What a long strange summer it has already been! It hasn't felt much like a break yet, but I am starting to settle into a new summer routine. We drove back from Virginia on Monday. It is about 12-13 hours by car and we are getting pretty good at the drive. When Kurt goes up for work, he will fly, but with all the kids and the supplies we are still taking back and forth, it made more sense to drive.
With the new job, I am working this summer, but it is a minimal amount. I have two mornings a week scheduled in the office during June and then I'll bump it up to three mornings a week during July. So far I am doing most of the normal summer work that I would have done on my own. What a nice change to pace to have them offering to pay me to do work. That isn't something that often comes up for teachers. In addition to college advising, I am also still handling gifted, homeroom and new teachers. This week I started on the gifted curriculum and paperwork planning. Next week I will jump into the homeroom lessons.
Not lots of blue scraps yet, but plenty of blue skies. We have worked so hard at the cabin for the last two weeks and it has been so much fun! I sleep like a log every night and then wake up ready to start again the next day. Much of the work is just new house things like cleaning and organizing, picking out paint colors. All much fun. Then there is the land that has been sadly neglected. So much trash to haul away and lumber from old out buildings to be burned. So far we have only dealt with the main three acres. The upper seven remains untouched. I haven't taken many photos because everything is half done. These are a few of the structures which have been taken down. I am watching the fire now as we try to burn the last of what can be burned and Kurt hauls a load of the rest to the dump. We have made quite a few trips to the dump and had quite a few fires! Still more to go, but progress is being made.
Ready to head home again and switch gears. I will be working some this summer with the new job and I have a couple of T-shirt quilts to make. One for commission and one for Sydney to take away to college in the fall.
It's a brand new month! Looking forward to making some progress on blue. Why is there so much blue in my bins? I've whittled down lots of colors, but blue always seems to fill up first again.
There is still plenty of work keeping us busy in the mountains. Yesterday we tried to free some apple trees from vines and made a trip into town for supplies. Then we cut fire wood and made mulch. The next time it rains or gets too hot outside, I will finish getting the kitchen put together. Always nice to give everything a good solid cleaning before getting too many things put away. I will bring a sewing machine the next time we come up and try to find a desk to put it on. One thing at a time.....
It has been quite a week! I have been working diligently to move out of my classroom and begin preparations for my new job as a Career and College coach at the same school where I have been for the past 12 years. The students seem excited to have someone available to guide them through the process and are already asking for help.
And because nothing good ever happens in isolation, the movers are coming any minute to pick up the furniture we are having taken to the cabin in Virginia. It would have been so much more efficient to just keep the furniture where it is and buy something new for up north, but I thought our existing stuff would fit better with the mountain vibe. I am excited to pick something more beachy and less wood and leathery to live here. We found something we liked looking online, but we will be sitting on lawn chairs until we get around to going and looking at it in person. We have a day bed from Anna's room to sleep on, so if we can find a card table somewhere, all of our basic needs will be met.
The green scraps are still sitting happily sorted and trimmed waiting for things to calm down for a hot minute. Just to top off all the crazy, I have jury duty on Monday! Life just keeps trucking along. I hope you are having some nice calm sewing time though. I will enjoy your progress and wait for the relative calm of summer break. I will only be working two or three half days each week which should leave plenty of time to catch up on green and move on to the new color for June.
"Life move pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it"
My life has moved faster than usual in the past week. I think it was last Thursday when they posted a new job opening at my school. The district is creating a new position at all of the middle and high schools to have a new College and Career Counselor on staff. I knew that they were going to be creating the job, but I assumed it would require counseling credentials. When the announcement was finally made, it was listed as a "specialist" instead of a counselor and I met all of the requirements. Thinking that this might just be the change that I need right now, I discussed with the family and eagerly applied. Much drama ensued and the job description changed several times during the week, but in the end, it was a job that I wanted very much to do and it was offered to me!
So now I need to move out of my classroom and get a new teacher ready to take over AP Biology, learn how to handle all the new job responsibilities, attend training sessions and planning meetings and move into an office. I also need to wrap up the semester, submit final grades, pack and move furniture to the house in Virginia..... I am sure there is more, but right now I am just making lists and contemplating the future. I did get to start in on the green scraps though. I got all the ironing and trimming done. I was just ready to start sewing blocks together when Anna declared that she was coming home for the weekend. Most importantly though, I need to make some serious progress on Sydney's t-shirt quilt, because graduation is just 6 short days away.
It is amazing how relaxing hard work and fresh air can be. We got half of one of the chicken coops taken down. There was lots of wire and posts and mesh all intergrown with vines and roots and all sorts of fun. I used the empty space in front to set up compost bins, so hopefully there will be some compost in progress the next time we are back.
