Over My Head...

     I AM IN DEEP with everything in my life these days! I suppose it's natural that whatever approach you take to quilting is probably the way you approach life in general, and in my case, this is so true. So pay attention to your quilt-y habits for some cheap psychoanalysis. My number of quilt UFOs is matched by other projects I'm working on right now, in "real" life. I’ll try to hit it all briefly-- there’s no time for much more!

Garden-- looking fabulous and ready to go. (95% of this may have been done by someone other than myself, but I got it rolling!) I think I have planted my lettuce and onions a bit early. Some of our nights are still below freezing which can I tell by the chicken's water in the morning. There are still plenty more lettuce seeds and onion sets to try again. Seedlings are everywhere, inside.

Chickens-- we're still crushing the egg farming business, NOT literally. We have all our original twelve babies, now one year old. The four new ones are super skittish and there hasn’t been much time to play with them. My favorite hen, Buttercup, is getting picked on-- we have to put this grape smelling purple goo on her to make them stop. She's a "Buff Orpington"-- the DD has nicknamed her the "Buff Grape-ington" for now. You can see her right under that birch swing-- she's missing a few back feathers.

Orchard-- we have about a dozen more fruit trees arriving soon. Last year we planted six and they all made it through the first winter. Not sure how much fruit we’ll get this year, but we had a great first season-- our mailman Tom always commented on their progress as he drove down the driveway each day. I was able to surprise him with some peaches, when he pronounced them ready last August! Blueberries are also springing to life.

Bees-- I thought we lost them! Not much activity for the spring-- now all of the sudden, they are swarming. We have a second “nuc” coming soon-- this is what they call a purchased set of frames with bees and a queen. Yes-- you can get them mailed to you! I’m not going to make as good of a beekeeper as an egg farmer. I cannot tell which is the queen at all. You’d think for an artist, I’d see the difference right away. We’ll have to see how this situation develops. In the meantime, the DD is queen bee-- she gets it, or maybe just has better vision.

Quiltopia! It is happening. I moved ALL of my stuff out-- down to the garage and some in the house-- it is complete chaos here. I still have my little sewing corner in the living room, fortunately. Doing all that moving, I am really SORE today-- my next job is stapling rolls of plastic over the ceiling-- you know what that is-- an OVER THE HEAD activity-- don't you think the title of this blog is clever?

It's a huge upstairs space and I'm going to have a workstation for every activity-- sewing, digitizing, longarm, YouTube videos-- even scrapbooking. Quiltopia, indeed. I'll have to come down eventually-- no bathroom and no kitchen.

     Will all of these projects reflect my quilt-y ones and only get to 95% finished? Maybe! I can anticipate Mr. SFO will take quite awhile to get trim around those windows. I can sew without it. We’ll see what happens. 

     On the digitizing end, I did finish the April Village of the Month with not a moment to spare.  This one, for some reason, went through many iterations-- that bike traveled around those few square inches for a greater total distance than the Tour de France! Every time I work on the file, I rename the designs... Holland A, Holland B, and this one got all the way up to J. I hope you like it. There's a ton of summer themes to choose from now-- lake house, beach, patriotic, but before we get into that, I may throw in a "Sewing Village" for May. What would a sewing village have in it? Quilts hanging on the line, thread spool mountains? Give me your wisdom.

    I did continue to stitch along a little each night last week, in spite of everything going on. If you recall from the last post, my goal was to finish six reindeer. So I have two, and the other four are well along the way. I’ll consider it a win if they are done by Tuesday night-- Wednesday is May, if you can believe that. I’ve discovered the “Tilda look” is gotten by mixing really tiny pieces with big pieces. It’s super cute. Problem is, she doesn't tell you how many pieces you need of each size-- you are supposed to "count" them from the diagram-- then multiply by six. These two grade school math skills could definitely use refreshing in my case, judging by the leftover pieces I have.
    

   No progress on Release 2 of the Moonbeams Quilt. Release 3 is the first Friday of the month-- so that would be this week-- probably trying to get that done is a stretch but it’s next on my list after the Chatterbox quilt. I finished up 260 of these units-- no small feat! 

