I am thankful for my blog and my quilting, even though neither seems to be getting enough attention recently. I hope that will change this week as we now have an entire week off for the Thanksgiving holiday. We used to get three days, but during COVID they went to a full week and there is no going back from that! My oldest is home now and will leave tomorrow to spend the holiday with the boyfriends family. It will be our first major holiday without all the kids. So hard! I know it is the natural progression, but it still hit me. Kurt is off picking up Sydney the youngest from UF this morning and the middle child should return on Monday. So we will have 2 of the 3 until Thursday at least. Sydney has to go back Thursday night because she works a retail job and is scheduled for Black Friday. Then there is a big football game on Saturday. It is fun to see them have their own lives apart from us, but still an adjustment.
I have been mentally drained lately and spent many relaxing hours stitching away at hexies. I need to set a row length for these so that I can figure out when I will be done. I think the red row is going to be the longest and then I will just slowly bring each color to the same length and start getting them together. The one odd man out is the black. I might just sneak that on the end of the dark blue or purple row. I will never find enough black or brown fabrics to have an entire row.
How are all of your quilts coming along. I know a lot of people will probably be taking a break from rainbow quilts for a while to do the Bonnie Mystery. I haven't even checked to see what it will be this year! It has been a few years since I have participated, but I usually at least follow along to enjoy everyone else's progress.
I hope the holiday finds you happy and healthy and that you are able to find time for family and for yourself
The end of the year at Rainbow Scrap Challenge is all about finishing up. Putting block collections together into flimsies and then turning flimsies into finished tops. For us, the end of the year started with a quick weekend in the mountains to visit fall weather. Step 1 was finding the driveway. There are a few fall leaves to deal with. 
The neighbor called to ask for help in getting the last of the kiwis in before the first frost. 
That lead to a loaf of kiwi bread. It is jut like banana bread, but with kiwis. Yum!
I have quite a bit of sewing to catch up on today. November is supposed to be quilt assembly time. I might be able to assemble some of last year's block collections. This year has taken a bit of a sewing hiatus lately. How are your block collections coming along? Hopefully you have a quilt to two ready to come together soon.
I love seeing what people do with the neutral and makeup months. I have lost all hope of getting caught up for now but want to play with some light neutrals to add a row to the top of this sprouts quilt that ended up square. I don't enjoy square quilts as a rule, so I was thinking of adding some blossoms to the top to enlarge it a bit. The big career fair is next Friday so thing should calm down at work after that. Kids have been frantically finishing up college applications and asking for lots of help which is great! It just doesn't leave a lot of time to get the fair ready, so that has been happening on evenings and weekends. Not a great work life balance at the moment, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel that leads to some quiet sewing time.
Misterlinky is below, please let us know what you are up to these days.Loving the weekend! Work is a mad dash at the moment and sleeping in this morning was the best feeling. Follow it up with some sewing and sorting of scrap? Sounds like my plan. What is yours?
Ah, the weekend! I am finally feeling better and work has gone crazy! The first set of seniors is getting acceptances into rolling admission schools and we have three that have already made final decisions.
I am so much looking forward to some quiet time today. Most of last weekend was spent with movies and hexies. The photos don't show a lot of progress, but the aqua row is longer now. How are your aqua scraps coming along? Monday will transition to light neutrals as the color of the month. If you don't have light neutrals, this is your chance to catch up or lay out your block collections to figure out what is still needed.
Misterlinky worked on the first try this morning! Please share your progress with us.
Well that was odd, misterlinky disappeared for a bit this morning, but I found a back door and managed to get in. Speaking of disappearing, our Friday night margarita date night restaurant is closing at the end of the month. Our friends came out with us last night to say farewell. I am not sure what we will do on Fridays now, but it has been nice not having to make a decision. When I get in my car on Friday to drive home, it tells me how long to get to Little Dos. My car is a bit scary sometimes.
I have been down all week with a head cold. I tested negative for Covid, but it still did me in. Hoping to be more human next week. I guess there is one more week left in September though, so I don't have to worry about a new color quite yet.
How are your aquamarine/teal/blue-green scraps coming along?
