If It's June, It Must be Tax Season

In the midst of all the festivities this Spring (i.e., 80th birthday party for Mom, 2 weddings, 1 great nephew birth), I have been lacking in my quilting. I have finished the camp quilt and have sewn the binding on the brown couch quilt (which is now earmarked for the bed). I am in the process of burying the threads on that puppy and then it will go into the finished pile. I still need to sew the binding on the coordinating smaller couch quilt and then that, too, will be done. This past Monday I opened up my scrap drawer (it's not like I don't have bolts and bolts of fabric!) and started piecing a scrap quilt. This one, however, has a design to it and I am unsure if it is a design someone else has already created or if this one is my own. I'm sure someone will let me know at some point.

So far this year, I have run my 5k's each month except February. I could not find a 5k to run in February so I skipped that month. I will be running my June run next weekend. The bad thing about that is that the adult 5k is scheduled for 9 a.m. That is so CRAZY!!! It's like 90 degrees at 9 a.m. here in Houston. Oh, well. If my time is bad . . . that's all I'm saying!!! I'm enjoying these runs if only for the celebration breakfast at La Madeleine after each run and the scrapbook pages that I'm creating. I'm happy to say that I am up to date on my scrapbooking for these runs.

For my birthday I ordered three books from Amazon.com. They are all creative type books and right now I am reading "The Creative Entrepreneur" by Lisa Sonora Beam. I don't have time to actually sit down and do the exercises, but I'm enjoying the reading. This is tax season for me so I'll be busy for awhile now.

Well, speaking of that, I better get back to my tasks at hand. Until next time . . .

Beginnings

Today is the beginning of the 4th day of January of the new year. It's always a season for beginnings. I'm working on my first quilt of 2009. It's going to be a scrap quilt made from the leftovers of E's quilt. I think that I'll keep this one and actually use it on our new leather couches. It'll be the perfect colors for the brown leather.

I've been up since 6 a.m. working on my transfer pricing stuff. I'd like to get it done, but I think that I will spend the day sewing instead. Too many things to accomplish. Doggie has been at my side all morning and he just informed me a few minutes ago that he wanted to do something different and go outside. While I was out there, this is what I discovered in the garden. Aren't they beautiful?!

Well, it's time to get the day started in earnest and go jogging with the dog. Yesterday B. joined us and we did a nice trek through Bellaire. Every day's an adventure. This is my month to run a 5k so I better get with it. I made it the 30 days with no soda and as much as I wanted one yesterday I did not give in. January is the no sugar month. That's ridiculous of course, but I'm going to try to cut out as much processed sugar as I can in my diet. Since I like sweets, I will start there and see what happens. Wish me luck.

Another Week Closer

Two more weeks until the Consolidated federal return and all state returns must be completed. Consequently, I went to work today on my Friday off. I really don't mind. This new job is a really good gig. I can't believe my good fortune to have found such a relaxing place to work. It's amazing. Of course, my dream job would be to stay home and create all day, but I wonder if I would have the discipline. I left work around 2 p.m. today and I took a nap, went jogging and designed a new quilt. I will work on the new quilt tomorrow. It's going to be an experiment, but as B says, all of my quilts so far are experiments and he wants to know when I'll get serious and do one for real. I think they will be experiments for the duration. My philosophy is that they do not need to be perfect; they just need to make me happy. And trust me, they do. We took pictures of some older and newer quilts tonight. I remember thinking when I finished some of the older quilts how excited I was about the stitching. Now I look at them and think, "oh my goodness", but I still enjoy seeing them. Some of them will be donation quilts especially the ones where the bobbin threads have major problems. All I can say is that they keep getting better and better.

Lessons Learned

Quilting is a fun adventure. This year my goal was to enter a quilt in the International Quilt Festival in Houston. As Maxwell Smart would say "I was this close". The entry form was due on Thursday, June 12 and on Wednesday I made one too many errors that could not be corrected by Thursday. I was a bit disappointed, but in the end the quilt turned out wonderfully and I am very happy with it. Since it was a wholecloth quilt with my original design, I discovered that blue chalk really isn't the way to mark a quilt. Luckily, I only made the mistake on the center medallion. I still haven't figured out how to get the lines out. Also, the quilt is huge and it took 54 bobbins. I thought I had enough thread, but at the end of the day, I became cognizant of the additional coding on thread with the dye lot number. I probably used three or four different dye lot numbers on this quilt. In addition, I did not take into consideration the amount of matching fabric needed for the binding. When I went back to the store to purchase another couple of yards, guess what??? That's right, there were five different off white fabrics, but none were either my brand of fabric or the right color. Note to self to remember to buy LOTS of fabric when doing a wholecloth quilt. All in all I am not disappointed. I will be finishing the binding and then I will be giving this as a present to my brother in November. It's a milestone birthday so he's getting the "special" gift!!! I think he and his wife will enjoy it. I am now working on another wholecloth quilt (original design) that I started last weekend. It's a lot smaller and I should be able to finish it up this weekend. Yay!

Since last we spoke I have changed jobs. I spent almost five years at the last company and in June, I made the switch to a job that comes really, really close to being "perfect". It's amazing how nice it is to go to work each day and enjoy the view, do my job, get every other Friday off and get paid a lot to do less work than before. Hmm . . . go figure . . . life is good right now.

Tonight the sky is pink. I took some pictures to capture the moment. It was threatening to rain, but it was only a threat. I guess we got plenty dumped on us this week with Tropical Storm Eduordo.

Well, I must go create. Enjoy your evening.

A Good Day

Today was a good day. Doggie and I usually start our Saturdays off with a nice jog. Well, first we watch our quilting shows on PBS and then we take off. Today's jog was good. The weather was gorgeous today - cool in the morning, warm in the afternoon, even cooler this evening. Tomorrow morning is spin class. I've been going faithfully for 5 months now. B and I are biking the MS150 again this year. This will be my 3rd year and the 4th ride for B. We are ready to get out on the open rode and ride our "real" bikes. I think we are shooting for a ride next weekend if the weather is good. Yay!

The quilting project lasted all day today and lots of progress was made. I learned how to mirror image text while Doggie slept in the chair next to me. Since I don't have any draw software on my computer, I discovered that my printer has a mirror image feature that was a lifesaver for my quilting project. I was able to print out all of the quotes, words, name and dates that will now go on the quilt. In addition, I have pieced most of the back of the quilt. It would have been much simpler and quicker to use my fabric stash, but I am using M's clothing for the back. Since not all of the material is cotton, I had to stabilize a good portion of the material before it could be pieced. Now I am almost completely out of stabilizer, but I see this as a good thing as it means another trip to the fabric store is in order. Yay!

Tomorrow I hope to finish the piecing and get the quilt loaded onto the longarm machine. Maybe if I'm really on a roll, I'll even do a little bit of quilting before the head hits the pillow tomorrow night. It was a very good quilting day.

B was gone most of the day working on his projects. We had a very nice evening together eating dinner and watching a movie. Now he and Doggie are sound asleep and that is where I am headed.