If Every Day Were Saturday

There was a 15 K this morning that everyone was running, and I really should have done it, but Ice Skating doubled up with Cub Scouts this morning, and two parental units were needed to make all of that happen. After that, I spent the afternoon getting ready for tomorrow's big quilting extravaganza. I was afraid our troop wouldn't get enough done, so I invited over another troop to use as extra help. Miss Sheila came over after lunch and we got the backs pressed, the batting layered and the bindings pressed and ready to go. When my troop worked on the quilts on Monday they had trouble getting the first strip to lay flat and true. Hopefully the preparation will make the actual quilting go more smoothly. We'll be quilting from 1 to 4 and then skating from 4:30 to 6:30, so the afternoon should be busy.
After the prep work, I went ahead and chained through some blocks that had been laid out earlier. I got some 10 inch squares from Keepsake Quilting a while ago and went ahead and layer cut those into a modified 9 patch. I think there used to be more brown blocks, but I stole them for the OHR quilt. I'll come up with something for a border on this one and it will be just the perfect size for another lap quilt. I also put together the extra geese units from Dad's Plaids, but I won't have a picture of those until they are together as a flimsy. While watching the election returns on Thursday I was puttering around on the computer and put in an order for some goodies from Z&S Fabrics. They had some REALLY good sales going on, and I got a couple of backing lengths, but mostly half yard cuts of things that I liked. I found quite a few black and brights, but also a few Christmas fabrics and a collection that might turn into a princess quilt for my niece. I should start wrapping things up for the day, it's starting to get late and I'm feeding the neighbors dog while she is out of town for the evening. I have a long runs scheduled in the morning, so I need a good nights rest.

Wonderful Weekend

It is Friday, long awaited and much appreciated! If the week had lasted another day, I'm not sure I would have made it all the way through! And so, I celebrated the begining of the weekend by finishing off the string quilt I started on election night. Because most of it was finished during election results, I'm going to call it the election quilt (not exactly original, but its a charity quilt after all). It will go in the stack with the other quilts for the nursing home. I'm not sure how big the stack will be by Christmas, but it is looking good so far. I have a quilting workshop tomorrow with another troop of Girl Scouts, so that should help the total grow some more.
It was good to have Kurt back in town again, even though this was a short trip. We went out to dinner on Thursday and he was telling me about a poster at work that they had made from an advertising photo he posed for recently. I thought it was funny enough to see him on the company web site, I couldn't imagine a huge cardboard cutout of him! I joked that he should bring one home to keep me company when he is out of town again in December. So here are the kids posing with the not quite life sized poster which I am now calling "Mini Dad"

Puttering

I was up late last night watching election results and needed to do something to keep myself awake. I should have been grading papers, but instead I pulled out lots of old orphaned bits and pieces and started randomly sewing.
The first set are all of the leftover 1.5 strips from the Patriotic Log Cabin and Carolina Crossroads. All of them! I chained them all together and then cut out 5 inch blocks. Originally I had planned to alternate them with some nickel blocks that came as a charm pack, but when they were done, I thought they might look good with the diagonal blocks put together to make diamonds and the straight blocks forming an outer border. I think I'll put a solid inner border between and it will make another nice nursing home quilt. By the time Obama was giving his acceptance speech I had used all my strings and finished enough blocks to make the border go all the way around.
The next set I pulled out was a group of leftover HST from Orange crush. I pulled out every pastel 3.5 inch block I had and ended up with 7 shoofly blocks. I still have more HST blocks, so maybe those can season until something else pastel turns up in the scrap bin.
The last set are the extra Dresden Plate blades from Sydney's quilt. I kitted up another complete twin sized quilt, and still had LOTS of leftover pieces. They have been leaders and enders for a while now. This is about a third of what I have sewn, and I think I'll alternate them with white strips.

Yikes

It's never good to be completely exhausted from a busy week and then realize that it is only Monday! Maybe the rest of the week will calm down and I'll have a chance to recuperate. Saturday I mentioned running, open house, and voting. Sunday brought more running and a marathon of laundry and paper grading along with cleaning, shopping and an OM meeting. I did something radical with the girls clothes --I'll have to wait to see if it will work. I was getting REALLY frustrated with the level of organization in their rooms. They couldn't manage to keep the clothes in the drawers or the clean separate from the dirty. Instead of continuing to be frustrated after washing yet another article of clothing that had never been worn -- I went radical. I pulled everything out of their rooms and let them choose 7 outfits to take to their rooms. Along with pajamas and socks and underwear, that is all they get for the week. I hope this works, because the volume of laundry in this house was killing me.
Things are back to normal at school, all the special events are finished and I have hope that they might learn something again. I had to run out to the fabric store after work to make sure that we had enough batting for the Girl Scout quilting bash tonight. I usually use warm and natural because I have a thing about being 100% cotton all the way through. Polyester was on sale though, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

