Orange Organization

I will readily admit to being out of the sewing flow since school started.  I'm a bit behind on teal and have just now started to dig into the orange.  The dark month, well, it was dreary around here.   So it felt good yesterday to start pulling down purple blocks (from June!)  and to start assembling the random scraps into blocks.   Crumbs are always fun and meditative, so those were the first to come together.  Then the Sister's Choice blocks were nicely simple.  

I even dug into the hexie bowl and found a treasure trove of prepped and unprepped pieces.   I have a backing for the Chopsticks quilt of last week roughed out, so as I get that put together, I will continue to turn the fabric chaos that is my sewing room right now into some more RSC blocks.  There will be a few holes to fill in when block assembly begins, but as long as life has a few moments of calm, I can deal with those when the need arises.  

I am linking up today with Quilting is More Fun Than Housework to enjoy some scrappy goodness, and Kathy's Quilts where quilter's are slowing down to hand stitching on Sunday.  You should stop by as well and enjoy all the beautiful projects that quilters have to share today.   

ScrapHappy Saturday - Orange you Glad for Fall?

I have just started to dig into the orange scrap bin for September.  Things are still pretty busy at work and I am just a bit overextended at the moment.   I am going to take some sewing time this weekend though to put together some orange blocks.   Cases are way down since the mask mandate, but it will be expiring at the end of the month, so we will see what happens then.  They still might extend it at the next school board meeting on Tuesday, but that just doesn't seem to be likely.  There is a very vocal group of protestors at every meeting yelling loudly and burning masks.  

The sunrise was beautiful this morning and there was a stunning rocket launch on Wednesday

It started out looking like any normal launch, but then it just burst into a halo of light that pulsed for a remarkably long time.  It was the first rocket to carry only civilians.   

ScrapHappy Saturday - Fall Festivity

I will be the first to admit that it doesn't feel much like fall yet, but I am enjoying the idea of fall. Things are much more calm at school and cases are more managebale with the mask mandate in place. The courts continue to issue new rulings on what seems like a daily basis, but every masked day is a victory with more kids in school and fewer sick teachers. Sydney is fully recovered and working to make up on the school work that she missed. She is taking the ACT this morning. She missed the SAT during quarantine, so we will need to schedule another session for that. Senior year is starting to feel more real as we get ready for the junior versus senior powder puff football game. There is no dance this year, but they will still have a homecoming court at the football game. Every little bit of normal is so much appreciated at this point.

ScrapHappy Saturday - Downward Slope?

I feel that things are starting to calm down a bit here after the big Covid bump that followed back to school. Kids are masked now and most of the initial batches of positive teachers and quarantined students have returned. Sydney will be back on Tuesday after labor day and is feeling completely normal again. She tested negative yesterday for the first time! Anna even came home for quick weekend visit to pick up a few essentials that she forgot to take with her for back to school. Ryan is settled in to his new rental and we won't see him again until Thanksgiving. He would be happy enough to spend that with his college friends as well, but we have decided to visit our Georgia relatives instead. Hopefully things in Florida will be calmer by then. We are still hitting daily and weekly death records, but the curve of new cases might be trending down now, so that is promising. Hopefully there will be time for sewing as this is a long weekend. I still have quite a bit of organization to do in the sewing room, but that will gladly wait while I spend time with the girls this weekend.

Orange is the new color for September, which I completely forgot to announce when September started 4 days ago.  I am feeling fall for sure.   I will also work on the new block for #Full stop which will be a dash.  Nice and simple which is just about where my mind is right now!

Still Moving Forward

Sydney seems to be feeling better.  She is not happy about having to quarantine, but I have convinced her that she should make the best of it and try to enjoy some quiet time to relax.  She started trying to crochet this morning but did not get very far.  She did paint her nails, give herself a facial and find a new series to stream.  Not a bad day overall.  I sewed together the extra OMG blocks into a flimsy that I have decided to call LOL.  That helped break up spurts of cleaning and sanitizing that help me feel like I am doing something productive.  

I was late to the sunrise this morning.  I wish I could say that it was because I was up at 4 for the rocket launch, but I slept right through that too.   

While still n the mode of using up extras, I pulled out a bag of random 26 patches which I am starting to play with now.  I think I will randomize the fat pink and skinny green strips and call this one Chopsticks.  It is quite relaxing to just play with layout and design knowing that everything was leftover from some other project of long ago.   

