Time

Time – no matter how much of it I have, I never have enough (or so it seems).  I have discovered that the more time I have, the more time I waste.  I have always described myself as “organized confusion”.  I know where things are at (well, most of the time) but others would just shake their heads and throw their hands up.  When I was a working lady with kids to see off to activities and husband’s schedule to keep track of along with my own schedule, I really did a decent job of it.  The kids are off on their own, the hubby is retired and loving it.  I am unemployed by choice and loving it….  except, I can’t seem to get things done that I really want to.  When I was a working lady, part of my job as a manager was to not only effectively manage my own time but that of my employees.  My neighbor has a 90 minute drive to work and moved in over 2 years ago.  She and her hubby moved into his parents (his boyhood) home after his mother passed.  My neighbor is frustrated that she still hasn’t managed to get the house painted as she’d like.  Organized as she’d like.  ETC…. so in my infinite wisdom (being sarcastic here), I told her to devote 15 minutes time either before or after work to sorting, clearing, whatever needed to be done.  I told her to make a weekly goal and realistically plan her 15 minutes to achieve that goal.  I told her I would help her paint rooms, move furniture, whatever she wanted.  I told her – pick one room at a time and devote her time to that room only rather than a bit here and a bit there.  She called me during the week to invite us to dinner this evening to celebrate her hubby’s B-day and then laughed and said, “I still haven’t started my list.”  Got me to thinking,  “why don’t I follow my own advice and schedule my week????”  So… on my agenda today is to sit down and give myself a specific goal I want to achieve by the end of the week and then schedule time each day to accomplish that goal.   First of my goals is tear the kitchen apart.  Well not literally, but I do need to pull everything out of my cupboards and clean them well.  I have a ton of glass ware that I will donate for my G-kids school rummage sale.  I don’t think I have outdated food stuff, as I’m pretty good about rotating that sort of thing, but it’s a good thing to check occasionally. And even though I know it should not take a week to do all that, I’ve decided I’ll schedule my time to include sewing specific projects (I have a few), finishing up those ‘almost done’ projects and see if I can get my ‘wasted’ time trimmed down….

Well if you’ve made it this far, I might as well show you some of what I did this week:

The printed fabric was sent as a challenge.  It was a FQ and we were to add fabric and make as many 12” blocks, with the print being the main fabric, as we could.  We have one lady who comes to Sew Fest who does not sew.  She started coming with her sister and loved the time so much that she continues to attend.  She enjoys taking blocks and doing layouts for quilts.  So her challenge will be to take all the blocks that are made with this ‘focus’ fabric and create a layout for a quilt.  She knows about this challenge – she has not seen the focus fabric or the blocks.  What she doesn’t know is that she will receive the quilt when it’s completed   Anyway, the blocks are what I came up with as my contribution.  The last one (with the pinwheel center) is what I called an extra.  The HST units are the trimmings from the previous block and I had just enough of the red and purple to put with them to make that block…. 

I did also quilt a quilt this week.  It was sent to me from one of our QFC members and it was a full size quilt.  As I was preparing to get it on the frame, I thought of the things that a professional long arm quilter must go through on a regular basis… I won’t go into that, but I have the utmost respect for those who quilt for others as a business…..

‘til next time,

Katie