June Update

So far so good!  I have not bought any addition craft supplies, well that is not any purchases that are not totally justifiable.    And yes, Kathy, it is a pledge we make and remake to ourselves on a regular basis. 

I was in OCMD for the Air Show.   We were on the boardwalk just above the VIP tents so we had the best view!  

A trip to OCMD always includes a stop at Salty Yarns. I saw some things I liked and wanted but I resisted.   I did however buy a pair of cheaters which fall into the category of "needed to finish a current project".

That justification is not even a stretch! It is totally legit.  And I have to say, the real cheaters and not the 4 for $12 Amazon cheaters are nicer.   I'd been using 4.0's for some time and had started to  struggle with focusing.  These are 3.0's and  everything is crystal clear!  LOL  20 days and counting on the pledge to make no purchases.  I wonder how long I can keep this going……

March/April/lMay as well as September/October/November seem to be my busiest months.  At the beginning of the June I had a day at home, with no where to go and nothing pressing on my list.  Usual days when I have no where to go, I get up, put on garden clothes and head out side to dig and weed and transplant and then, quite frankly, collapse mid-afternoon sweaty and dirty from the lifting, lugging and  heat.    This particular Monday, I decided the yard and gardens would wait and I sat down to write out some cards, send out from checks (yes, I still write checks occasionally) balanced my checkbook (and yes, yet another archaic thing I do) did my report for my EGA meeting 4 days in advance rather than 30 minutes before the meeting and just generally sorted paper work on my desk.  By 10 a.m., I was done and felt great.   Those nagging tasks that niggle at the back corner of your brain, the ones I tend to put off because I’d rather have my hands in the dirt or holding a needle, were gone.    I don’t know why I make some tasks seem so tedious when if I actually just do them they are no big deal.   I think it is that retirement thing....I'll do it tomorrow.  Just like I used to tell me kids…"you have have the time if you take the time".  Pass the salt while I eat my words!

We have had some beautiful weather the beginning of June. Sunny but not hot.  It carried over through much of one week.   One such day I looked at my infamous to-do list and decided to start cutting the hundreds of 2 1/2 inch squares of holiday fabric I needed for an EGA class in July…and another marvel, not waiting until the week of to start the cutting.   Not wanting to miss the beautiful weather, I took everything outside to work.   It was a great thing to do.  Although more than once the wind did take a square or two and sailed them into the strawberry patch.  

I resolved by the end of the day that once day a week I would do no yard work, go no where, but rather work on something totally different, not necessarily on my to-do list and just maybe I wanted to do rather than something I felt like I had to do.  Mr. Wonderful suggested I take more than one day a week off.   Well let’s not get crazy here, I do have my lists.  He doesn’t understand how I never run out of things to do. Ahhhh, but life is so good.   Two and a half years retired and not bored yet.....just living the good life.

I watched the Queen’s Jubilee as I am sure many of your did.  Just love the Pomp and Circumstance.   And oh that Prince Louis!  Many of us have had a child like him!  He is going to be a scamp for sure.

I caught up on my Garden of Stitches SAL.  I am enjoying this piece but I have hit a wall for the time being.  

I am not necessarily enjoying these 23 rows of modified herringbone stitches.   It is not a quick section.    I will work on this next week and be sure to get my June assignment done before July starts.

I have let my i-Stitch Band Sampler slip behind.  Five or six weeks left until the end.  I'm hope to finish Week 22 today and work on Week 23 tomorrow.  I am done being bothered by not keeping pace with others.......enjoy the journey, it's not a race to see who gets done first.    (Hmmm, this philosophy has contributed to my tons of WIP's)

My band sampler may have slipped but I have almost doubled what I had done on my hexie quilt.  

I am not sure how big I am going to make it.   I will just continue to add to the right side until I say enough....I will not keep adding until I run out of hexies as that would make a Jolly Green Giant sized quilt.  I'd really like to set a goal of September to be done (total fantasy).   Because of the size I think I will pay to have this long-armed rather than me attempt it on my Husqvarna. 

I saw Top Gun Maverick - Awesome.   It was the perfect thing to do before going to the air show with the Thunderbirds in OCMD.  One of my favorite things was the use of the music from the original movie.   The music is so synonymous to Top Gun I would have been disappointed if it was not in the second movie.   