    Now it’s time to make the blocks. I hope this project starts moving faster-- the April Sew Sampler box is in hand, again a winner. I'm  not usually a pastel fan, but just look at that gingham. I ordered a finishing kit.

      Back to Chatterbox-- I now have to sew pairs together-- so here's some overthinking for you on how to get a nice mix of colors. I have light blue, white, red, gold, and dark blue units, and I don’t want two of the same color together. 

    I laid them all out by color in columns. I’m going to start with the light blue units in Column 1, because I have the most of those. I take the first light blue, and skip over all the other light blues-- I sew it to the first white unit in the Column 2. Then, I pair the same light blue with the second, then the third whites in that column. Then I move on to pairing the same light blue with the reds, golds, and dark blues in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th columns. That makes nine different combinations in all, with the same light blue fabric.   

     Then I do the same thing with the second light blue fabric-- sew it with each of the other colors. I will get nine more. I continue this with the last two light blue fabrics-- so I now have 36 combinations, all different.
    Now I'm done with light blue-- the next column is three different whites. I don’t go back and combine the whites with the light blues-- we already combined all of those together in the first round, right? So I’m only working to the right. Each white print gets combined with every red, yellow, gold, and navy blue. There are three white fabrics, and six other colored fabrics, so I have 18 more unique combinations.
   Now we move to the red column-- again, they only get combined with colors on the right--there’s two different reds and four golds and navys, so this time I only get eight new combinations-- it decreases each time. The last set is down to two golds and two navys-- just four more combinations.

   After all of this, I have 66 paired units all different, to work with. There’s still a ton of units left to sew together, so it looks like there's enough to repeat the whole process. This time, I can sew the light blue blocks to the right of the colored block-- I would end up with 132 unique units. You have to be careful when you get near the end of the process though-- you don’t want to be left with, say, four light blues. So take stock at that point when you have about a dozen pieces left to make sure your going to be able to mix until the very end.

     I cannot tell you how much I am enjoying this distraction--- okay, my adding and multiplying may need help, but I used to love "Probability" in Math class-- that's what this is.  Maybe I should just go ahead and join the DULL WOMEN’S CLUB on Facebook-- I think I qualify!
    And you-- still reading this! Bless you. It is such a comfort to me in life to know I have true friends who will read this far, and a few other blessed people who are truly interested in my process of making unique units with hundreds of pieces. You are all going to inherit the earth.

  Now let's get out there and make more progress this week-

are you ready?

xox

Carol

Cutting Corners

      The leaf quilt has been carelessly set aside-- that last 2-1/2" border can wait. I am now obsessed with the Chatterbox quilt!

     My mom always enjoyed telling the story about how I would sit on the floor as a youngster and cut magazines to shreds. She called it doing "Clippy Cutties," and always finished by saying how I left a mess for the vacuum! Apparently, I had more affinity for scissors than crayons in my formative years. If only I could relive that magic moment when I discovered tape-- all those little pieces could be put back together in a new way!

     So here I am years later, still doing what I was born to do. I mentioned that the Chatterbox quilt is the most repetitive thing I have ever made-- I'm usually drawn to Sampler quilts that keep my interest a bit more. But here I am, working towards 240 of these:

     There are quite a few steps to just getting this far-- cutting fabrics and taping them to Triangles on a Roll, stitching on the dotted lines, then cutting on the solids, removing the papers, ironing open, trimming dog ears, stitching on blue and white corners, pressing the corners back, trimming them, and then pressing the seams open. Phew! This is repeated for twelve different fabrics. It's quite a few hours, so to streamline the process. I promised myself I would strictly assembly line them-- all twelve fabrics-- one step at a time. Of course, I couldn't stick with that plan at all! I now have pieces at every stage of the aforementioned construction steps. Fortunately and because I took over the kitchen table, I have kept them organized. 

     My fall back position was then to just get all the units together before I started final assembly. Then this happened-- Whoops!

    You can't blame me for just wanting to make sure I was liking this thing for all the work that's going into it, and good news, it's a hit out of the park in my view. The colorway is semi-patriotic-- red, white, blue, and gold-- perfect for summer. And it's going to come out at a very generous size-- 48" x 48"-- perfect to drape on my couch.