We had a 2 day week with students, it was nice to settle in slowly. We still can't teach AP Psychology or call students by any name not on their birth certificate. What a strange world. On Monday we are expecting the permission slip so that Thomas can be Tommy again and Cynthia and be Cyndi. I do feel a bit bad for the kid whose parents named him Lester, but everyone is too terrified of being sued under the new law to risk anything that hasn't been officially sanctioned. I keep hoping that once we get past this things will settle back to something more normal again. Until then, fabric hasn't changed much and nobody has declared rainbow quilts to be illegal yet. Let us sew!
It is finally starting to feel like summer. I have been working a few hours most days, but yesterday I had an actual at home all day vacation day and it was so lovely!
I have been busy sewing hexies together into rows. So far I have finished red orange and yellow. I really don't have a lot of orange fabrics! I will see what I can find to bulk up that row a bit. It has been so nice to settle in with a movie and sew in the air conditioning.
It is HOT out there. I try to get out before it heats up in the morning, because once the sun is fully up it just starts to bake.
We have enjoyed beach walks though, with toes dipped in the water it doesn't feel so warm. There are all sorts of turtles swimming in the ocean and birds hanging out in the sand.
I also made good progress on this t-shirt quilt. If is for the same lady who had me make a quilt for her daughter's wedding last summer. This one is girl scout themed. I am not sure if I like the green that I had on hand for the lattice. I might try something else.
How is your sewing coming along. We are halfway though July already!
It's July! I am looking forward to red this month. Something vibrant seems just right. We are at the cabin this week doing lots of manual labor. There has been wood cutting, rock hauling and assorted chores keeping us all busy. Kurt installed a new window successfully. We got an estimate from a contractor and decided that was a project we could definitely try to do on our own. The first attempt went well enough that I think we will just slowly work our way through the worst ones.
We did get a dumpster delivered and have almost filled it in two days with the collected debris that has been collecting on the property for at least the last three decades. It is red in honor of the color for July! We were successful yesterday in using the UTV to winch a washing machine up the side of the ravine. It was quite exciting! There were several pieces of a target practice deer form that got tossed in and the head ended up poking up at us over the edge of the dumpster. His one remaining eye is following at us as we roam around the property. There was lots of hand sewing of hexies that got accomplished in the car, but sadly, no photos. I brought up a machine though, so a sewing space is on the list of projects. It is a long list, but we are making good progress!
And now the beginning of summer. A bit of a delay in the start of summer vacation this year, but I have two weeks of pure relaxation mode to look forward to. Sewing, relaxing and hanging around the cabin. What could be better than that?
I hope you are feeling ready to finish with the pastel blues and greens. July is scheduled to be red this year! It should be bit of a change of pace.
I hope that you made great progress on orange and are ready to move on to some nice pastels for a change of pace. Orange is never a large volume color for me, but blue and green are quite the opposite. Hopefully by having another chance to focus on the lighter end of the blue and green bins we can all keep up with the supply.
Some colors need more than one month. I will admit to getting a bit tired of working through the blues, but the bin never seems to get any smaller! Just in case you made a nice dent in the blues when we did dark and bright earlier this year, feel free to add some light greens to the light blues to try to tidy up two bins in June.
Graduation was Tuesday, it was a beautiful ceremony. Then, we went to trivia again on Thursday and won! We can keep eating for free as long as we keep wining.
Finally, it was the last day of school! Just two weeks of camps and a week of work at the district, but there is a light and a tunnel in there somewhere. Having a summer is one of the best things about teaching.
Looking forward to seeing lots of happy oranges. Everything in my sewing room is a disaster right now. Kurt is putting built in shelves into the wall under the stairs and two children are home form college, dropping off all of the detritus from dorms and apartments into my sewing space and the spot where I usually put my car in the garage. So my car is outside getting salty and getting to my sewing machine is a dusty obstacle course. Still, somewhere in there are my orange scraps! I am looking forward to finding them and reclaiming at least some of my new sewing space.
How are your scraps coming along this month? Misterlinky is below. Please share your progress.
I hope to dig a bit deeper into the purple today. It has been strangely stormy all week so I think I will get out for a walk early today. Kurt is working on some built in shelves in my sewing space and some of the kids will be home for the summer in the next couple of weeks. So sorry for the delay today. I am in Orlando without a computer this weekend and DH is trying to post for me
Still lacking in purple on the design wall. I am getting caught up bit by bit though. 
There is purple in the pipeline though, so it will be on the wall soon enough. 
There is an extra day this weekend to sew with the Easter holiday. Looking forward to a nice walk on the beach and some time with the machine. 
