Life Less Tiring

Mother's Day Tulips
Mother’s Day Tulips

I should be less tired, but I’m not. DH was out of town, which should be a good time for me to rest, but I did an extraordinary amount of driving to be with him to attend some events.

Work has been stressful. I am working on getting a new contract, which will be in a different department. This means that I have to prepare my work to hand over to the next person. I know you are thinking “really? again?”. It is the nature of contract work. I am constantly having to get my contracts renewed or find new ones. It isn’t ideal, but I have a lot of flexibility, which I like.

Still it is all tiring and people in the department are whispering about my contract ending, which is just annoying. I am looking forward to some time off.

I haven’t done much sewing except for my work on La Passacaglia. I have had an hour here and there to do some hand stitching. I love that project. I think I will go work on it now.

See you later!

Bad Tech Week

Nobody died.

It still has been a difficult couple of weeks in blog world. As you may have noticed, my site has been down. There are a lot of complicated reasons that are boring and not  quilt related. Trust me, you don’t want to know.

The bottomline is that I have to pay  more for hosting, but customer service was so terrible that I was able to negotiate several months for free.

Fortunately, I  have still been sewing. Stay tuned for an update.

Don’t Should on Yourself

During the storm last week I should have sewn more.

Over the weekend I should have made progress on the Field Day Zipper.

When I have a spare moment, I should be working on the Teenaged Boy Black & Grey Donation Quilt.

I should be farther along sewing triangles to the leftover octagons.

These are words going through my head recently. Finally, I sat myself down and we talked.

I DO want to sew. Really. There is no reason I shouldn’t be sewing. I feel like I want to work on a project about which I am really excited. The problem is that I have a couple of other projects I also really want to get done, mostly to get the off my plate. I am not excited about them, so creative things kind of bog down.

I have to figure out what will get me out of this mood. Am I in a rut? Did I should badly on some projects that are not exciting me? Are projects not moving off my design wall fast enough? I don’t know.

My mom always says I shouldn’t ‘should’ on myself. I do a lot and I get stuff done. beating myself up about sewing is stupid. Yes, I want to finish projects, but clearly there is something else going on. Life is taking up space in my head and that is a thing that sometimes happens. Other stuff I enjoy is getting shoved aside for a lot of things I feel I ‘should’ do.

Quick Update

My weekend was completely embroiled with quilt meetings and family events. I had a few minutes here and there, but never seemed to be able to settle down to write. That meant that none of the posts I usually prep on the weekends got done. I didn’t get any sewing done and didn’t write any book reports, so I really didn’t have much to write about any way.

I stayed home from work on Monday and sewed all day except for going to they gym in the morning and taking the Young Man to an appointment.

Grape Basket for English Teacher
Grape Basket for English Teacher

I cut this block out at the BAMQG meeting on Saturday and then sewed it together on Monday. I have made a lot of baskets in my day and found this one to be a bit on the tricky side. Exhaustion could have played a factor. 😉

I chose the colors to go with the pillow I made for this same teacher last year. You can see the 2010 pillows and compare.

I was also held up by the labels. I have the Young Man draw on a piece of paper to make the label. I have to mark the seam allowances, so his art does not get cut off and it took me awhile to site down and do it. Now it is done and I can progress.

 

Artquiltmaker Blog NOT dead

There is a great saying that someone told me: OBE – overcome by events. That is what happened, but I am still committed to the blog, so please come back.

The things I am thinking about now are:

-what makes a good [quilt] teacher
-how much slack should you cut a teacher to whom you pay money?
-just by virtue of walking into a room of quiltmakers, should you consider them your friends? Should you expect them to consider you their friend?
-napkins. I am trying to get another long term pending project off the back of my chair. I just need to sew.
-clearing out stashes. I did it and brought 3 bags of first quality fabric to the Children’s Quilt Project. I had help and my friend also reorganized my fabric so I can find stuff. I now have a section of quilt back fabric, which is great.
-exchanges. A friend and I are doing a block exchange. We haven’t started yet, but it seems doable. I can’t wait.

More soon…I hope!