    I am going against my best moral judgement in pressing the seams open-- the block size is 6" finished and I don't think I have a choice. I'm not going to be doing any pinning of points to keep things moving, except that center one-- and here's how things are looking:

     Super sharp, but not exactly aligned-- if those seams were nested, my points would be snug as bugs. So we'll see what happens. Unfortunately, this quilt is the next one getting carelessly set aside this week-- I found out one of my best internet friends had also purchased the Tilda Christmas quilt. This is the one I succumbed to, in a weak moment, after Christmas. Then, I badgered her into doing a stitch-a-long with me. April is Reindeer Month-- surprise, surprise, her six deer are done, and my package isn't even open yet. So I'm switching gears today and trying to make that a sewing priority this week. I will have no respect for myself if I disappoint my friend.

    Other things I had planned to finish in April-- February and March Kona Star blocks. Leaf Quilt. Moonbeams Release 2. Piece three backings for stuff I finished early this year. Ha! For awhile, I thought one day of straight sewing would catch me up. Now, it's realistically a week of sewing that would be needed. Let's wait until it will take a full month of sewing to catch up all the things! It would be my dream to take a month off this summer and work on all of them-- work on all of them in my finished sewing studio, which is slowly becoming a reality-- we have a start date, May 1st. More on that as it develops.

     Two people I enjoy following on the web-- Pat Sloan and Sister's Choice Quilts have both commented lately how overwhelmed they are with projects and the need to scale back. One woman in the comments said her house looked like a padded cell with all the hanging quilts! People always suggest donating.  I haven't done too much deep thinking about this-- but the overwhelmed feeling can't be denied. I have kept up with giving away most of what I make-- most of it is going for birthday and Christmas gifts-- so I really don't have a ton of finishes hanging around. Most of what I do finish is usually mug rug to table runner size-- there's not a whole closet of quilts anywhere to be found in my house. Would I just make quilts to donate?-- this is where Pat Sloan's thinking is at this point. You would not have believed her hallway with shelves and shelves of quilts-- many still needed binding. I have to admit, donating would take some of the joy out for me-- I love making things for my family and thinking about what they would like. I bring this up, because once the new space is ready-- all the old UFOs will be unboxed and added to the new UFOs-- it may be a sobering moment and I'm trying to prepare myself. For now, I am scrupulously avoiding purchasing new projects, but I still haven't cut down starting new things I have already bought. I would obviously like my brand new space to be completely organized with only the things I love. So there are my musings on that topic. Let's see what happens.

     Seed packets came out last week-- thank you for loving them! I want to do more this summer and the possibilities are endless. Flowers, herbs, wildflowers, not to mention Set Twos of all of the above! It is fun to design two blockbuster things together-- for instance-- a sewing set themed for Christmas is an assured hit. So I'm thinking of "Santa Seeds"-- not just the typical poinsettias and holly, but a bit more whimsical like Reindeer Corn, and Snowflake Seeds. This is how the mind wanders, when you a working on repetitive sewing projects! I keep a notepad by my sewing machine.

     I got quite a few hours in, working the real vegetable garden last week. You would not believe how everything has come alive suddenly. I turned over four rows and planted some early peas, onions, and spinach. Of course it's not going to rain all week, so time will need to be spent watering. And the garden still needs about 2,000 hours of work. But it's glass 1/2 full here right now-- or 1/1000 full, as the case may be. xox.

    

 Look what followed the DD home last week! And wouldn't this picture make a great pictorial quilt? 

   We have eggs coming out of our ears these days, but my 14-egg Crust-less Quiche is a real winner. My older hens are getting really nasty with each other-- it's making me sad. My rooster is bent on destroying me. I gave them a new sandbox to play in and a jungle gym is coming, but it's fight, fight, fight. I have considered letting them out to "free range"-- but you know what is going to happen if I do. A lot of situations in my life really need some thought and some action right now.

     Finally, I've been telling you all to watch what AI brings in front of your eyes on social media-- it's extremely revealing. The latest group that Facebook thinks I need to join is, the "Dull Women's Club." I'm not taking any offense-- Facebook is mad at me, because I haven't posted anything on my personal page for quite a while. Why would I, when I can blather at much longer length over here?

