Friday, January 29, 2010

Almost

I know I owe a real post, life at work is getting almost back to normal. Which means I can take time to write said post.

In the mean time, visit this site and look at these adorable pockets!


 

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Folded Rainbows


Work is still crazy-busy, and I still can't find my card reader so this is from my phone of 54 of the 71 pieces of fabric I dyed over the weekend.

Friday, January 15, 2010

To-Do List

Today, I'm breathing.

The other day my boss heard me exhale. It was one of those long exhales at the end of a short encounter with him and my mind was reeling from all I had to do and ws making mental lists of things I had to accomplish pronto. We are mailing out a survey on the 26th and I've been working on validations and fixes non-stop for several weeks.

Our sponsor is known for taking their time on things despite the firm mail-out date, for example, we just got the final form last week. So my boss tells me I wasn't allowed to breath yet, had to wait until mail-out. Yesterday we pushed the survey out to the public server so the sponsor can do their testing. (I hope they know they don't have until March.) So, today I can breathe a bit until the testing results come back to me and I have another list of things to do.

I've been working through a pile of Girl Scout vests in my spare time. I've gotten five done in the last week or so, but the pile isn't diminishing any. I hate sewing those badges on when there's not a lot of room left for them. I raised my rates again to $40 so the workload is more palatable.

There should be a package on my porch right now for me (aren't tracking numbers and the Internet the greatest?) containing a new bolt of muslin to dye and two new dyes. I plan on dyeing a slew of fabric this weekend so it'll be ready for our bee's next exchange project next Wednesday. I'll post pictures of my dyeing adventures. If I can find my card reader, that is.

I was rooting through old photos and found this one from 2003. Enjoy.


Wednesday, January 13, 2010

To hold you over

I'm still alive.

Work is still crazy-busy. I wish I could blog more. Someday...

Here is a picture of my newly re-done sewing room.

If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see some quilt blocks I've been working on. Look in the mirror on the wall.



 

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Yesterday's Post

Work is crazy-busy. I posted the picture below yesterday, fully intending on writing a description, but never got around to it.

On new years day my husband's (best?) friend and his wife came to hang out with us for several hours. They live in Alabama so Sue had not seen my quilts before and I gave her a mini trunk show. I showed her the quilt I made last year for my cousin and her new husband (that I still haven't mailed off yet!). Sue loved it and I told her how easy it was, we can make the top in less than two hours. Then I pointed her to my stash and told her to pick out four fabrics.

The center of the top was assembled by the time they had to leave. Sue loved it, but I realized later we'd arranged the pieces incorrectly for full impact of the pattern. It was one of those situations where I knew I'd never be happy if I just left it, I had to redo it even though Sue would have never known. So I spent the next several days picking it apart and resewing. I'm glad I did, I think it looks great now, especially with the two borders I added.

The picture below is of the finished quilt top, basted and ready to quilt. And if Sue ever reads my blog, she'll get to see how it's coming along.



PS, Greeny, I'll make a wall-hanging for you with this same graphic design. Just go to your local quilt shop, pick out four fat quarters that you like together that have a good mix of texture and contrast, (the shop gals will help you with 'fat quarters') then pick out one more, either another one of the first four or a new one for the border, and send them to me. I'll send back (sometime this decade) a quilted wall-hanging. Deal?

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Monday, January 04, 2010

The Year in Review

I still haven't mastered the whole idea of blogging from home, it just seems like it's part of my warm-up routine here at the office, so here is where I blog. And since I haven't been to the office in a while because of the holiday and snow days, that explains why I haven't posted since last Tuesday. Sorry.

Let's review 2009, shall we? For starters, here are the first line(s) of the first posts from each month. (Edited for clarity and brevity.) Current comments are in this color.

January 2:
Here is the first line or two from the first post of each month for 2008. It's fun to look back and see what was blog-worthy. Sound familiar? I stole this post idea from last year.

February 3:
This weekend I finished 12 scout vests. I often use a glue stick to hold the patches down while I sew them. I learned this weekend there is a window during which I need to sew after I glue, too soon and they're not stuck enough and too long and the glue is completely dry and the patches peel right up. I went through 3 glue sticks on 9 of the vests. Good thing I buy in bulk. It's good I get paid to do these vests, I'd hate it otherwise.

March 3:
I'm back to work today, which means I can blog. For some reason I just don't blog from home much. Which is where I was yesterday, home. The schools were closed because of the snow storm that went through Sunday night. See, back in March I felt the same way as I do now.

April 1:
Back on Thursday, I ordered some Smashbox goodies. The order was to be filled by the personal shopping lady at the Annapolis Norstroms. She said she'd mail out the orders on Friday and since it's a short jaunt from the big Annapple to Bowie, I thought I should get my package on Saturday, Monday at the latest, right? I ended up returning many of those items. Left to my own devices, I just didn't like them much.

May 1:
I'm sitting in a classroom in Rockville, MD class now waiting for the lecture to start. The rest of the class is finishing up an exercise my class partner and I finished yesterday. I'm so smart.

June 1:
I was first introduced to the mobile fraternity when I was in college. A friend of the husband-to-be of a friend drove a Saab. Another boring post, obviously.

July 6:
I'm back from vacation.
I'll be posting a review of our hotel soon. I came back to work to 775 unread mail messages that I'll have to work my way through. This was the vacation to Punta Cana with the hubby.

August 3:
I'm back from vacation.
I'm trying to tame the laundry beast.
659 new email messages were waiting for me at work. Another vacation? Oh, yeah, this one was to the beach with the family.

September 2:
My weekend went great until I stopped doing things on my to-do list.

October 5:
I played a lot of golf this weekend, 18 holes with Dan at Bowie CC and 18 with Mark and AM at Glen Dale. I normally don't to play so much in a month, much less a weekend. Both times I was lousy on the front nine and much better on the back: 64/51 & 63/50. or something like that. Can't wait for this winter to end, and these winds, sheesh, can't wait for golf weather.

Two posts from November 2:
I woke from a dream the other morning where Bryan Voltaggio was in my kitchen.
and
I found myself asking my husband to delete the mouse in the mousetrap.
In my mind, Bryan is still the better looking Voltaggio brother and was the best looking chef on the show; and, I haven't seen any mouse evidence since Georgia fixed the water damage/hole in the wall. Yay!

December 2 :
I got a replacement iPhone recently, right before the warranty expired. For some reason when I synced it back to the computer, the passwords didn't get restored. I have three email accounts that I can read on my phone. Evidently, the passwords are all different and I cannot remember one of the three. I should probably keep a list of what I've tried so I won't continue to torture myself with old guesses. This is still true. It's been a month now and I still haven't remembered my password to that third email account.

Other things in Review

I posted about 149 times, not very many, I'll have to work on posting more. I logged about 625 miles on my walkometer with an average speed of 3.9 mph. That doesn't include the miles I walked when the battery was dead. I did about thirty-thousand loads of laundry and still have thirteen-thousand unmatched socks. Ok, not really, but it seems like it.