Side-tracking

I think I may have mastered the art of getting side tracked to the Olympic level.   Take this past weekend....started sorting the magazines on my coffee table, then to a journey through my WIP's, which lead  to putting away random floss and overall organizing of my flosses, somehow I got into my quilting fabrics, which morphed into cleaning closets.   By mid-day, I think I have 5 different projects going with none near completion.  It all started because I wanted to create a 'shopping list' for my upcoming retreat at the beach.  End result, while in the midst I had a mell of a hess going on, I did manage to sort, clean and organize several craft related areas and did a good cleaning of the entire upstairs.

Since I finished my Jeannette Douglas class piece I have done almost no stitching.  But my little sorting exercise has put the reminder forefront in my mind - way to many works in progress.   Some needed missing floss, some are from Christmas in July, some just need a few days or stitches or an embellishment or two.....so I have a path forward.

I seem to have gotten myself into a rut.  I so wanted to get that class piece done I was doing little more than coming home from work and sitting to stitch.   After a day of drama and stress at work - AKA Menopause Manor - 11 women/8 men on the Executive floor can lead to days filled with days of drama - I found myself just flopping on the sofa after dinner and just staying there the rest of the rest of the evening just stitching or roaming the internet.   Brainless activity trying to recover from a stress of the day.  Not a good thing for the waistline or the backside!  I am trying to get better motivated.  I told myself if I could come home in the summer and jump around in the pool for a at least an hour most evenings, then I can stay off the couch and get some things in and around the house done and not save them all for the weekend.    I think it is time to reintroduce the treadmill into my daily routine.

 This is normal.   This is how I found Buddy after I went to get a fresh cup of coffee just now.

Buddy wants to be center stage.    Little too difficult to stitch with him on my lap.  He likes attention and climbs on my lap when I sit to stitch or do computer work.

 A restful Buddy - trust me - he is just waiting to pounce!

Buddy helps me sort my needlework patterns.

                 I have never had a cat that demanded so much attention and I am loving it.

I think he has found his throne.

Life with Buddy has been interesting.   He is really a people cat and wants lots of interaction.  It is so wonderful to be greeted when I come in the door by his meowing and purring.   We have settled into a routine of playing for a few minutes and more playing and brushing after dinner each evening.   My allergies have really kicked up and I do hope it is a seasonal issue and not my new kitty. We are still settling into a sleeping routine and I am not getting much sleep.   Buddy not only has his days and night mixed up as well he as wants to to be in bed with me...but not by my feet.   He wants to lay on my chest, my head and just about anywhere he deems comfortable. Seems to be a theme. I am thoroughly enjoying this cat.  He sure has personality. OK, that's my little bit of catching up.....hope to have some stitching to share soon.

A Start and a Finish

A new start for a cat .....meet Buddy......

 I picked him up after work today.   He is lovable, friendly, playful and very curious.   I kind of fear what I may discover he has been into while I am at work tomorrow.   

It didn't take long for him to make himself at home.

 And a finish.   This is my class piece from the class with Jeannette Douglas 

Sturbridge in July of this year.  There is not one part of this I didn't enjoy doing.

I like how the color changes in the red stripes.

The top and bottom matching rows and bunting were fun to do.   

This section reminded me of a quilt block and was much easier than I thought it would be.

Love, love, love the white pinwheels.   They don't show up too well in the photo.

Closer view of the bunting.

It is great to finish a class piece.  Heaven knows I have a few class pieces the 

remain to be completed.  Grace Mason awaits my return.   But first off to my stash 

pile to pick out something small to start as my take along stitchery piece.

Catching up

Like most of you, summer blog posting seems to take a back seat......

Here's a quick catch up...

The pool cover was put on yesterday which always signals the :-( ending to summer.   I did so well dieting this summer and lost 10 lbs. in 8 weeks.   Mr. W. comes home and the lbs. are starting to pile back on!   Rats!  Oh well, it was a crappy summer weather wise with all the rain and I am a lover of the changing of seasons so bring on the fall!

We had a great Labor Day weekend with both my daughters and family and friends to enjoy crabs, corn on the cob,  all the salads, and other fixings.   It is always nice to have my daughter from New England come home for a few days.   Each time she comes home she teaches me something techie I didn't know.   This time she hooked me up with HBO to GO which I didn't even know I had! Duh!   I have been stitching while watching the last three seasons of Boardwalk Empire!   My sister had told me about the show a few years ago and it reminds us of our dad.  He ran away from home in Pittsburgh PA at 17 and landed in Atlantic City in 1925 and as the story goes, was a numbers runner for a few years!