That brings me up to the Girl Scout meeting. I can only say that the amount of sugar kids are allowed to consume following Halloween needs to be less. Much less. The girls were energetic and enthusiastic. Unfortunately that led to much sewing blindly followed by a large bits of unsewing. They did well once they got the hang of it and got about halfway done with their quilts, which is what I had planned. We'll finish them up at the next meeting.
Miss Sheila is my co-leader and has the patience of a saint. She's British and very good about keeping the girls on the proper path. She brought two of her sewing machines, and with my 4 set up, we were sewing full steam ahead. I would never have been able to manage supervising so many girls without her help. I don't think I have a single Mom in the troop that knows how to sew at all. Not only did she help with the meeting, she even sent dinner over after the meeting. So, I'm sitting here now munching on homemade egg rolls and trying to stay up until 10 at least so that I don't wake up at 4 am again tomorrow.

Everybody Go Vote

Kurt is going to be out of town on election day, giving me a very limited window of kid-free/work-free time. In order to avoid having to worry about possible delays and long lines, I went ahead and voted today. Sydney waited with me and kept our fellow line standers entertained by singing the ABC song and dancing. She got a glow-in-the-dark bracelet and a coloring book about voting. She wrote her vote inside the front cover while I was filling out my ballot. Now I just have to sit back and wait to see what happens on Tuesday. Make sure you all get out there and vote. After the role Florida played in the 2000 election, I think we all know how important a single vote can be.
Most of the afternoon was taken up with an open house at school. I had a few forensic science students in, and they ran some little demos of labs and things. Community open houses are one of those times when it hits you that private schools have a definite business aspect lacking in public schools. Public schools don't have a marketing department. The kids did a great job of making the class sound exciting and the touring families thought forensic science sounded like a really cool class to take. I hung out in the background and tried to let them do all the work.
Before that, the morning was taken up with a run (only 9 miles today!), so that accounts for most of the day. I did have a little time to sew and got a couple of shoofly blocks done. I use some blocks that were rejects for the Orange crush quilt and some extra squares from the 3.5 inch drawer. It's amazing how quickly a quilt can come together when all of the parts are already made. My kids spent some time before lunch playing out in the driveway, so I took Dad's Plaids out and sewed down some more binding. I'm sure I'll get back around to the start again some day.

BOO!

Happy Halloween! I hope everyone had a happy holiday. We have a Halloween tradition of setting a fire pit up in the driveway and sitting out passing out candy and roasting marshmallows for s'mores. The weather was perfect this year! There was just a tiny chill to the air which made it seem more like fall. The neighborhood has gotten into the holiday spirit over the past few years and most of the houses now have people sitting out in the driveway wearing costumes with decorations and music. Some houses give out beer and juice boxes while others bob for apples. It makes it all so much more fun. I always have trouble getting Kurt motivated to celebrate holidays, but this seems to be one that he enjoys.
We had quite a few people making s'mores, especially as the evening progressed. I was afraid for a while that we would run out of chocolate, but we ended up with just enough. Some of the kids had never roasted a marshmallow before or made a s'more. How sad. Some of the older kids remembered the marshmallows from years past and made a point of saving our house for last.
Our kids all had very different philosophies toward trick-or-treating this year. Sydney was so excited and went at it like a madman, running from house to house. Ryan was mellow and hung back with the grown-ups. Anna did part of the block with us and then went off with two of her friends from the bus. It seems like just last year that we took her out for the first time and she could barely say trick-or-treat. I'm starting to feel like they are getting grown up so fast. It all just keeps speeding by.

It Never Ends

I always know that I am starting to get overwhelmed when I can't remember all the things that need to get done. My routine is pretty stable, and I can usually manage to get by with a simple calender and maybe a shopping list. When life starts to get a little frantic, things start to slide. Then something doesn't get done, and it makes me crazy, and I start to feel overwhelmed. I told one of my classes today that I was starting to feel fragmented, a clever student suggested that when you defragment your hard drive, you throw out all the stuff you don't need any more. Of course he thought chemistry was one of the things we should think about deleting!
Sometimes I react to stress by getting my act in gear and powering my way through the list. Sometimes though, I try to ignore all of the things that aren't getting done. Denial never seems to do the trick for me. I just end up getting more frazzled. So here I sit posting to my blog, wondering if I'm going to get the lab reports graded and put together a power point, or just hope I wake up early enough in the morning to get something done before car loop duty. On the bright side, I have managed to power my way through 7 loads of laundry this evening, so I can cross that one off the list.
As busy as it is though, it is all good stuff. I'm happy to be able to do all of the things I do. I am satisfied with the big picture and the major life decisions, and that should be enough to help me get through the day to day. It's easy to forget about that in all of the minutiae.
My nephew Zach is getting better again. The antibiotics seem to be working, and if he continues to improve, he could go home in the next few days. I think it's been over three weeks that he's been in this time, and I'm sure it must seem like an eternity to my sister. I wish I lived closer so that I could help out.

