (Esther Aliu) quilt that I remember she started MANY years ago. The finished quilt is much bigger than this, but she decided to finish this center block and stop. All that is hand-appliqué, even the zigzag border. Yikes!!!!!

The center of Love Entwined

And someone else was knitting these poppies for a Remembrance Day art installation hosted by her local Legion. They are stunning, and I can't wait to see what they do with them. 

Knitted poppies

OK -- I'm allergic to dogs or something in my house. When I woke up at the retreat house, my nose was perfectly fine. I wake up here, and my nose is itchy like mad!!! Murphy? Lexi? Thank goodness I love you lots!!!!

Let's take a wee break from the tidying up in Studio B and share the puzzle competition with you. 

It didn't take long to get from the retreat house to the puzzle competition in Georgetown. In the past, this competition was held in a community center, but it has grown, and they filled the arena (Mold Masters) with 100 tables, with a bit of room to spare, but not much! Can you believe? And I would bet that this particular event is small compared to the US or the World events. Unbelievable!!!

Canadian Jigsaw Puzzle Nationals

I don't know what "social puzzling" or "puzzle chess" is. Although I suspect social puzzling is just assembling with friends. Puzzle chess? I'll have to look that up. I would have loved to stay for the entire event (it started on Friday), but I was at the retreat. Anyway, I went up to the stands to watch the next event start. The timing worked perfectly, so I got to see the start. 

The puzzle boxes are opened and then closed again by the volunteers. I don't know if the plastic bag is open. The boxes are then put into a red cloth bag. I watched part of the pairs event, and it was intense. And it was LOUD as people were chatting. But imagine 100 tables, all but one filled, and these pairs were madly flipping pieces and finding homes for them. And there were a lot of volunteers and spectators, who were most likely family members of the puzzlers. 

Let the pairs event commence!

As I was leaving, I snapped a close-up picture of one of the teams. Most started on the border, but not all. I found out after I got home that the DIL of one of our Monday group was competing in one of the events - could have been the individual events the previous day. How fun, and I knew NOTHING about this before. I feel like a kid in a candy store. 

Talk about intense!!

Speaking of candy stores, I did go to the puzzle store around the corner, and the darn place was hopping!!! All these puzzles for this competition have never been released before and bear a label stating they were for the Canadian Nationals. How fun!

I came home and got distracted by watching the livestream of the event. I cannot believe how quickly the participants finish these puzzles. It's totally insane. I went to bed watching the teams (groups of 4) and fell asleep. I would have fallen asleep regardless of how exciting this or any other event was. 

And now back to unpacking, which I did more of this morning. As I was madly sewing the scraps together yesterday, I needed a few HSTs but didn't have time to trim them. I'll trim them this morning, and then the remaining ones to be sewn can go back into the retreat bag. 

A few HSTs to trim this morning

I pulled out my zipper box and found TWO more appropriately sized and colored zippers for my two projects that I had to stop because of zipper issues. 

Better choice of zippers

But as I dug through the zipper box, I realized that while all the zippers are in one big container, they need to be sorted into "like" families and then into plastic bags. It didn't take long to find the zippers, but what a mess. 

OH - I guess I didn't send myself the picture of the zipper box. But that's one thing about sorting and organizing. If you put all the same things in one spot, it'll be much easier to sort and bag them. 

One of the best areas I sorted out quite a while ago was my supply of plastic bags. I had tons of them and gave a good part of them away, but what remains is sorted by small assorted, snack size, regular size, and large. It is so easy to find a plastic zippered bag for anything I need. 

Sorted plastic bags

I'm running low on large bags, so I may have to crack open a box if I have any left. I think I must have kept one box of large bags. I'll have to check it out, but no need to open the new box until I need it, because the minute one bag is empty, it goes into the appropriate bag. And notice, they are labeled!!!!

