The madness is almost over or is it?

It's funny how some mornings I have three or even four potential titles for the blog post. Today, my mind draws a blank.  Hopefully as I write this, something will come to mind.

I have to address this before I go on.  It isn't directly related to quilting, so you can skip over it, if you like.

It's Christmas party time of the year and I'm fortunate that we received an invitation to a Christmas celebration dinner at a restaurant. There were 30 people. Of the 30, I knew 6 including myself and we were all seated together so that helps. I must say that as I get older, I really hate making small talk with people that I don't know - just to pass the time. It's totally different if the event is at a trade show where we talk shop or with quilter's that I don't know.  But in a restaurant where it's already loud and you're trying to make conversation to fill time - I'm not into that anymore!  I used to be super good at it.

So the dinner is supposed to start at 7, cocktails at 6:30.  We arrived at 7  - hey I had things to do when I got home and that is a whole other story. I don't think we sat down to dinner until 8 PM.  EIGHT?   I'm almost getting ready for bed by 8 PM and it had been a long week - I was tired!  Then we had bruschetta that was being passed around which I didn't take as my hands were full with my purse and a drink - I'm out of practise at these functions. So the remainder of the bruschetta was on the table.  I had one piece. Then we had not one, not two, but FIVE appetizers.  Seriously? FIVE???  I had a small portion of all of them but one.  When the main course finally arrived, I just asked that it be packed away.  I certainly wasn't hungry and I certainly wasn't going to eat pasta that late at night. I was sitting beside the host who didn't say a word!

Then there was dessert which I ate a bit of mine. Then I said - time to go.  We didn't get home until after 11 and guess who was wide away at 2:19 AM????   Did not sleep well and I have loads of work to do today.  So while I'm a fan of Christmas parties, this body just doesn't appreciate the late hours any more. And I'm up earlier than most so it takes an extra long toll on me.  It's going to be a "fun" day especially since I have to pick something up and it's an hour each way.

It's the only party we're going to - I guess I can just suck it up (and it's over) and I have a nice shrimp pasta dish for lunch!!!!

Oh, let me share with you what happened last night.

I got home from work and I had made myself a note to look for some specific patterns.  Before I forgot that I was looking for this set of patterns, I decided to dig through my patterns immediately upon getting home. I did find what I was looking for - thank goodness for filing systems, BUT I also found a few other patterns that I would love to put on my TO DO list.

A few patterns I want to make

So you see what my problem is - all these would be fun to make (and there's one that I'm not showing you - it's a block of the month and it's complicated)    As I work through my schedule over the next couple of weeks, there are some in this pile that I will definitely make, others likely won't make the cut.  But since I'm planning on having a whole lot more time in the coming year (same amount of time - just used more efficiently), I aim to get more done.  And just like that - ten new projects!


As the year winds down, I'm trying to get the Row by Row license plate thing finished.  Good luck with that, since I still have stuff from 2015 to take care of.  But it's all by my computer and I hope to steal a few minutes now and then to take care of it.

Here's my latest catch of license plates.  There are more, but I'm not showing them until they are paid for, swapped out or whatever.

From Quebec

From Alaska

Thanks to Pat and Shelly for making those happen!

And on that note, I have to finish piecing a quilt, get it on the machine and hopefully have it ready for delivery by tomorrow at noon.  It's going to be a long day. Fortunately both the piecing and the quilting shouldn't take long and this is the last one of that mad rush - I still have FOUR more that HAVE to be quilted this coming week (or the week after by the latest). OK - so when those FOUR are done, the mad rush will be over.

I'll be assembling photos and my project list for 2017 which will get posted on the blog on Monday. Stay tuned for that!

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!