Celebrate the small stuff

And it's all SMALL stuff. While I'm not out of the woods yet, I feel much better. I even tried to nap yesterday, and my body said, "are you kidding?" So I did have a wee lie down but didn't sleep. I went out for an uneventful short walk in the morning and a much longer one in the afternoon, and all was fine. 

My darn throat is still sore, but how much of that has to do with the dryness in the house? Even with my humidifier going full blast in the sewing room, it's dry. Well -- we'll see how I fair when I get home. But I'm so much better, so I can deal with a sore throat! Trust me -- I'm NOT overdoing it!

Two of our group had to leave yesterday, and I swear Susan wasn't even in her car, and we had rearranged the sewing room! 

My mostly clean sewing station

And when the other Susan left, I confiscated her desk as my computer desk!

My computer desk

And I even got some sewing done. It won't seem like a lot when I show you, but it's monumental in what it is. 

Several of us are working on the "many" block projects this year. These are the ones with all those darn little blocks - hence the name - Many blocks. I'm working on the 365-day quilt. I had decided that this would be my retreat project for this year as, at the last retreat, I got quite a few blocks done. With everything that happened this week, that just wasn't possible. 

And I need to do something with this massive bag of scraps as this is NOT efficient to find fabric. 

My bag of scraps

I intend to iron all the scraps and then put them neatly into a box, which will take much less room. Then I'll have three boxes of green scraps. Yikes -- time to do something about that! However, that sorting didn't happen. But I managed to get the February 14 bonus block done. 

February 14 bonus block

And there was a birthday block as well. There were several iterations in light and dark and 3" or 6", which confused me. However, I started cutting for the 3" block, so that's what I made once I realized there were multiple sizes in the pattern. 

So 3" blocks are tiny. How tiny? Look at how small this half-square triangle got trimmed to. 

A half-square triangle

Yes -- that got trimmed to 1". So that finishes at 1/2". I know --- this is crazy!!!!! And here is the birthday block in the 3" finished size in the dark. 

The bonus birthday block

And that's enough of those tiny little blocks, so I worked on the center block, which is 18" finished. That was easier, although the construction method was wonky. The bottom line is that it is done!!!!! 

The center block

And that means that I am completely up-to-date until the end of February. I was hoping for the next class that, I would have seven blocks of March completed. But as I said at the beginning, one must celebrate ALL successes, no matter how small. I am happy that those blocks are done. 

We also realized there are better times than March to have a second retreat -- it's too close to the January date, and March is a tough month for me, so I will try rearranging dates for next year. It's all about being flexible!

We did something different for dinner: we went to the local burger place. Actually, there are two of them on the same corner. We picked one, and I had a hot dog and onion rings. It was a bit pricey for what we got! And the onion rings were way too salty for my taste, but the others seemed to be OK with it. Next time, we'll try the other place and see if it's better. Anyway -- it was nice to try something different. 

OK -- so if you've been mixing a fix from Murphy or Lexi, I have something to share from Murphy. She must be "stressed" because this is the picture I got. 

One more toy bites the dust

Now she is a toy wrecker, to begin with, so she is NOT stressed. She is just being Murphy! And I wish she would wreck more toys. Perhaps she is trying to say she wants something new to play with! I still need to get the back story on this incident!

And despite the setback in the walking this week, I'm still ahead on my Virtual Challenge. I'm at 49% of the distance, within 48% of the time. Phew!!! It's not fun to get behind on an ambitious goal, as it would take some doing to get back on track. 

Still on track for my ambitious walking goal

I will go for a short walk this morning, but I have two presentations to do when I get home. WAIT -- the clocks went back, or whatever direction they went, and the sun will stay up longer, so I can take the girls for their walk after the presentations. They are NOT going to be happy about that. 

The presentations are ready to go -- I finished them this morning. Yep --- I'm on top of things, with little wiggle room. 

I've got one more project I want to work on this morning -- I have an URGENT quilt to cut out and start sewing. 

And then this coming week is a whole new adventure! 

And remember to celebrate ALL the small stuff!!!! 

Have a super day!!!!!

Ciao!!!!