Forest bathing - literally!

Oh my—what a treat yesterday was! I had nothing on the agenda, and I could do what I wanted when I wanted. I certainly needed that mental break. I haven't even cleared up the tables in the film area yet. 

A bit of tidying needs to be done

I'll do that later today, or maybe I'll do it during Monday's Sewing and set up for the final presentation. Yeah! Then, I think April will be very quiet except for my "personal" classes and a couple of challenges I must work on. A few quilts need to be quilted, so I'll keep myself busy, but I'll be on my schedule! Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed each presentation, but it was a crazy schedule, and a break is very welcome. 

I also managed to clear a tiny bit of the cutting table. Some items on the floor are gone, but I hope to tackle more today. 

A little bit of room on the cutting table

Except when I went for a walk and had a nap, I sewed all day, and it was glorious. I hadn't done that in months, and it felt great. Will I share what I did? Oh, you can see part of it. 

I was able to finish this little sample. Hmm - the colors are quite mixed, and the pattern doesn't really show, but that's OK. I may try to find a quilt pattern that might rescue it. 

My small sample

Here is one of the alternate blocks for Chatsworth. It's a row of flying geese. Some of the fabrics were cut, and some were partially cut. I had used fat quarters, so I didn't have enough background to finish each block, but I'm perfectly fine with using other fabrics to finish the blocks. 

Alternate block for Chatsworth

I returned to working on my braids as an ender/leader project. It feels nice to work on this project, as I can see progress. There's a box brimming with those precut pieces. Let's see what happens to it over the next while. While I have piecing to do, I also have embellishments to make and quilts to quilt, so I won't need enders and leaders. 

Progress on the braid

I tackled some paperwork. I also pile things that need to be done on the desk, and these two glue bottles have been sitting here for some time. The tips were filled with glue, and there was a mass of glue all along the outside of one of them. It was a mess, and it was solid! I took a cue from Brenda (a retired elementary school teacher) and used vinegar. I think I had tried before, but they were still a mess. This time, I heated the vinegar and put the two tips in it. 

Unsticking the glue using vinegar

At last, after TWO hot vinegar baths, the tips were completely clear of glue on the inside and the outside. I got glue from one; the other may have too much air inside the container. While I LOVE the concept of this glue bottle, those tips were way too long. I'd be tempted to take the wire cutters and snip the tips off, but I'm afraid I would crush the opening, and then no glue would come out. Well, no worries, I have a couple of small plastic containers to which I can move the glue, and the tip is plastic and about ½" long. I just needed to clear those tips for my sanity! And they were on the desk. Now, they are back where they belong. 

I have the next set of paperwork sitting here, and I'll keep plugging away at it a little each day. The important thing will be to keep up with the daily stuff, which I've done an OK job at. Then, I need to delve into some older stuff. Keep, toss, or action. I'm getting better with the toss! 

Our area was very fortunate with the weekend storm. We had some ice in the morning, but it was only on some surfaces, like certain trees. There was no damage and no power outages. Other areas in the province were severely affected, and I hope their power is restored. We are left with fog. 

It was interesting that the ice remained on a tree like this. 

Ice

But these trees were completely free of ice. They were about ten feet apart. 

No ice

There was still ice on these kind of branches as well. 

More ice

You cannot see it in this picture, but water (melting ice) was dripping down this tree. It reminded me of being in a rainforest and was quite interesting to watch. 

Water was dripping down the tree trunk

But the most astounding part of the walk was when I entered the forest. It was NOT raining, yet the melting ice dripping off the trees was LOUD! It sounded like it was pouring rain, but it was just the ice melting. I honestly felt like I was in the rainforest. It was so cool. I took a video of it, but I've not successfully loaded videos on the blog. 

Forest bathing was almost a literal term yesterday as I was getting wet, but the moment I exited the forest, it was dead silent, and no more "rain"! 

Look at this sweet girl! She looks so demure! Why is that expression so popular these days? It sounds silly! 

Mom - I'm trying to be good

Look at her while I was reading my book in the evening. 

Mom - do you want to play with me?

She has been doing so well with her bladder issues, but then, the last couple of days, she has not been so good. Two accidents, and they are not her fault. She just leaks! I try to ensure that she goes out regularly, but because I was focused on sewing, I might have missed her signals. I feel so badly for her as she doesn't understand what is happening. So, I must be better on my toes and put her outside at the appropriate times. She needs to build up her core muscles! She is on medication for her weak sphincter. 

But she is like a little kid. You put her out and tell her to have a pee. She looks at you and says, "I don't have to pee." After I told her she was NOT coming until she did her business, she finally went and had a long pee. Then she came in all happy—just like a kid!

I shared that small sewing machine with you a couple of weeks ago, or it might have been another brand. I found a picture of it in an older magazine. It has been thirty years since PFAFF came out with its first embroidery machine. Can you believe that machine embroidery is so young? Notice that the embroidery arm for the small one is inside the harp. The largest hoop would be 4" by 4". Now look at the creative icon 2! It's HUGE! 

PFAFF - 30 years of embroidery

I hope to work on machine embroidery today, but we'll see how the day goes. I don't want to make lists—I'm going to try to clear those two work tables, but that could take weeks! 

AHA -- we are down to the final 100 pages in The Sequel. What will happen? I now have a better idea of the villain. But when I think about it, who is the villain in this story? I was thinking about authors on one of my recent walks. The really vicious characters in the books I've read recently are women. Men just shoot and move on. Women are vicious. And it's usually a female author who writes about the vicious women villains. Why is that? 

I know it will be a glorious day and a glorious week. I have things on the agenda this week, but one item a day is my kind of pace. And I'm off to spin class this morning. 

OH, something bad happened, and I'm almost embarrassed to tell you about it. I was working on digitizing that chicken I shared the other day. All was good, and I was on to the last step. I went downstairs to do the final step, only to find that my *&^% laptop rebooted, and I FORGOT to save the file. So, instead of being at the end, I must return almost to the beginning. Silly me --- I should have saved that file! Oh well, it's good to go back and repeat that exercise multiple times so I don't forget. Things like this keep me humble! 

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!!