We made a burn pit and had a huge fire, though there is still more to go. It was wonderfully relaxing even though we are both tired and sore from hauling rocks and wood and random bits of everything. We met our new neighbor and learned how to get to town and back. Tomorrow is back to real life again, but it has been fun living in the mountains for the weekend.
Off to a super late start today. We are at the new cabin for the first time after closing on Friday and I had to wait for Kurt to install an internet thing on the roof before I could get a signal to post. The closing was super smooth, although we were all sweating a bit due to lack of communication ahead of time about the broken septic system. It is all fixed now though and we are starting to settle in. We walked around the property yesterday after closing and met a neighbor who drove us around the upper acreage that they seem to use mostly for hunting. We are pressure washing this morning and clearing out rubbish. I will be sure to post more photos when the internet is less sketchy.
Every week, I keep thinking that things will calm down any day now. Sometime soon it will be true. The end of the school year is in full swing. AP test prep, end of the year presentations, celebrations, awards. All good, just as always, all at the same time.
I do have time to sew this weekend though, after a couple of power grading sessions to get caught up. Less than a month till graduation! I guess I should get to work on Sydney's t-shirt quilt again. Deep calming breaths. All is well.
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Then we drove over the eastern part of the state to look at some properties. Kurt is working more out of the DC office and we are talking about having a home base nearby. We traipsed around several properties in West Virginia on our own because our realtor does not have a license to sell properties there. We found one with an amazing view, but it is quite far out from the city and the neighborhood was... rustic. Then the next day we were scheduled to meet with the relator that Kurt had been working with online. After several hours in his office sifting through the options we were finally off! We had primarily been talking about property on which to build a log cabin like house. Existing houses pop up from time to time, but always seem to disappear before we can have look. We did add one house to the list though, because it had an ideal location and we wanted a baseline for comparison. That was the one that we fell in love with of course! 10 acres nestled on the edge of the Shenandoah National Park with a little house and plenty of space outside. We are working through the paperwork now and nothing is final. Wish us luck though. We put in several bids on different places before successfully buying our beach home. Hopefully we won't have to go through all of that again.
Clearly there was lots of driving time between all those activities for hand sewing of hexies. I am so happy to be back home with my machine again though and have almost finished off my yellow blocks for the month. Misterlinky is below. Please share your yellow progress with us all.
And so begins a new month at Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I was happy to make enough progress with aqua to not feel bad putting it away to make room for the yellow and gold parade. It is utterly a coincidence that the colors of the Uranian Flag are yellow and blue, but I plan to lean into that this month. I am thinking a nice blue string block with a yellow Dresden Plate would be a fun idea to play with. I will keep you posted of course! I had just gotten to the point where all the yellow was out and starting to get organized when Anna decided to come home from college early for this weekends trip to Rhode Island which was a replacement for last weekends trip to Rhode Island which was cancelled due to snow. She is there now, with her dad and I am getting regular updates on all the news. Sydney is in Orlando at another science fair. I drove her over last night for the set-up and she insisted that she was perfectly capable of driving herself there today. She is also reporting in regularly with status updates.
So other than keeping tabs on everyone else, it should be a calm weekend to sew. I found a nice stack of yellow HST unit all ready for the Carpenter's Star block. I might try another version with a blue center star. This is a huge block and would make a nice table topper on its own.
I hope that you are all looking forward to digging into yellow for March. Misterlnky is below, please share your projects and plans with us all.
The March colors are yellow and gold. Something bright and full of sunshine to welcome in spring and chase away the winter gloom.
Rainbow Crumbs is fresh off of the frame. I used a square spiral in grey thread. I was afraid that it would have too much contrast against the white, but it seems to blend in just fine. 
The closet isn't even half empty though. Still in waiting from left to right: Yellow and Green Chevrons, Sister's Choice, #FullStop, Baby Nines and Churn Dashes, Garden Trellis, Dear Jane, Strings, Sprouts, and Postage Stamps. I can comfortably cross two more off the list today and tomorrow. Piecing the backings and getting the quilt loaded on the frame are the hard part. I've taken care of the easy finishes, everything else will need a bit more effort.
I haven't gotten much further than ironing and cutting on my aqua and teal scraps. With the quilting frame set up temporarily in the family room, I am trying to focus on getting as many flimsies quilted as possible before it is time to disassemble everything on Monday. I have a sampler quilt which was a block of the month from Temecula Quilt Company many years ago. I didn't want to start it until Dear Jane was done. I'm trying out different quilting ideas because quilting the Dear Jane is a terrifying thought. The bobbin ran out just in time for Sydney's Lacrosse game last night. They have won one and lost one so far.
There was a second sunrise this morning over a cloud bank. It is colder today than yesterday, but still beautiful compared to the bitter chill of last weekend.