Experimental Quilting.

I had some 6 inch squares that I got from Amy during the giveaway for her 100th blog post. I pulled them out last week while I sat at the kitchen table watching the kids do homework and started messing around. Somewhere in the back of my head was an episode of simply quilts where they made a stack of equal sized blocks and cut through them all at the same time. One of the patterns was a puss-in-the-corner block which should have been pretty straight forward. I decided to try a diagonal version, but didn't bother to look up specific directions, although I know they must be out there somewhere. They sat "seasoning" until I was looking for something to putter around with this weekend.
I lost some size in the seam allowance, but squared everything up to 4 inches. I'm not sure what the pattern is called, but I thought it was a nice cross kind of block. Encouraged by the ease, I whipped up a few more. The measurements shifted a little as I went along, but they all squared up to the same size in the end. Even though it might cause a little wasted fabric, it certainly made the cutting fast.
I alternated them with some teal blocks from my 4 inch block box and found some border fabric to go with them.
Kurt and Ryan were gone on a cub scout camping trip, so I spent the wee hours of the evening of Saturday putting them together to make another nursing home quilt. I just finished up the quilting in a simple straight line pattern and stitched on some purple binding. Usually I just throw my "experimental" blocks into the orphan drawer, it was fun to turn these into a finished project.
Ryan and Kurt came home on Sunday morning covered from head to toe in filth and mud. It stopped raining eventually on Saturday, but left the ground so saturated with water that they couldn't step down without sinking in. They had lots of fun though, and after baths and laundry all was well again. Then the afternoon was our next OM (Odyssey of the Mind) meeting. I kept Sydney entertained while the kids practiced building structures out of straws. Ryan worked for a long time on his, and came up with this cube that worked very well.
As soon as the meeting ended, I headed out for my long run. 15 miles was on the schedule for last weekend, but I missed it while we were out of town. I made that up last night with Tom who is doing the full marathon Thanksgiving weekend and had 20 on his schedule. The first 12 miles or so went pretty well, but then I started to get tired. I walked a lot during the last three miles, but made it home before the kids were ready for bed. I managed to get a shower before collapsing into bed and woke up this morning with tired legs and really scary hair.

Nothing Like a Nice Quiet Weekend at Home

As my dear husband would say, "You're right, it is nothing like a nice quiet weekend at home." The men folk have departed for Cub Scout camping, leaving us girls here to fend for ourselves. It's been a drizzly weekend so far, interrupted by brief bits of dampness. Ice Skating was first on the list this morning, followed by the Girl Scout beach clean-up. We went straight from there to see High School Musical 3 and eat a late lunch. The girls were happy to veg for a while after all the activity, which allowed me a little time to layer and quilt my most recent chaos quilt. Wow do these little guys come together in a hurry. I'm being very original and calling it Lime Green Chaos Quilt. I did a simple meaner in the crumb blocks with some stars in the setting squares. Miss Sheila, my co-leader, is kind enough to hand-sew the binding on the nursing home quilts, so this one is done done as far as I am concerned. The next two Girl Scout meetings are for the girls to work on their quilts, and the weekend after next I'm having a workshop with another troop so that they can make some as well. Assuming everyone shows up and all goes well, that should add another 18 quilts to the stack. I've got a stack of Dresden plate blades that I've done as leaders and enders, I think they might be almost ready to make their way into my next nursing home quilt. It should be a little more traditional than my last two.

Scrapmaster

I signed up for a scrap exchange a while ago. I have mine ready to send off, but haven't popped it in the mail yet. However, I got this fabulous package of scraps from Emily. She even included an adorable quilted card and a lovely note saying she noticed that I used lots of brights in my quilts and tried to focus on those. Thanks so much Emily!
While I was in a scrappy mode, I pulled out the scrap bin this afternoon and trimmed down some squares. I won a bag of scraps a while back on eBay and have been working my way slowly through those. It's so fun to play with all the little bits and pieces and think about how much fun it will be to put them all together. I think I'll definitely start working on my Irish Chain quilt as soon as I am ready to start another finish.
I was scheduled nonstop all day, so it was nice to sit outside today watching the kids play and sorting through my scraps. It's been a busy week so far, and I think this is the first night I haven't had to go out to a meeting of some sort. My mom called earlier to say that my nephew Zach is back in the hospital again (he came home yesterday). It isn't the bronchial problem they thought it was, so they've scheduled him for a heart catheterization tomorrow. They've moved him from the local hospital he was at previously, back to the heart center where he had his surgery a year and a half ago. If his patches are failing, they will be the best people to deal with the issue. The poor little guy has been through so much in his life, I hope this doesn't end up needing more surgery.