I have been concentrating my stitching on my class piece to be done before my September guild meeting.   I am close.  I have until Thursday so I am pretty positive I can do it.  Just need to complete the red on the bunting and fill in the last 3 motifs and puritan blue triangles above the bunting.   I hope to post a completed final reveal next weekend and more pix and info will definitely follow when I am finished.

The non-profit board I sit on has changed their mission statement and will be taking a new direction the first of January.  Lots to do during the transition including preparing for a yard a sale of 25 years of stage props and costumes and stuff.

Going house shopping today!  OMGosh    I have been ready to downsize for quite a while.  I am ready to be done with maintaining a yard, gardens (I created!!) and house.   We have an entire second floor we don't use now that the kids are gone.  I want to simplify!  Our first home was 60 years old when we moved in and my current home now is 57 years old.  It would be nice to have everything new.  Mr. W. (up until 3 days ago) was only going to move out of this house feet first.   I even have him considering a move to LSD aka Lower Slower Delaware near the beach.   *Heaven*  I don't know what changed.   A mention of moving into a 55+ community, looking at websites and floor plans and I am off  today to an informational meeting and tour.   Perhaps it was the thought of  him getting a golf cart to cruise a new neighborhood that swayed him.   I am sure any move will is four or five years away (not until retirement) but it is something to look forward to and gives time to de-clutter and empty the closets.

Here's the furry guy I hope to see today.

I have been trying to adopt a kitten/cat but have not been successful.   I went to the local shelter and was deemed not a good candidate!   Mr. W. met me at the door one evening and said the SPCA had left a message.   Before he gave me their message, he asked, "What exactly did you say on the application".......Me - "I told the truth and I listed all the cats we have ever had"....seems honesty is not the best quality..... Let's just say that cats  I have had have never had the named "Lucky!".   Seven cats in 38 years did not bode well for me as a good home provider.   So today, I hope to visit the friend of a friend to get a new cat.   

Weekend Update

Lunch hours at work are rough.   I feel more like I am sitting
at a Marriott then three short flights of stairs from my office!

Progress has been slow on my Jeannette Douglas piece. A sorry state of affairs when I share that this is the only project I am currently stitching on.   I have fallen into the method of only stitching on one project at a time....so unlike Side Track Robin.  It really does make completion so much faster, but one does need to take time to put needle and thread to fabric if you wish to see progress.  I am enjoying the different stitches in this piece but have not spent much time stitching except for a half hour at lunch most days and during my Thursday night stitching group which sometimes means I rip just as much as I stitch once we get chatting away!  

Needing a couple of extra hands to hold this flat to photograph I grabbed a few of my scissors to help.

Called into service - not getting much use since I got my Dovos!

A favorite.  Even got my kids hooked on this game.

Little stitching going on since I've had a couple weeks with early morning meetings and late nights at work.  The mornings I am not going in early I seem to be just a vegetable sipping my first cuppa of the day and playing Words with Friends or Seven Little Words.

Come to think of it, I think I have been tired since Mr. W. returned home......hmmm, does the mean he makes work?   Not really, he is pretty self-sufficient.  I think it is sharing the bed, the covers and the snoring.......hmmm, twin beds or separate bedroom in the future?  Maybe just be the dog days of summer.  

Where I will be spending the afternoon (hopefully)
stitching but first housework and laundry.

Today is certainly not one of those dog days of summer.....we have a beautiful weekend of almost early fall like weather ahead of us.   I am going to have to see what I can get into outside!  To that point, I need to share a website I found.   It is called My Fairs and Festivals.   Enter the date, enter the state (or zip) and viola' you get a list of all the fairs, festivals and events for that day/weekend in that area.  Imagine you are traveling and will be in Soddy Daisy, TN (Hi! Diane) for the week and want to know what is going on.....pretty cool.   So many times there are things going on just around the corner that I never know about until I read about it in the Monday morning paper.   It was just a stroke of luck to find the site and you be sure I have bookmarked it.

OK, folks, sun is shining and the humidity low and I need to get a move on.   Happy stitching all!

Closet Clean - out

Pardon the wrinkles.  Just popped this off the Q-snaps long enough to take a picture.