I am working on catching up on both guilds blog posts as well as the website of one.  One guild done/one almost done.  Talk about a niggling task that I put off.  I dread doing the website updates.  They are not needed frequently. It always seems once I learn to navigate the site, there is an upgrade to the platform and therefore the steps change!   But once I get into it, it is usually not as difficult as I imagined it to be before I started.  Just do it Robin!

On the same lines….just when I thought I would dedicate one morning each week to catch up on other blogs and make comments, there is a snafu, more commonly know as some kind of darned update.   Some blogs have a new comment form where I must ‘identify’ myself as "Not Anonymous" but when I do it, it only takes me in a loop.   Ugh!   After a few go ‘rounds, I donned my garden gloves and go sit in the dirt!  So Bloggers, don't despair, you are being read.   Receiving my comments is a whole other issue.

My son gifted me with something.   He has been pulling out the garden edging and the stones in his flower beds and wanted to know if I could use them….thought about half a minute and I had a plan.    I replaced the bricks lining the my garden path in my Back 40 project and dug in the edging and then laid the stone and various pavers and bricks to create a better path through the area.   See, one person’s trash is truly another person’s treasure.   Now I don't need to get out the weed wacker for the path, just a spritz here and there for any grass that comes up through the stones.  One of the things I like most about this area is that I have spent next to nothing on it.   I’ve bought a couple of wine bark bushes and a couple of cone flowers but for the most part the flowers are transplants or seed packs just tossed in to grow.  It is about 98% sweat equity!

And this would be why I don't accomplish as much stitching as I would like to.

Time to get some more stones from Rich's place.   I am babying Monday and Friday this week so I will have more than enough.   I'll keep going until I am done with the path or run out of stones and bricks, whichever comes first.   Got lemons, make lemonade.   Got stones and brick, make a walkway.  Just like stitching, slow and steady wins the race.

Looking ahead to Christmas (what!) it's only June!  There are five of us that are doing an Advent Exchange at Christmas and I have 19 or 20 of the necessary 24 already.  I need to start the ‘assembling process’, make the gift tags and even start to wrap them.  I think I have  this on my August to do list to start August 1st.   Five times 24 is 120 packages to wrap!!

Here’s to smooth sailing the rest of June, July and August.  These are not the Dog Days of Summer, but the Robin Days of Summer.  Much relaxing will be done, the pool water will warm up; this is the latest it has been before a first swim!  Last weekend it was in the upper 60's.   Beautiful weather, albeit not swimming weather.  And much stitching will be done and much enjoyment will be taken from looking about the yard at the results of my hard work in the spring time.   Oh, and yes, William has asked if he could come spend a week as Damma's now that school is out…watch out Damma!   

I'll leave you with some early morning photos of my yard walk.   This is one of my favorite times of the day to be in the garden, when the shadows are long, and the fragrances are strong.   Heck, who am I kidding, I'd prefer to be out here most of the time as is evidenced by breakfast, lunch and dinner on the deck.

Lavender is doing great.

My Dill AND my Hosta are shoulder height!  Probably supposed to do something with the dill, like trim it.....

In addition to strawberries, I have already harvested lettuce, peppers, cilantro and green beans.  Tomatoes are not yet ready.

Volunteer Foxglove and Black-Eyed Susans in my Back 40 area.

Orange cone flower I planted last fall.  Either he is a dwarf plant or he needs Miracle Gro!

My sentinel...Mr. Squirrel.     The colors in here were at a peak last week.....this is an area in need of thinning.

Even out front, the colors abound......not so much the rusty color of the dead azalea blooms.  I just transplants some of the Russian Sage yesterday into the Back 40.   It was being smothered by the shrubs growing over it and I thought, hmm, I know where I can put these!

Time to thin this bed out.   The coreopsis and Shasta Daisies have seen better days. And I'd really like to eliminate all the Spiderwort.   Believe me I have tried but the bugger just keeps coming back.  It does add a nice pop of color and then.....it just falls over and covers everything around it.   The Stella Doro lilies in the background have not yet blooms, but wait until the do......yellows and oranges all over the place!

Thanks for stopping by.   Keep safe and keep in stitching.

R

I am suffering

from a bad case of Stash Accumulitis to the Maximus!   This I have found is highly contagious by spending too much time with other crafting minds.  

I am putting the brakes on my stash enhancement.   No worries here that I am spending the grocery money on crafting supplies and we have been reduced to eating canned cat food. With Amazon, UPS and Fed Ex each stopping at my house at least once a week or me carrying in a purchase from every time I venture out, I just woke up and thought....enough is enough.    I'd like to vow that I will buy NO MORE unless it is needed to complete an active project.   The operative words being LIKE TO.

