if you hadn’t guessed, things got busy here in Western NY. The last time I posted (Boxing Day 2018) turned out to be the last time I touched my sewing machine. In fact, the few times I had enough breathing room to even think about sewing, I’d totally lost my mojo; something about being overtired, overwhelmed, and just a little bit strung out. The new job has been kicking my tuckus and I’ve just not had energy for anything other than reading in my free time. Not that there’s a whole lot of free time to begin with. That being said, I’m absolutely loving the job. I am so completely into what I’m doing now that it makes everything okay. And now, at about 8 months in, I’m starting to feel like I’m getting a little bit of the hang of things. A little, anyway.
Prisca’s new digs
This summer, as things slow down a bit here in the northeast (churches generally go program-lite in the summer and no one wants to be locked inside in meetings during our few nice weeks of the year) I’m trying to reclaim my personal life, slowly but surely. Trying to find space to once again return to things I love, like quilting. Earlier today I re-subscribed to a bunch of quilt magazines that I used to love. I think some of the no-quilting-issue has been out-of-sight-out-of-mind as I no longer work in the home office that shares space with my quilting studio. I’ve rarely been even going into that room. Just this week I moved my poor ignored Betta fish into a new aquarium in my family room so he’d have company again.
Auggie likes the idea of me settling into my office again.
Not using the sewing room much, of course, doesn’t mean it didn’t still get all stacked up with stuff. It’s been a dumping ground for the last several months. Today I gave myself a Sunday off from visiting a church as I’ve had quite a stretch of packed work-weekends (and work-weeks) and wanted to stay home with my hubby on Father’s Day. However, he’s feeling a bit under the weather so it turned into a very quiet day before heading to my MILs later for the family get-together. So, today’s return-to-sewing endeavor was to clean out my sewing room.
Uncovered a few new spools of thread
Now that I’ve taken care of that, I’ve decided my next step in clearing the decks to get ready for actual sewing again will be sorting through my UFOs and sending off anything that just needs to be quilted so I can get them finished by check. I’d been delaying because I kept telling myself I should do it myself but, frankly, if they haven’t gotten done in the last four or five years, they won’t ever get done. Time to contract those puppies out. I also need to get myself organized for the two wedding quilts I have in my head. One niece gets married next April, the other probably the year after that (she’s finishing up nursing school first, she says). I have both designs and much of the fabric but haven’t created myself project boxes with everything in one place. So that needs to get organized.
And a shipment of Tulip Hiroshima needles from Massdrop
Will I ever get to a quilt retreat again? Signs point to not-anytime-soon. With all the travel I’m doing, when I do have a weekend off I prefer to to nest. Someday, I’m sure, I’ll slow down enough to fit that kind of thing back in.
I have, however, started pondering whether there might be a role for an Accu-Quilt in my life. When one doesn’t have much time, one explores time-saving techniques. Feel free to share your opinions and experiences with me!
And five months’ worth of Sew Sampler boxes, plus a fabric collection from Fat Quarter shop in prep for one niece’s wedding quilt
So that’s my update. I decided I should return to blogging with some sort of regularity, though, because I think everything goes hand-in-hand. When I was podcasting and blogging, I was quilting so I’d have something to talk and write about. I stopped podcasting and blogging and gee, there went the quilting. I don’t have time for the podcasting at this stage, but I should be able to start squeezing in a little sewing room time and some short updates here and there, I hope.
Clean, ready to go, and a very happy dog ensconced once again on his bed.
On the other hand, it may be another 6 months before you hear from me again.