I stitched a bit this morning......I am over half way on my class piece.   Yeah!   I really hope to get this completed by mid-to-end of September.   Retreat is the first weekend of October and I already have a piece in mind I want to start!!   And then there is Grace Mason of course that I need to stitch on and then the stitch-a-long with guild....of my!  Too much to stitch and not enough hours in a day. As I stitched this morning, I was watching House of Cards (thanks Pat!!)  Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright and others....really quite excellent. Talk about corruption in government.   This show is really quite believable and frightening at the same time when you realize this probably only scratches the surface of the secrets, favors, personal agendas, wheelings and dealings that actually go on.    I understand there is a British version too for those folks on the other side of the pond! Anyway,  after three episodes I needed to get up and get moving so I could justify a good sit 'n stitch later today.

I decided I needed to tackle my closet today since it is a kind of showery, gray, misty sort of I don't want to be outside kind of day.    So to the closet I went........this is what the the floor usually looks like by the end of the week (the part I am willing to show you).

Mr. W. gets in bed at 8.   Heck, I
am mostly likely not even home yet or if I am, I am not inside yet, so it makes keeping the closet neat difficult.   By the time I decide to get undressed for the night he is in dreamland and I need to be quiet so I just kick off the shoes, etc., etc.  This of course has lead to a grand sort out of all things in the closet today.   It is kind of the August ritual that developed when I used to have to assess who had what and who needed what to start school....but enough.

More important, I  did just want to share this trick for cleaning and sorting out clothes in the closet.  I read this somewhere.....here's what you do......for one year every time you wear something you hang the hanger backwards on the rod.  At the end of one year, you know you have not worn the article of clothing in over a year and therefore, can chuck it!  I choose April Fools Day as my start date since I am foolish to think that I will even fit back into some of the things I 'save'.

On that note, happy stitching all......may your stitches be many and your frogs few and I will return to start sorting the drawers in the closet!

My Folly is Over...

Mr. W.  will be rolling in sometime tomorrow afternoon following eight weeks on the road......

So let's have a catch up on what I have been up to!   My daughter gave me this adorable squirrel sweater.   My family has this crazy obsession with squirrels.  It is what all the best dressed teddy bears will be wearing this season!

 I took a vacation day Friday and my sister and I went "junking".    It is always fun for sisters to get together and share and laugh.    I found this adorable miniature dress form.   I have no idea what I will do with it but it was one of those things that I knew if I didn't buy it, I would regret it.

 OMG!  Got this Christmas table runner for $4!!!   This is how it was folded on the table in the consignment store.   Being a stitcher, I knew without peaking what the other side would look like.

 Not only that, I am a sucker for needlework I find in consignment stores.....I know how much time and effort I put into my pieces so I know someone did the same here.

Overall it is 48 inches long.

Another $4 find!  This is about 11 x 18.    Couldn't find this when I was looking.   Back then, all I saw were tons of January and no July (birth month)

And a $1 find.   This chicken wire shoe.   The bow and flowers will come out and I am not sure what I am going to do with it but it was another too good of a bargain to pass up.

Today I managed to make my monthly guild meeting.....I have missed the last three months and even though it was just  stitch in it was so good to go and see everyone.   I've been doing a lot with my non-profit board so little stitching has been going on.  It's minimal but here's my progress on my class piece.

I am going to have to frog a teeny tiny bit.   I put in two too many stitches in the center of the heart below the flag.   Not a terrible amount of frogging.  I think I will survive.

After my guild meeting I picked up my BFF and we went to a local guild's quilting show.   Of course, I needed nothing but got this R-W-B fabric for a table runner pattern my sister gave me.  The show was not as nice as the bigger shows but I think it is important to support the local guilds.  Beside some of the bigger national shows can be overwhelming.

 I got this fabric last weekend in Lancaster PA with my daughter.    I am so drawn to 1930's retro fabrics.    I think I finally have more than enough to complete the string quilt I started.

I ended my jammed packed day with the afternoon and evening at the Havre de Grace Seafood Festival.   Yummo!  Seafood sampler platter, corn on the cob, crabs, cold beer, live bands, craft vendors.....it was a fun afternoon and evening for Deb and I.

I got some great shots of the lighthouse, the park and the water on my phone.

We strolled the promenade along the river.   I love exploring new towns and cities and finding their hidden gems.  Things the locals probably take for granted.

Check this out.   I bought this fab messenger bag.

 Close up of the button decoration.

Look when you flip up the front flap!!  Double wow.    It is made from real jeans.   The pockets will hold my favorite pen and cell phone and my keys are on the belt loop.   Inside it is super roomy.   There is room for my pocketbook, my lunch and a place for files but it will house a zipper mesh bag with a stitching project for me.  Perfect for work.

I am off to rearrange everything from my old tote bag to my new messenger bag.