   So-- I've seen it a few times, and I haven't joined. Mostly, the Dull Women don't leave the house much, live in remote locations, and garbage day is the most exciting thing that happens all week. That ticks two out of three boxes for me-- my wonderful SIL does the garbage. There's an obsession with sharing shoe sizes-- I'm not interested in that.  All I can say is the Dull Women should tighten up security on that group because I've been able to see ALL of the posts, without joining. It occurred to me, if they don't tighten up,  the group is in danger of just getting taken over by quilters. Sure enough, not 48 hours after first seeing the group, someone in a remote corner of Europe shared their 180 nine patch units they had made.

My heart is with her. And all of you. Have a dull week-- just do it!

xoxo

Carol

     

Get it Together!

      Spring is here!

    We are starting to have some beautiful sunny days in the high 50s as I emerge from my cocoon, feeling a little pasty-faced and weak from too many winter hours spent behind sewing machines and computers over the past few months. Every where I look outside, the melting snow is revealing projects and maintenance jobs that need to be done! My daily Mantra is "GET IT TOGETHER!" said in a bit of an angry tone to myself in my head, to combat that overwhelmed vibe.  I'm starting with an enforced hour in the garden from 2-3 every day. Once that shows some progress, there is a bit of painting to do outside, and then some more fun gardening projects with flowers.

     Last week was a tough one-- when last we spoke, I had the Safelite appointment that was supposed to be three hours, but ended up being five hours, with an additional three hours driving time. They ordered the wrong windshield-- I have the FANCY car, with the FANCY rain sensors and FANCY ice melting features. I swear I'm not a FANCY girl-- this was one of two cars on the lot in April of 2020 when I desperately needed transportation, and trust me, the second choice was even FANCIER!

    I think the service people were worried I would go ballistic-- I bet they've never had a cross-stitcher in before-- so patient-- the hours FLEW by, haha, and Release Two of the Moonbeams stitch-a-long got done in one sitting! 

     The quilt part of the stitch-a-long has four blocks this month-- they look somewhat like those red stars with the green "bone" I'll call it. They are releasing the first Friday of each month, so that gives me a little more than two weeks to git 'er done. Maybe, maybe not!

     My extreme case of taxitis is starting to go away-- it features red eyes, a sick feeling in the pit of the stomach, and sleeplessness! But not much done on the digitizing end last week. I did finish up the Veggie Seed Packs-- very cute! I want them to be stiffer that the Poppy seed packet from the Gardening Bowl Fillers came out, so I may add another finishing suggestion, which is mounting them on sticky board. And I'd love to make a little basket for them to live in-- so still some more work to do.

     I used to be a graphic designer, so these were super fun for me to draw up. I may do a flower series if the set sells well, and then maybe even herbs over the course of the summer. But it is really hard to keep your attention, people, when the weather gets nice! Hoping to get some test stitching done tomorrow.

    Springville-- I am so sorry to say-- just a little progress! Don't worry, I will GET IT TOGETHER!

      On the plus side, my leaf quilt is almost finished. Last week, I just had the blocks done. I laid them out with a printout I cutout and they looked a bit too regimented. My print out idea did not work at all-- the print was way too faded and small. I tried to do something with a more random layout by adding some extra strips here and there, but it was just turning into a mess. I ended up just laying it out on our bed.

And here's my final layout!

I am really happy with the way this came it-- it really captures the leaves on brick image I've had in my mind for 40 years! The row seems were KILLER-- lots of pinning. All that's left is a little border-- just quickly cut four long strips, you say? No-- it has to be made of 2x2 and 2x4 inch pieces! I really want to free motion this myself with swirls and leaf veins-- I'm hoping to have my longarm set back up in about 8 weeks. Yes, the sheetrock for "Quiltopia," my 600 sf space above the garage, has been ordered!

I started my March Sew Sampler box-- I'm making the "Chatterbox" quilt with the Sweetwater Vintage fabric provided.

It's cool looking, isn't it? It is quite a bit of sewing! It's basically HSTs with an additional tiny white and dark triangle sewn to each side. I have 12 fat eighths-- I can make 240 3" finished HSTs. I've actually never done a quilt that's as repetitive as this one. The Sew Sampler box came with 3" "Triangles on a Roll"... have you ever use them? They are paper piecing guides you can use to make HSTs. 

