Progress Report

Things are moving right along! I still have a long list of things that need to be completed - well, there are 14 things on the deadline list. They're in various stages of completion. But my goal is to try and schedule things around my upcoming sewing retreat so I don't have to sew on deadline stuff while I'm away. I think I might be good.

And since that was my plan, I've already packed for the retreat! It's a mere four weeks away - one can't be too cautious about not having enough work to do! OK - so it's stuff from the hall upstairs and I needed a place to put it! But it's all good.

The next couple of weeks are going to be silly and I need to keep ahead of the homework/UFO stuff. I finished one thing yesterday and no I can't show you. You'll have to wait, but it's so darn cute.

Here's something I can share with you. The progress on my red and white ender/leader project.

These ones are sewn in pairs and need one more seam to become a quarter of the larger block.

Pairs of half square triangles waiting to be sewn together

This is what those pairs will look like when they're sewn together.

Small blocks of half square triangles

But the best news of all??  All the small bits are sewn together. They're all pressed and now they're all trimmed as well. Ready to be sewn into pairs and then into quarter blocks and finally the entire block. The worst part is over!!!

All the half square triangles are trimmed and ready to sew

The trimming really is the ugly part of the whole thing. I was trimming some half square triangles for another project the other night and I just added a few of these to the pile and before I knew it, I was done both!

I made great progress on that customer quilt that I'm custom quilting. I'm LOVING the quilting. I had so much fun but it was intense and I was tired. A little bit of stitch in the ditch today to tack down a few things and then it should be off the frame. Then onto making a magazine quilt that had better be done by Monday. Yes - I'm an idiot for leaving this one to the last minute. But I do that all the time so what's the difference.

Hey - I still get loads of personal time in there. Reading, walking to the library, walking with the girls. And I never stay up late!

Speaking of the library, I've been using the computers at the library this week. Why? None of our computers have a CD drive built into them. So off to the library. What am I doing with a CD? Well, I'm transferring embroidery designs from the CDs that they came on to a USB stick so I can put it in the embroidery machine.

I started with these patterns. These are ones that got soaked during my basement leak. I managed to save all the patterns - a little bit wavy from the wet, but no problem - they are still legible.

Patterns that were salvaged from the water leak

I was worried about the CDs. Does water ruin a CD?? Apparently not. So despite the fact that the CDs look awful and look at all the crap in the envelope, they worked just fine.

Water damaged CD

That was on Thursday. Then I took more patterns in yesterday. I was able to transfer about half before I ran out of room on the USB. I have other things on CD that I'm going to take in and convert. Then I can transfer the files to my hard disk from the USBs.

Thank goodness for the library!!!!

Besides, it's a perfect distance to walk. I love walking to the library. Yep - if only I would have lived close to a public library or had access to a regular school library when I was a kid. I went to a one-room country school for 5 years and the teacher would go to the school board once a month (I think) and she would bring back a selection of books from that "traveling" library. I think I read everything that she brought.

Speaking of hard disks. I got this e-mail the other day.

Oh, shoot!!!!  I see that about 2/3 of that storage space is taken up with my e-mail. The rest is photos. Seriously?? My e-mail? I know I have a lot of them, but taking up that much space??  OK - I have to go in and see about managing the e-mails. I might just buy some more storage and be done with the problem for the moment. All this darn stuff is connected and we're really at the mercy of the big guys as to how to deal with it. Why can't I keep my e-mails on my computer and NOT on their server?? I probably can do that - I just need to find out how.  Just emptied my trash and that freed up some space. Enough to hobble along for a day or two. OK - more deleting of e-mails is in order.

Two things that I forgot to mention yesterday. One is the last blog post on QUILTsocial. So you had better get over there and check it out.  I had some serious fun free motion quilting on the domestic machine this past week. It's taken me a long time to really get super comfortable and I'll never finish learning new things. You really should get out some small projects and follow along with what I did. You'd be amazed at what you can do when you get things set up properly and use the right needles and threads.

The second article that I came across and I'm really loving this idea is about seniors sharing housing. What a great idea and what a great way to use those big houses that are around everywhere. Someone has started a Facebook group to help seniors find each other. I'm in!!! I'm not ready, but when the time comes, I'm in. What a great thing - companionship!!!  This is no different than our student days when we shared housing. I think it's brilliant. I just need to make sure that I'm with a bunch of quilters so we have something to talk about!! I might even share my stash - but I bet they come with their own. I might need to think about that.

OK - I'm off to see if I can get more space from my e-mail. Well, no - I'm off to quilt. Darn deadlines.

Have a great day!!!

Ciao!!!