 

We've Hit a Wall

I was watching the school board meeting on Tuesday knowing that they would refuse to consider a mask mandate and that I would be returning to a room full of unmasked children again on Wednesday. One of the people to speak was the lady at the district level who coordinates quarantines. That isn't supposed to be her job, but it is now what she does. We have quarantined 15,750 people in the first three weeks of school as a result of 3033 positive Covid cases. And as she started to tell us about the new statistic they were gathering this year, which is the number of teachers and students in the ICU or on a ventilator, she started to break down. She said that we have hit a wall with quarantines and cases. The new focus is on increasing availability of testing for students and staff. 

 On Wednesday Sydney started to feel congested and tired, so I got her in for testing on Thursday to learn that she is positive for COVID. As a critical infrastructure worker, I am still required to go to work every day until I test positive or develop symptoms. I have felt the benefits of the new available test resources, so that is a good thing. I managed to get swabbed yesterday and I am still negative.

While all of this was going on, Kurt was out of town for the week on business and Ryan was living in a hotel and shopping for an apartment in Gainesville after his housing plans fell apart. That is when the car he was using broke down. So all in all, quite a week! Kurt is taking a U-Haul full of furniture to Ryan to help him move into his newly rented townhouse, get the car fixed and then drive home again. They don't go in to the office when there is a household case, so he will be working from home this week. That will let him take care of Sydney who is already bored and sick of quarantine. I think I might sew a bit and then maybe take a quite moment in a dark room to recover.   

 

Mindless Sewing

 I am mindlessly sewing and it feels good.  No plan today other than to empty bags of extra bits and pieces.  These tiny nine patches and churn dashes were from the OMG! quilt of several years ago.   They are fairly random, but I'm enjoying the fondling of the fabric today.   NOT thinking about the 1,623 Covid cases and 8,303 quarantines my district has managed to accomplish in the first two weeks of school.  NOT thinking about the 11 positive staff members at my school.   Most of them should be back soon, not the ones who were very sick, but the mildly symptomatic and vaccinated portion of the group.   Celebrating small victories.  

ScrapHappy Saturday

 

Its been two weeks since school started, and things are clearly not going well.  I will try to put all of that out of my mind for the weekend though and think of other things.   I have two days with no plans and I will enjoy every minute.  The sunrise was beautiful, the sea turtles are still nesting and with my daughter back at school again I have access to my sewing room again.

ScrapHappy Saturday

 We have just finished the first week of school.  In case you haven't seen the news lately, things are not going well in Florida.  I'll start with my own tiny  corner of the universe.  At my school, we had 12 teachers out on Friday for COVID.  8 have already tested positive and the other 4 are still waiting for official results.  They had to send in staff from the district office to act as substitute teachers because we don't have enough.  Our first student came to school positive which has lead to a round of student quarantines.   I bought at home antigen test kits because the wait for a testing appointment is currently 3 days without a doctors order.   Nobody has died yet in our county, so that is better than others who are near. We have over a thousand students quarantined district wide and have identified 700 positive case this month.   Those numbers don't include Friday when things really started to get messy. My friend texted from her school where they had 132 kids out on quarantine and decided to have a pep rally.  I'm still standing though.  I'm starting to adjust to the absolute horror of standing in a room full of unmasked children during a global pandemic as if it was a normal thing.  The school board meeting on Tuesday ended in the wee hours of the morning with a vote against mandating masks.  It is ironic to add that one of the school board members voting against masks wasn't physically at the meeting because he had COVID.  

Anna is home this weekend sleeping in my sewing room, so I'll enjoy a bit of handwork on the balcony in between rain from Fred.  Please stay safe! Sewing is the perfect socially distanced thing to do when outside is scary.

ScrapHappy Saturday

 

Though I won't be sewing much for the next couple of weeks, I hope you are digging into your teal, aqua, blue-green stash.  I love this color and am using it so much more than I used to.   School is back in session on Tuesday though, and my list on non sewing tasks is long right now.   We've been busy with teacher meetings all week and there hasn't been much time for my own curriculum, planning and class prep yet.  I am looking forward to digging in today.  On day one of meetings, there were 5 teachers with masks.  On day 5 of meetings, about 60% of teaches were wearing masks, one teacher had tested positive and another was awaiting test results. This year will be a fascinating epidemiological experiment.  

 There is an August block though, so please scroll down if you are playing along with the #Fullstop quilt.   For everyone else, please share your projects with us all.