You lay two fabrics right sides together and pin the paper on top. Sew on the dotted lines, then cut on the solids.

The results are super accurate-- this is an "HST" unit-- a half square triangle for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, one of the basic blocks of the quilt world.

Only thing is, you then half to pull the papers off and trim off those little dog ears. Horrors... I am pressing seams open for this project because there's too many tiny pieces. Once I have 240 of these, I then need to sew 480  little flip and stitch corners on them. It's a good mindless activity for me at the end of the day, but I am hoping this whole thing can be done by the end of the month.

No progress on Pressed Flowers, or a heck of a lot of other projects that are lying around right now. But I'm thinking of starting a new feature on this blog-- "Quilt Kits I Didn't Buy This Week." heehee.

I really want this:

But I didn't buy it!

And I've really been wanting this for a long time:

But I haven't bought it.

And there's this-- I really want it!

It's the Fat Quarter Shop's Christmas Free Stitch-a-long--
honestly, if I get sucked in, it's not like I don't have enough Christmas fabric to make it my own.

Just think of all the savings of time I have made by not buying anything new-- I will really be able to make things happen this week!

So that's all the nonsense that's in my head this time. I hope you're encourage to GET IT TOGETHER this spring, and make all the beautiful things.

xox
Carol

Ten Brilliant Observations of the 2024 Eclipse

      It was about six months ago, I read somewhere about the coming eclipse and was delighted to see we were just inside the path of the moon's shadow. Good thing it came to us-- Mr. SFO and I do not travel, especially do not travel in traffic, and most decidedly do not travel in traffic where any sort of crowd might be involved. In fact, it's unlikely that we would walk 50 feet up the road to get a better view of any given thing. To borrow from Jane Austen, "There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort."  

    The DD and SIL are young and feel differently-- they wanted to travel to the top of a mountain. I had to convince them that wouldn't really be much closer to the event... and because we were on the very edge, I also had trouble convincing everybody we would be in TOTALITY. (So fun to say that word, is it not-- I'm going to miss it!) Here's a diagram I drew in my embroidery software to explain it to them.

   They were still skeptics-- as the days drew closer, I eventually found a chart listing all the towns in the U.S. and was able to definitively prove we would be in glorious TOTALITY for 45 seconds. It's so awesome to be right all the time, isn't it!?

     I had been watching the weather for days ahead of time-- there was not a cloud in the sky, and you have no idea how unusual that is for these parts at this time of year-- the sun has been in full eclipse behind the clouds for months now. With temperatures in the 60s for the first time in forever, the weather was truly a gift.

    So here's my brilliant observations-- I do apologize for acting like no one has ever seen an eclipse before, but I've never seen an eclipse before. But honestly, I didn't hear anyone give the in-depth analysis, as you're about to read, anywhere on TV. Enjoy.

1. The sun is bright. So we heard a thousand times before any discussion of the eclipse-- DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. How do you even do that? It hurts and you can't even see it anyway-- thank goodness, or we'd have a lot of blind people stumbling around. It's just too bright. One thing that surprised me is, even with just a sliver of a crescent of a sun, it's still too bright to look at. (I guess I will have to confess to trying to peek through my fingers with extremely slitted eyes to discover this and I'm happy to say my corneas are still intact today) Then magically and only when in TOTALITY, we could finally look up. So that brings me to brilliant observation #2--

2. Those overpriced, cheap paper glasses were worth it. This is really the only way you can look at the sun. But you can't see anything else through those glasses, so I questioned how long I'd really want to have them on before I fell into a ditch. On the contrary-- it was fun to look at the sun in the middle of the day for the first time in my life. And see it gradually getting chipped away. Heck, I may even pull those glasses out from time to time this summer to see if the sun's still there.

3. The sun is small. When you finally can look up at it, for all that light and heat, it's pretty surprising how small our sun is! Think about it-- for the moon to cover it, it would have to be small. I think I understood, in that great big sky, why it's a rare event when the moon is passes directly in front of it.

