Losing heart a bit...

    Happy Spring and believe me, it couldn't come fast enough! In addition to the world being in flames, the situation on the SFO ranch is not much better. So life has definitely gotten in the way of sewing, but after two weeks of not posting, I hope I have enough progress to share.

     Can't get enough of me? I did get another YouTube video up with this free Lucky Spot Placemat design-- don't miss out, even if you have to fast forward through my slow drawl of instructions. 

     I have now finally mastered the sound track lessons of video production-- music, cutting out the words, UM and LIKE and SO, which comprise a bigger part of my vocabulary than I realized. And not a moment too soon-- I am losing my gypsies in less than a week!

   This is one of the things that is making me really sad, but I'm trying to remember if COVID had not intervened, the artist-in-residence would never have come home, never discovered that she loved the mountain, and never found the great love of her life. 

     So off they go to walk from Georgia to Maine. You can always count on me for overthinking, and in my heart I know they will come back completely different people than when they left. 

    So you all gave them their start on YouTube-- "GYPSY TRAILS." And thanks to YOU-- you gave them over 1,000 subscribers on their channel throughout the course of the Christmas stitch-a-long.  But now they have over 2,000 subscriber and WAY MORE watch hours than me-- heehee. So there's some catching up to do. If you want to start watching the hike, check their channel in about two weeks. It's as good as reality TV gets! I'm also watching a channel called "Jay Wanders Out" and he's a couple of months ahead of them. It's fun to just let YouTube videos roll while you sew, even when the embroidery machine is running at full tilt!

    To console myself in the past couple of week, I took a virtual trip to Hawaii:

via Kentucky and Oklahoma...

and I am currently in Mississippi, so the next set of Carefree Highways designs (#9!) will make an appearance soon and then there are only five to go! This is a quilt I hope to have completed early summer- instead of dib-dabbling it along, I'm going to spend entire days with assembly until it's finished. Thank goodness I wrote instructions a few months ago that I can now follow, since I don't have a clue what I was doing on this and right now it's pretty much a box of untrimmed embroideries--LOL!

I have been able to keep up with "A Ribbon Runs Through It" and almost have my next installment of four blocks done. The next installment shows no signs of shipping, and I think the Fat Quarter Shop has pretty much given up on updates for now.

Block #7 is almost done-- they are all colored differently and this one was not one of my favorites-- too much pink, and not very colorful. I caught myself thinking about how it could be improved with a little of the green or purple. God help me if I try to think up my own colorations! This is supposed to be my "mindless" activity.

The St. Patrick's table runner fell by the wayside and has ended up in the dreaded ziploc. Mr. SFO is out of town next week, and my gypsies will be on the trail, so I may take a day of sewing and try to catch a few things up. I still want to make this, and as we say-- I'm now a year ahead of schedule.

The April Birth Month mug rug is out in time for those April 1st birthdays! These have really been fun to digitize, AND a commercial success-- those two things don't always go hand in hand, so I am grateful.

I've been cutting the squares for the quilt block as I go along, but FEB-MAR-APR- still need to be assembled. So I may just make a list of an all sewing day for early next week.

Morning sewing is fully rolling again! Can I finish this by it's anniversary of when I started in late June? I believe I can. So the Halloween corner is finished and just needs a bunch of backstitching. I notice all these new designer eschew backstitching-- I've always found it easy to do-- mostly you are just outlining shapes and you don't even have to refer to a chart.

Look at the difference just a couple of hours of backstitch made in this banner area!

Backstitch was made for typography, but look how even the pumpkin is crisp and brought to life.

So now comes the saddest part-- there's always a question of how much personal information you want to put out there, but this is really my diary, too, and I want to write about my life. I'm sure only my best online buddies will make it this far anyway.

My mom is 89, and just a couple of weeks ago she said
(in the dry sense of humor we all share):

 "I am feeling so good lately-- I'm probably full of cancer."

So this week, we were in the ER for a sharp hip pain, which we assumed was just a muscle strain, and that is not what it turned out to be as you can probably guess. We will know more tomorrow.

I have recently been thinking of the old hymn:

"Through many toils, trials, and snares,

I have already come.

'Twas grace that brought me safe thus far,

and grace will lead me home."

Just hoping we can all make it through this with
grace, strength, and dignity. We've all gotten this far-- we can get a little further.

xox

Carol