Singing in the rain!

 Oh --- another bonus about the TruEarth laundry strips—they are Canadian (Port Moody, BC). I remember seeing that on a website, but I forgot. Thanks for the reminder! I'm excited to give them a try!

I'm almost embarrassed to show you what I did for my 60-minute-or-less challenge, but as I said, it doesn't matter what you do, and if it takes only 60 seconds but gets done, that's perfectly OK. This item had been sitting near my computer in Studio B for months—probably close to a year. I finally tackled it yesterday. 

I have this cheap whirly thing in the backyard. Last year, the string broke, and it sat beside my computer waiting for me to fix it. So I grabbed some invisible thread and attached a new string. It's now hanging back outside. I know—why did I leave it so long? I have no idea, but my 60-minute-or-less challenge has me fired up! I should have used a thicker thread, like fishing line, but I don't have any. So I used my crappy invisible thread that I don't like and it seems to work. How long will it last? 

My whirly ornament is back outside

I have this basket of "crap" on the table beside the computer in Studio B, and I need to go through it. I've been ignoring it, but yesterday, I picked up a bag in the basket and peeked inside. Good grief—this is a school project from 25 years ago. 

An abandoned school project

It was a project where we were to make a 3-D object using something as the structure, in this case, wire mesh. The blue around the edges is embroidery floss. I never finished it, and even if I did, what would I do with it? 

It's supposed to be a box

I rescued the floss and the picture frame wire; the rest went in the garbage. I had many good intentions, but never finished many of them, hence the proliferation of UFOs. This was a cute concept, but the edges of the mesh were a bit rough, even turned back and covered with the floss. So out it goes. 

Then I found a bag within that bag and spotted these two things. Why? The issue is—these are perfectly good nuts, but what do you do with them? They need some hardware recycling place where you can send rogue screws and nuts. I've got lots to contribute. 

Rogue nuts! 

This is the table beside the computer. During February and March, it was completely clean. Now, it's a work table of sorts, but it does have a few things to sort on it! These are on my list of things to deal with, some of which will fit into the 60-minutes-or-less category. And it's this kind of stuff that we need to be dealing with. Imagine having to deal with someone else's crap like this? NO - take responsibility and deal with it. Most of it can be thrown away, so why aren't we doing that? I'm trying to get there! As silly as this sounds, throwing that wire mesh project away took a lot of mental effort. Why? I'll never finish it. 

Table of crap to sort

In preparation for a weekend machine embroidery retreat, I went into Diane's scrap tubs looking for something. I found tons of binding, so I pulled out what I saw and piled it onto that table. 

Strips of binding that need to be sorted and bagged

I measured the binding width, sorted it into three bags, and put them in the storage room. I'll use them to bind some of the community project quilts. 

Premade binding for community projects

I mentioned the upgrade to my cell phone's Android OS. I decided that if I was going to get comfortable with it, I needed to play. Well, I found a super addition to the camera. My camera (S23) has three lenses—wide, standard, and macro. There is also a 30X optical zoom on it. To use the Zoom feature, you needed two fingers to zoom in on the screen. 

When you select the macro setting, you get three zoom settings (10, 20, 30), and I can easily choose the one I want with one finger, which is AMAZING. If you're wondering where one would use that, I could have used it when I took that picture of the ducks the other day. I couldn't zoom in because I had Murphy's leash in the other hand. 

Check it out if you have an Android phone!!! Look at this picture I took of the girls from my office, and they were playing outside. 

MOM - we need you!!!

And what about this? Looks like a robin, which was on a tree at the neighbor's house several doors down. I snapped it from my front step, with ONE hand! 

Using 30X zoom on my phone camera

I also found the watermark feature, which is easy to use. Did you notice that in the photo above? I must go in and, if nothing else, learn how to use ALL the features on the camera. 

We had a virtual retreat in the afternoon, and it was a slow day! I think I might start the summer ones a bit later. We don't need to be on all day! But we did have loads of fun. I'm still struggling with some sort of interference with my microphones. Oh yes - I need to reboot the router and ALL computers this morning. I don't know what is causing the interference, but I need to get it fixed as it's super annoying. My Shokz over-earbuds work fine for a while, then my voice becomes garbled. It's so irritating!

While on the retreat, one of the ladies' husbands gave me some tips on solving my computer storage problem, so I need to investigate that later this week. But what I really need to do is DELETE all the crap I don't want, ensure the filing system is set up (which is mostly is - it's mostly sorting a bunch of stuff that doesn't have a home yet) and then go from there. That's a slow and steady job, and I'm chipping away at it, but it takes time. I'm going away to a short retreat this weekend, perhaps I could do that in the morning before everyone gets up! I likely will not be taking a sewing machine as I'm teaching and trying to cut down on what I take. 

I went for a walk in the afternoon, and because I don't have windows in Studio B, I didn't realize it was getting cloudy.. When I left the house, the sky looked threatening, but did I turn around and grab an umbrella? I did not. As I walked, there were a few sprinkles of rain, but nothing serious. When I reached a potential turnaround in my walk, I asked myself if I should turn back. I decided there wasn't enough rain to warrant that, and all was good. 

I was about 20 minutes from the house when the rain picked up. Still not super bad, and I was only getting slightly damp. However, I was about 10 minutes from the house, and it started to RAIN! At one point, I thought it might turn to hail. You know - those big white drops, but not hail. Needless to say, I got wet. You know it's wet when you feel water sloshing in your shoes! Shoot -- I hope they are dry this morning, as I forgot to stuff newspaper in them yesterday. 

Pouring rain

I changed into my pajamas, and I was just fine. Everything else went into the washing machine, but I used my old stock of pods—I need to use them up! I didn't run—what's the point? I just kept my usual pace, and all was good! It's one thing to get caught in the rain; it's another to go out when it's raining. 

During the virtual retreat, I managed to finish this giant quilt. It was fine when my microphone worked from the earbuds because I could chat with everyone while I worked on the quilt. But when I had to switch microphones, I could only listen! 

Customer quilt - DONE

It will be a super busy day as I have loads to get done, and I'll miss part of Monday Sewing to accomplish what I should have done yesterday! It shouldn't take too long. It's an editing job, and someone suggested I ask AI to edit overnight. Now that might have been a handy thing if I knew how! I know how to make AI assist me, but I don't want it to do the job without me. I like editing, so I'm OK and getting much faster at editing my rough drafts. It'll all work out! 

On that note, I'm off to spin class, and I'm certain I will need a nap today as I struggled to fall asleep. I had several things on my mind (all good), and I should have gotten up and edited last night.

Do you have a basket of 60-minute-or-less things to do? It could be so simple, like tying a string on an ornament, but it qualifies if it's something that has been languishing and you haven't done it. One a day -- imagine how many little things we can clear up, if we do one a day! And if you're on a roll, maybe you could do two! 

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!!