4. Celestial events are SLOW. So it took a long time for the moon to cover the sun-- we went out about 2:00pm and our TOTALITY wasn't until 3:30pm. I'd hate to admit how many times I reached for the dreaded cell phone during the once in a lifetime event. Granted, I was texting other people about it. How fast does the moon travel? Slow. In a nod to our weird northern location, the moon seemed to be traveling from right to left as I watched TV in Mexico, but where we are it went from the bottom to the top. Very strange.

5. Celestial events are FAST. It really didn't get super dark until TOTALITY. Things started to look weird about 20 minutes before. The light was kind of yellow and red but not quite like a sunset. All the shadows had fuzzy edges. I stood up at that point, as if to get a better look. For perspective, the series of  four photos you are looking at are just about 10 minutes of time, out of the whole two hour event.

6. TOTALITY was beautiful. I even understood for a moment why you would suffer travel, traffic, and crowds to view such a thing. A perfect golden ring hovered in the sky, then a "star" popped out. You can see it to the lower right of the sun-- someone on Facebook told me it was Venus. We were all transfixed for a moment.

7. We have more and closer neighbors than we thought. We were all wondering what the animals would do-- the chances of us hearing nighttime insects here is 0% right here now with the temperatures. (Believe me, after just one warm day, that is about to change.)  But after a moment of silence, a great noise came up-- was it howling wolves? Honking geese? Our chickens? No-- it was people! We heard a great cheer echo over the pond and another group up the road. I was tempted to yell myself, but Mr. SFO is sensitive to noise and I didn't want to waste any of my 45 seconds. The chickens did not even bat an eyelid-- just kept pecking away! Like, "Yeah-- it's just a dumb eclipse, people. Where's my corn?"

8. The cold temperatures and wind are a thing. Okay, so maybe not the wind-- we had that anyway. But I went from pulling out deck furniture and running for suntan lotion to freezing again-- I almost thought I'd miss the eclipse by running in for my down coat! It seemed like we got about a minute of view, then that little bead of light cracked out from the bottom of the sun and it was time to don our glasses once again. The whole process reversed itself over the next hour. (Slowly scroll back up to experience it!)

9. It's fun to do something different for a day. I definitely dropped some baggage I've been carrying around for one sweet afternoon. And, (philosophical thought warning!) for a couple of blessed hours, the entire country was looking in the same direction with optimism.

10. Chocolate cake is good way to celebrate anything. (Thank you, C.W., for that thought!) I thank the Lord for my DD and SIL everyday-- they fired up the grill, and we enjoyed our first hamburgers, baked potatoes, and pasta salad of the summer. The DD even made a celebratory cake-- here it is in TOTALITY.

And here's a view of the beautiful, sprinkled "corona." 

And my "sunshine" rising over the moon once again. Awesome day!

So that's the once in a lifetime event over! It's hard to get back down to Earth this morning as I write. I have a three-hour appointment to get my windshield replaced and two sets of Form 1040 to get done this week. 

Remember, every day is a "once a lifetime"-- let's make the most of them.

xox

Carol

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies!

      I am in a high good humor, way too happy for a person who suffered another foot of snow and another twelve hour power out this past week! Why, you ask? Because celestial and earthly events have turned in our favor and conspired to afford Northern New England the best view in the country of our coming eclipse. (Fingers crossed.)

    I even was inspired to stitch up an embroidery design with the shortest shelf life I have ever done. I'm sure you had to have seen it, because I have made sure it is constantly before your eyes for the last few days!

     Of course, its value is over on April 9th-- but I'm happy to say it has sold well and dragged in a few unsuspecting new customers.

      So, I don't really want to be that annoying person prattling on like this is the first time the moon has ever slipped in front of the sun. To encourage those of you not in the path of TOTALITY, chances are you're going to get a bit of a spectacle in North America wherever you are-- it will get dark. I read that Boston, a good two hours drive from here, will reach 95% of full eclipse, so it's bound to be true that a really wide area beyond that strip they keep showing is going to have some darkness. So even if you were too frugal to buy the $5 glasses or the $1.99 aforementioned mug rug, be sure to head out between about 12:00pm and 4:00pm tomorrow with a colander.