Look at my Jenga pile of shame….

and this does not include the class pieces from my recent Guild Anniversary.  Oy!

All the purging I did of fabrics, kits and supplies a few months back was not done to create empty spaces. Every box shipped off for eBay sales is not permission to buy to refill the space that was created ….nor does every box I take to be donated give me Carte Blanche to buy more things.  I had thought I was moving to a more realistic phase of my crafting life. 

Realization hit me right between the eyes after the second trip in 10 days to a fabric store spending $$$ and $$ respectively on those visits.  When I took the fabric upstairs to put it away I saw the other fabrics I had bought to yet put away. 

Shortly before my brick and mortar shopping trips, these lovelies arrived from a pre-order last summer.   It is a selection of fat 8ths from the Blackbird Collection that I ordered from The Kitten Stitcher.  These will be great for finishing.

Of course when Kitten Stitcher sent out the announcement the fabrics were in and shipping would follow, she was great at marketing by including the link to her site with the selection of ALL the fabrics that came in and I HAD to order these.  I'm thinking project bags?

And then there was the sale at Joann's on buttons.    75% off    The packages were assorted size and hombres of each color.   Yes, four different colors jumped into my card.   I mean, it was like buy one, get three free, right? 

However there is no project mind for these.

More fabric for project bags because apparently I have the need for more bags to hold all my projects.

Some pillowcase material for my grand daughter and other fabrics....just because.

In mid-May, my sister and I each ordered the same jelly rolls of Moda fabric from the Ladybird Collection and we created a challenge between us.   Using the same jelly roll pattern we are each making a quilt and then going to compare our finished projects to see our interpretations.  I absolutely needed the coordinating fabric for the binding and accents so back to the fabric store in Vineland for a third visit!   And how's this as a major side-bar.......My sister said she has fabric for 4 quilts already started and I just laughed and said I had 4 quilt tops started and at least four others kitted up.  

Let's factor in Jamboree in October 2022 that I have signed up for,  the Shaker Retreat in November 2022,  and two classes with my guild.  Now these are not necessarily stash enhancements BUT as we all know they create the buying opportunity. 

In about 6 weeks, I am well into four figures of purchases and expenses.   An honest assessment of projects and time tells me I can never ever ever ever EVER complete all the things I already had in my stash and I need to stop ACCUMMULATING!  Sew, I plan to not buy ANYTHING until I use up some of what I have!!!     

But wait,  I forgot to mention I HAD to have these smaller button forms to cover with tiny cross stitch motifs to create the Sampler in a Jar……and immediately ordered the larger size as well…..and yes, they still sit unopened.   The intention is there, it is just the execution I am lacking.  Woe is me.......I think I need a refresher in time management.

Not to be left out, there are the 24 skeins of WDW Chesapeake I bought.  I have the pattern for the French Alphabet Sampler which is monochromatic.   It is difficult to say but truth is, this is not even on my radar to start.  Heck the plane carrying this project to my WIP basket is still on the assembly line at the Boeing factory in Washington State.    And yet somehow I felt it necessary to get the floss.  What was a thinking?   Am I going off to Tibet on a year long voyage of solitude and self discovery and thought I needed supplies to keep take with me?   I pray I have not blown up the supply chain of available WDW Chesapeake with this need to have all the things.

I need to stop trying to be a one woman economic stimulus plan.   I don’t care how much my credit card company loves me and lets me keep charging each month I need to STOP not for monetary reasons (well maybe when I think about it...LOL)  but to save my house from exploding craft supplies all over the neighborhood.  Somehow my neighbors housing draped in ribbons, bolts of fabric and floss hither and yon does not conjure up a comical site in the least.

I need to work from my stash.  

    I need to work from my stash.

            I need to work from my stash.

I am sure I am not alone with this illness.    Knowing that I have no will power and I never stick to any fantastical plan I create has not yet deterred me from pledging to myself, and now to the world,  that no additional stash will be added to my accumulation of supplies for mass crafting  unless it is needed to complete a project in progress! Maybe there's a support group for us.   

Hello, my name is Robin and it has been one day since I last purchased 

crafting supplies not for immediate use.

Thanks for stopping by, thanks for letting me vent, stay safe, be kind and keep on stitching.

PS. Within an hour of posting, I was alerted of a support center in Tennessee.   Thanks Diane!