Progress on the Heartfelt Sampler

 And so another week begins! They seem to be marching along, and here we are, almost in the middle of March!! I see Murphy and Bear synchronizing their sleep pattern again this morning. They are quite the pair, and Lexi is nowhere to be seen. 

We had a fantastic show-and-tell at our machine embroidery club. The ladies are so talented, and I have to say we are full. I expanded the class length by 15 minutes, and we still ran over just a wee bit, so I can't let anyone else in. 

This is what it looked like behind the scenes. 

Behind the scenes at machine embroidery

Yes, that is Bear sleeping on the table! He was on the floor, and then he needed to be held to keep him quiet! I'm getting very good with the computer and camera equipment. I've got it down pat how they all talk to each other! Yeah!! But I need to call my new earbuds into service. The old ones sometimes work for the entire hour, and sometimes they do not. When they cut out, it takes at least a minute for the mic to switch to the computer mic, and that's frustrating!

And at one point, I had Murphy to contend with as well. 

MOM -- are you done yet? I NEED you! 

I see changes on my computer this morning. I was trying to edit a document last night. Where did Grammarly go? It took a bit of frustration to get it back—I suspect Microsoft is trying to force us to use some of their add-ins. Anyway, after a frustrating reboot, there it was, and this morning, it looks totally different, yet again! 

While I "took" the afternoon off from what I was supposed to do, I worked on things that needed progress. I completed all the blocks for the Heartfelt Sampler. 

The last block set for the Heartfelt Sampler

That's the final set of blocks - DONE! Here are all my blocks. I hope to put them on the design wall today and start sewing them! Since I hadn't started to lay out the blocks, I didn't pay much attention to the diagram until I showed it during the class. ACK!!!! The designer put a PARTIAL seam in the mix. So, I had to jig the pattern a bit to offer the class two options, so that was done yesterday. All these little things TAKE TIME!

All the blocks for the Heartfelt Sampler

I have a few short emails to send following up on some of last week's events. I need to get that done this morning because I suspect there will be more this week that will have to be put together. 

It's great to be at least that caught up. Our final show-and-tell for the Heartfelt Sampler is next month, so I need to catch up, especially since I want to do some lettering on the border. I still have to cut out the background or finish cutting the squares from the strips I've already cut. 

I had two blocks to sew for the 365-day quilt I'm trying to work on. This quilt is getting the short end of the stick every month. I had hoped to complete all the March blocks last month, but that didn't happen because when I was sewing at the retreat, I made a few cutting errors and forgot to cut the fabric for half of one block. I had recut the pieces and had planned to get them done. Well, I managed to get one done for the Zoom meeting yesterday. 

One block for the 365-day quilt

The second block was completed later in the day. Yep, there is not a lot of contrast between the pieces, and I'm OK with that. These blocks are so small, and the quilt is so busy that it won't make any difference to the final look. 

A block for the 365-day quilt

I need to get back to work cutting more blocks. Perhaps I'll try to do that today during Monday's sewing. 

Some of my writing assignments were completed, and I advanced some of the projects I'm writing about. I'm not quite where I'd like to be, but hopefully, I can complete a lot this week. Let's rephrase that—I need to finish most of it this week. 

I have to switch around some events in my calendar, so that must also be taken care of TODAY. I HATE my calendar, and scheduling an entire ME day is a joke. Don't worry. I always get parts of the day for me, such as my walks and afternoon breaks or errand time, but an entire day? It won't happen this month, and I'm OK with that. April, at this point, is dead quiet! There are MANY days with NOTHING planned, and I hope it stays that way. 

What's happening with the EXIT Game Advent Calendar? Well, we are almost finished!!!! And as I thought, we started to demolish the box. We started that a while ago by cutting the lid in half, and several doors had to be removed! I had to slice part of the top open last night.  

The remains of the Advent Calendar by EXIT Game

We've done very well this time and still only had to look at those two clues, which I think is pretty amazing. Are we getting to be pros? Nope - I think we've done enough of them that we've "trained" our brain to think outside the box on this stuff, or maybe the puzzles aren't as complicated. It doesn't matter - we have TWO puzzles left to finish this game. 

We'll take a break for a while, as DH will be away for a fair amount of time in the next couple of weeks. Don't worry -- I have a few more of them in my puzzle cupboard, and they are still at the beginner level. Can we handle an advanced one? I look forward to December 1, when we follow along for December and attempt to finish it on time! 

Some people were voting for the two quilts I shared yesterday. I'll be thinking long about that project and see what else happens in the fall. I'm OK with more open days, but I also like to work on something new while I finish the old! I'm putting them here again since one of them was missing at the very beginning of yesterday. Who knows how that happened? 

While I was sewing yesterday, I was surveying Studio B's wreckage. I think I can swing a reorg without having to find a home for all that stuff. Yep—I need to get over these next two weeks when there is little extra time, and then I can tackle that. 

So this week, I have 10 Zoom calls—that's it. Oh, and two errands in the car. That's going to be a piece of cake compared to last week! Hopefully, the prep work won't be too crazy for any of them. My "fun" reading material these days is a User's Guide to brush up on some information! Hilarious!!!!

On that note, I'm out of here and on my way to spin class. 

Have a super day! 

Ciao!!!