Enjoying the Journey

I was standing in the grocery store the other day, waiting for the debit terminal to decide it was ready to accept my card, and I started chatting with the clerk about how impatient most of us are these days.  These are new terminals, and while the old ones were noticeably slow, these are even slower.  It seems to take forever from the cashier entering the payment type, to the terminal actually asking for your card.  It's probably a grand total of 7 to 10 seconds, in actuality, but as I stood there chatting about it, I realized that I comment on this every week.  And it made me start to think about how impatient we are these days.  How we rush from place to place, errand to errand, home to job to kids' events and back again.

Computers and technology were supposed to make our lives easier.  But in fact I think what they have done is make us expect everything to move faster, take less time, so we can do more. And more. And end up rushing from place to place, complaining about waiting 5 seconds for a transaction to process.

Several months ago, I changed jobs, and shed a pile of stress in the process.  More recently, I have made a conscious decision to slow down in other areas of my life.  No more rushing out the door in the morning to get to work 5 minutes earlier.  No speeding down the highway in a mad rush to get somewhere on time.  If I have to leave a bit earlier and that means that I don't have time to wash the dishes first, or I don't get a chance to sew that last seam, that's OK. Everything does not have to be done today.  I can do what I have time for, leave myself enough time to get places without rushing, and what I don't get to today will keep until tomorrow.

As a result, I find myself enjoying the journey more.  Both literally and figuratively.  I can enjoy the brilliant sunshine as I drive, because I'm not checking my watch and fretting about being late.  I can stay and chat with a cashier or a friend, and not worry that I'm going to be late for something else.  I can sit a watch my cats sleep.  And I can enjoy each day as it comes, without wishing it away in a mad rush to get to the next stop.

On (and off) the needles

I have been working away on my 4th quarter challenge for the Loopy Ewe, and I finally finished it!  Managed to work it out so that I used just about every scrap of yarn I had (there is less than enough for 1 repeat left).  This is lovely and soft.  It's knit with 2 strands of yarn (cashmere/silk combination) and I love it!  I'll definitely use this yarn again.

In the meantime I did get tired of knitting scarves, so I started yet another pair of socks. This one on smaller needles, as someone suggested that the tighter gauge might make the socks more comfortable (and wear longer).  The smaller needles mean these are going to take a long time to knit, however. 

So, in parallel I'm also working on finishing my other scarf.  I'm still not happy with how narrow it is, but it's too far gone to unknit now :)  I'm sure I'll find a use, or an owner, for it when it's done.

Drop by Judy's blog to see what everyone else has on their needles today.

Retreat Preparation

Only 1.5 weeks to retreat day!  So I've started thinking about what projects to take with me for the 3 days.  So far, I have 2 plans.  A twisted log cabin.  I saw a tutorial for making this without paper piecing, and I couldn't resist trying it out.  Now that I've done it, I'll do it a bit differently but I think this will work nicely. The blocks are small - 4.25" finished. But that's just about right for a quiltie.  I have to decide if I want to do this in the colour palette for this month, or in something different.

The second project I'm contemplating is Judy's New Beginnings.  I haven't done a Bear's Paw before, so it satisfies my "something new" need. I was first thinking about shrinking it down, to make a quiltie, but 1" half-square triangles seemed like too much work.  So I think I'll just pull a bunch of colour pairs and plan to make something bigger this time.  I'll some with me and see if I can get a few blocks made at the retreat.

I don't know if that will be enough, but since it's really only 2 days (and there are 3 classes) it might keep me busy for the weekend. Knowing me, however, I'll come up with a bunch more projects to take along before next Friday.

Design Wall Monday - Nov 5

My design wall is blank today.  I am determined to finish quilting a few pieces, before I cut into something new.  On this are 5 quilties, which always go quickly, plus at least one full size quilt, preferably 2 since I'm still about 8 quilts behind.  Plus I need to bind a bunch.  So I want to get some of that done before I cut into something new.

But I do need inspiration to keep me going, so I pulled out fabrics for the colour challenge this month.

Not bad.   I see now that the darkest red is a bit too dark, and the dark orange a bit too brown, so I'll see if they can be swapped out. And I'll keep these fabrics around to inspire me to finish up some projects so that I can get going on this month's challenge.

Drop by Judy's blog for more design walls.

Stash Report - Nov 4

As I said yesterday, it's been a busy week, with progress on a couple of quilts.  In addition to the piecing I accomplished, I finished quilting my checkerboard last night.  Now I just have to bind it - this is a big quilt - 95" square - so binding will take a while.

I quilted in two colours - dark in the dark square and cream in the light squares.  I like the end results - and as far as I can tell I managed to do this (2 passes on the long arm) without creating a pleat in the backing.

Used this week:
2 yards - borders for current quilt
3.5 yards - backing
1/2 yard - finishing UFO

Hop over to Judy's blog for more stash reports today.

Catching up

I've been a busy little beaver the last few days - but quiet on the blog.  I found out 3 days ago that I was basically out of storage for photos on my blog, so I went looking around and realized how big the files are that I have been uploading.  I decided that my best (cheapest :) ) option was to resize all the images to reclaim space - that should at least gain me a couple years of blogging before I have to come up with a new plan.

While doing that I realized that none of my photos are watermarked - so I located a tool which will both watermark and resize in one step - and now I am in the process of replacing every image on my blog with a new one.  That means editting every single post I've ever written, so it's a slow process. Fortunately smaller photos upload faster, so it's not taking too long to add the new photos.  If you notice photos not loading, that is probably the cause - I should have it all fixed up within a week.

In the meantime, here is some of the actual quilting activity I've been working on this week.  I finished the center for my batik quilt, and auditioned some borders for it.

The red is definitely out, and I'm not sure yet about the purple. I was looking for something darker, but I'm not having much luck finding anything I like.

This quilt is leftovers from a quilt I made for my son.  Actually, "am making" is a better description.  The top was completed in 2010, but it still is not quilted.  Soon (I hope).  Pieces of the piano key border on this quilt were left over from cutting the piano keys for his quilt.  And the 4-patch blocks were extras - not sure how that happened.  I had tucked some fabric away with the blocks, fortunately, and I added to the borders to make it 24", I'll do 2 inner borders, then the 4-patch blocks.  This will be another donation quiltie for the hospital.

October colour challenge

Last month's colour challenge used this palette.  I wasn't keen on it at first, but when I looked closer I realized that it was almost a rainbow of colours.  I started hunting around in my fabric stash, and I found a few options for this.

One thing I discovered was a fat quarter bundle I bought at a quilt show in the summer. It was a set of rainbow-coloured fabrics - and they all matched various colours in this palette (except the purple - that one doesn't appear in this palette).

So, I kept looking, and found a few more bundles from that same quilt show, and pulled a mix of fabrics to match the palette.  I decided to put together a quilt block from one of my books - I took a block, enlarged it to 24", and made a quiltie for donation at my guild.  I did run into one issue - I was short on one colour when I started putting it together.  So I pulled an additional quarter from the stack.  It was purple, which is not in the palettel, but hopefully I can be forgiven for that :)

After making this quilt, and especially after pulling in purple, I still had rainbows on the brain.  So, I took my rainbow fat quarter bundle, designed a bargello rainbow, and made a second quiltie.  When it was done, it needed a bit more, so I added some clouds and a blue bird flying over the rainbow.

And now it's Nov 1, and Judy has posted the next colour palette.  Off I go to see what I have on hand for the pretty colours in the palette this month.