     I'm going to post a few pictures mid-week for those of you interested. The kids are going to make a YouTube video a little later-- they have a drone, go-pro, and artistic abilities all ready to make a really nice short film. I will let you know when that goes live-- probably later in the week. I'm sure you'll be sick of hearing about the eclipse by then, if you aren't already.

     I had a good sewing week as well. I absolutely FORCED myself to finish the last 9 smaller leaf blocks of my Kim Diehl jelly roll project. this is going to be a nice size of about 55" x 55." I'm way into overtime on this-- it was supposed to be March's project. Almost there and I do feel it was worth the time, effort, and force.

     I didn't update this picture with all of the blocks yet-- its a 5x5 layout-- but when I do, I'm taking the picture and cutting it out with scissors to "play" with my block arrangement. This will be so much easier than repeatedly bending over to move blocks, or sliding around the floor on my butt! I do not have a design wall right now, and I've never needed one as badly.

    It occurred to me there is something very wrong with stitching a fall piece in spring when it looks like winter outside. But on I go!

    For digitizing last week, besides my Eclipse Mug Rug, the next Village of the Month is coming along. It's a tulip theme-- may be getting old for you, but tulips are still years away for me. I did throw some bulbs into the vegetable garden, poor things.

     Then, I'm working on a set of six cross stitch "seed packets"-- I may even make a little ITH basket to put your seed packs in for display, and to fondly look at for encouragement, when life dumps snow on you.

     For regular embroidery, I'm making a wall hanging that says BLOOM. This is a sister piece to the ones that say LOVE, HOPE, HOME, etc. So I need a saying for the sashing about spring or blooming or what not. Let me know if you can think of one.

    The O's get replaced with a couple of pretty wreaths-- I really love how the stylized flowers are coming out, and the set might be worth it just for the wreaths-- I hope you think so, too. To misquote Dickens, I am honoring Spring in my heart, and trying to keep it all the year, with embroidery projects, at least.

    What are the chances of finishing all three things this week? I'll be honest-- 0%! The big T-X deadline looms-- my heart is with every small business person struggling with Schedule C this week. I do three sets of taxes for family-- it is so hard to have it IN MY FACE how they are all struggling right now-- and still we owe more. Enough about that, or my blue skies are gonna cloud up and rain! Time to count our blessings, I guess.

    And thank goodness for the humor that this house runs on-- Mr. SFO is currently calling me "Betty Davis."

     We are fans of Turner Classic Movies and discovered one from 1940 called "The Letter." Betty is the star, as you can guess, and plays a murderess-- that is plainly revealed. The question is-- is she pure evil, or was it self-defense? We got sucked right in-- THEN-- at various stressful and inappropriate times during the investigation-- she pulled out CROCHET to work on! You can bet, I was riveted. As the story moves forward, she had more and more of a maniacal look on her face as she pulled that piece out of her project bag. So all I will say is-- in the last scene, if she had just kept crocheting instead of walking out into the courtyard, all would have ended well. Let that be a lesson to all of us-- just KEEP STITCHIN!

    Mr. SFO loves to point out factually incorrect things in movies with buildings. His favorite is when people hop up into air conditioning vents to escape the bad guys-- you may have also realized an A/C vent would never be big enough or support the weight! I was so proud to be able to point out to him that over the course of Betty's troubles, about two weeks, she would have never been able to go from a few crocheted squares into a nice throw size. Turns out that Bette Davis really knitted, though, and frequently did so between "takes"! 

     So here's my final progress for the week-- whether or not my face is maniacal when I pick it up-- well, you'd have to ask Mr. SFO. But when I pick it up, he keeps saying, "Hello, Betty!"

     Fat Quarter Shop did "Release 2" of the the Make-a-Wish Moonbeams piece on Friday-- that means more cross stich and four more quilt blocks. It's a busy week for me, with the eclipse and I also have a THREE-HOUR appointment in Augusta (an hour and a half drive) this week-- are hand stitchers the only ones who take long waits in stride? Yup, my windshield has an awful crack and I will be happily stitching away all that time.

    Have yourself a wonderful week--
whatever comes, clear skies or gray, let's just stitch our way through!

xox

Carol