The poinsettia blocks are now on the design wall, and I hope to get to work on finishing the sled blocks later today. That will leave a section of flying geese to make, and if I had been smart, I could have taken that with me to the retreat, and they would be done! And there are three bell blocks to make for each wall hanging. 

An update on the winter quilts

There was a book on the coffee table at the retreat house in the giveaway pile, and it's one I LOVE, so it followed me home and is now on the appropriate shelf. 

A new book for the collection

One of the ladies at the retreat house loves the dollar store and made several trips during the retreat, and found some treasures. This was one of the treasures - actually, this one she found a while back. Normally, I wouldn't have gotten excited about these baskets except for what she used them for, as she had several at her house. I'll tell you in one minute. 

Once she told us what she used them for, I decided that two of them would work perfectly for me. That was the morning that we walked to town for breakfast. I decided that I hadn't gotten enough steps for the day, and I would walk back to town and get two baskets. I had many offers for someone to pick them up in the car. Silly them—a true walker doesn't care what they carry home! 

Hmmm --- how to economize on carrying them back to the retreat house. You could NOT stack them and carry them as the handles didn't work that way. Originally, I was going to carry one in each hand, but I also wanted to stop for tea (that might have been why my sleep the night before was short!). How could I manage a basket in each hand and a tea as I walked along the highway? People might think me a bit strange. OH -- I must tell you the story of the tea, but I'm running out of time at this moment. 

So while browsing the shelves at the dollar store, I spotted zipties, bought a pack, ziptied the two baskets together, put them over my arm, held my tea in the other hand, and it worked just fine! I love problem-solving!!!! I should add a couple of zipties to the retreat bag. 

The two baskets are zipped together.

Now, where do they work well? Take a look at this in the stash room. 

Bolts on the floor with quilt backings balanced on top

Bolts of interfacings on the left

I have two spots where bolts of fabric sit on the floor. While it's not an issue, there are times when I've kicked the bolts in the top photo, toppling everything onto the floor. Extra quilt backing sits on top, and when the bolts go, so do the backings. 

In the second photo, I have bolts of interfacing and fusibles, and they are very light and are prone to sliding all over the place. 

However, a bolt of fabric fits perfectly in these baskets (40 L Laundry baskets), and now look. 

The end of the row of bolts is now secure.

I don't need all the bolts to be in the basket, just the ones at the end where they could slide forward, toppling the contents sitting on top. 

And even more compact is the area of interfacings. 

The end of the interfacings is now compact as well.

Not all the intefacings are in the basket, but that end is now solid enough that nothing is going to slide away, and it keeps the floor cleaner. Thank you to my retreat friend for that wee organizing tip!

Here is the state of the cutting table as I left it this morning. There are still bags and projects to deal with, and I plan to finish tidying up later today, though it's going to be a busy day. 

The state of the cutting table

I have an ultrasound scheduled for both knees, and I have to be there at 11:15. My knees were totally fine all week, and then the tendons in the right knee? Since I got home, I can feel them shift in and out of place, and they hurt when they do so! It's the most bizarre thing. Thankfully, they have stretched a bit since this started, but it's still not a pleasant experience. This is probably NOT what is happening to them, but that's what it feels like. I'll have to come up with a better explanation before I go to the sports clinic in two months. 

I also have a meeting at 4 PM, Monday, sewing, and some wedding stuff that has to be addressed TODAY!!!


As I was unpacking my retreat bag, I spotted a couple of postcards with some quotes on them. This will be me today!! 

A quote for the day

Of course, the girls were very excited to see me, but I was so tired, I just wanted to bring everything into the house. But then they got some cuddles, and OH MY, Murphy has a boobooo on her head. I suspect she was trying to cram her huge body under the gazebo to catch a rabbit, but she just didn't fit. Thankfully, she didn't get stuck and had no more than a superficial wound on her head. Oh Murphy!!!

MOM - Look at my boo-boo

Oh my—I have to run. I'm running late, and there is so much to do today!!!

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!!!