Important Stuff

I was feeling kind of bad about not blogging for two weeks.  Until I noticed that LOTS of people took some time off from blogging between the holidays and now.

Congratulations to my blogging friend Rita on her new grandson.  A couple of bloggers have been on the road over the holidays.  And some folks are just taking a breather!

Between Christmas and New Year's Day, I worked at home a few hours but mostly I was off work-work and doing home-work.  Christmas Eve is always at my house, and I cook and clean and do generally fun stuff like that.  The kids go to the various in-laws on Christmas Day, and I do a whole lot of NOTHING but what I want to do! 

This generally puts me in my sewing room.  A lot. 

I work better when things are clean and organized.  My self-proven theory is:  if you can't find things, you can't finish anything.  I do enjoy finishing things... once in a while I have a deadline and that makes it easier.  Deadlines make me schedule things.  Thus I finished up the boss's embroidered golf shirts with the tasteless logos, the baby baptismal gown (photo coming -- hopefully soon!) and the batch of 18" doll clothes.  I also used some of my scrapbooking skills to embellish some small legal pads for the Sunday School crew and finished a tablet keeper for a friend.  Whew!  When you write it down, it looks impressive!

After the mad dash to Christmas, I took some time to clean up.  I tossed a small pile of scraps that probably should have been tossed ages ago, and condensed my boxes of potential doll clothes fabric down to just two.  That freed up a square yard of floor space.  After other culling, two trash bags made their way to the curb.

Do you do what I do with patterns?  After I use them, I put them in a pile and forget that they came in an envelope, thus also creating a pile of envelopes without patterns to match.  Or not match, as the case may be.  Then once in a great while I have to pull EVERYTHING out, organize by brand, then match the pieces and parts and hopefully have whole patterns again.  Hopefully.  It's not an exact science.

So I spent a couple of days on the cleanup.  I used a gift certificate to buy another storage cart that I'm using for thread, cutting implements and small quilting rulers.  Boy, did I have a lot of thread!  But now that it's all in one place, I realize I'm short on some basics like white and black. 

My youngest granddaughter, Miss A, 'helped' by sorting out my pile of two inch squares.  She spent many hours counting making piles of tinly patches and generally having a good time.  We didn't accomplish much except maybe the joy of being together. 

I ask you, what more important task could sewing friends do for each other??

Stash Busting! Quilters Organize!

Hey, have you seen this in blogland?  Stash Busting is an actual initiative among quilters who want to work through more than they buy.  Who knew?  Not me, well not at first.

Used since last report:                   0.00  yards
Used year to Date:                       xxx yards

Added since last report:                 2.875 yards
Added Year to Date:                   xxx yards

Net Used for 2012:                        XX yards

I went out to visit a couple of my favorite blogs and saw these wonderful reports... hey I need to get on this.  It's too late to count 2012, unless I declare a Fiscal Year beginning Sept. 1, but maybe I should get started!  I have added a page to this blog called Stash Busting.  I'll see if it helps.

I also noticed that people title days, and blog a specific thing on a specific day, like Design Wall Day or Linky Day or UFO challenges.  Hmmm... that one sounds like it's for me!



UFO Number one million or so...  LOL!

Maybe we garment sewist should organize a UFO challenge.  Well, I guess I'd better check on what's going on at ASG, I'm sure I can find someone doing something onto which I should get on board.

Keep on sewing!

Missing Marty

This Christmas my dear daughter gave me a lovely diary for 2012.  She gave me a desk calendar last year, I thought this one was the same thing -- weekly calendar with space for appointments and occasions, you know the type.  When I looked at it again later, I realized there are two pages per week; one for appointments and the other for entries in diary form.  I tried writing a diary some years ago, but wasn't very consistent.

Blogging seems like the same thing to me.  Some folks seem to live on their computers, checking email or blogs regularly, not letting a day go by without posting. Then there are folks who don't update unless something BIG happens to them. The same seems to be the case with Facebook and other social media.  I think I start out in the first group, and gradually end up in the second.  For example, this week, since I'm on vacation and not checking emails at my office, I'm not checking at home either.  I did check today... good thing too, because I had over 100 unread emails (about 95% of them were from merchants advertising after Christmas sales).

I follow many blogs related to sewing and crafts.  I love Rita Farro's blog and Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing, and Quiltville from Bonnie Hunt.  Samina at American Sewing Guild has a blog, as does Nancy Zieman.  From the links on these blogs I've branched out to the French General and The Warp and the Weft.  I've discovered that many of these folks blog daily, some blog several times a week, and a couple are what I will call 'irregulars'. 

It's disappointing when someone just stops blogging for a long while.  I was reading and enjoying Marty Sews, a blog by a fellow ASG'er, when she just stopped.  Her last blog was in August of 2011.  I miss her.  From some of her prior posts,  I understand that there were some health issues with both herself and her husband.  I hope everything's OK with Marty.  I wish there was a way to know!

That's part of the problem with going from diary to blog.  If you miss writing in your diary, no one knows but you and the person who has to clean out your papers after you go to the Big Blogosphere in the Sky.  But if you quit blogging, your followers have no idea whether you're very ill, never coming back, or just vacationing in the South of France!

Well, I guess you have to actually have followers for this to be the case.