Blocks from a Couple of Weeks Ago

The sewing room is still not together. My sister and her hubby left around noon today. DH put the second coat of stain on my sewing room table this morning. Next will be to start putting on the clear coats, so I'm hoping to have the room done by next weekend. That's 3 weeks of not having a sewing room which puts me way behind in my schedule. It will be nice to have it all done though. 

These 2 blocks are ones I did a couple of weeks ago, but couldn't get them trimmed down until today. Got down on the floor where the cutting mat is and whacked away! The first one here is J3, called Rick's Volleyball. It is appliqued and paper pieced and has 14 pieces. In case you are wondering, the points of the inside square are intentionally chopped off per the pattern.

The next one is LS 13 called, Watermelon (why did i make that in yellow?), is paper pieced and appliqued. It has 22 pieces.

It's time to go sort out my office and see what progress I can make on that front. Feels like so much sorting, cleaning, tossing and such is going on around here. Just seems to dig up things I'm not sure what to do with! 

Hope you are having a creative and enjoyable Sunday afternoon!

Melanie

Adjusting

Life has been pretty hectic compared to sleeping in every day I wanted to and taking my time to do whatever I wanted. But that's not real life for most folks and it shouldn't be that way for me either! Even though I work at a desk job all day, it's suprising what a lack of energy I have in the evenings to do much of anything. I'd like to be able to blame that somehow on the cancer treatments, but I really can't. It's just life or at least my life.

The whole new-carpet thing was and continues to be quite an event. Some of that goes back to having to work and not having the desire to do much of anything when I get home. My DH has been working a lot on these projects. He had all the furniture back in place before I even got home the day the carpet was installed. It took me a week to go through all the decorations that had been taken down and packed away. Who wants to put up stuff that's gotten old and is not so cute anymore into a room that has been freshened up and somewhat modernized??? So all that had to be gone through, sorted and some thrown out. I'm kind of in the sort out mood these days. The living room and dining room were done by about last Saturday (10 days after the install!)

Then it was down to the sewing room.........I have a large walk-in closet in there that had been driving me nuts with its disorganization lately. So everything came out of there and was sorted out. Some stuff went to the garage sale pile, about 3-4 bags went to the garbage can and the rest was recycled paper and plastic. Now I'm waiting for my new table in there to be done. This is DH's job. He took it on without me even asking for some reason. Normally I'm the furniture refinisher, but I think he is taking a liking to it. My sweet friend, Rana, donated her old dining table to my sewing room. It is a very nice piece of furniture made of thick oak - nice quality stuff. We have stripped the top and will restain that (tonight) and the base we are just painting. A small twin bed has been removed (more credit to Rana) from the sewing room and a nice chair suitable for hand stitching will replace it, freeing up some floor space and allowing for a better arrangement of the furniture with the added benefit of a more comfortable place for my loved ones to stitch in that room. At the moment things are just piled on the floor, but I think by the end of the weekend, I should have pictures of the new room with new (recycled) carpet, new furniture and new arrangement! This is the kind of change I love!

Looks like the forecast is for rain this weekend with a break on Saturday. My sister, Betsy is coming to visit for the weekend and it looks like we might do just a bit of wine tasting and have a nice lunch in San Luis Obispo. Can't wait! Then the rest of the day will be stitching to our hearts content!
It's almost the weekend! Hope yours is great!

Melanie

And the Winner is.....

AMY!!!   She wrote:


"Just getting started! Would love some fabric to begin my DJ stash:-) Amy"

Well Amy, there are no more excuses for putting off starting your DJ as you are about to have a pile of fabrics to get it going! Please send me your address by email and I'll get these off to you. Congratulations! Thanks to the rest of you for participating in my drawing and for leaving all those lovely comments! I truly enjoyed reading them all!

As for me, things have been sort of wild around my place. We had the new carpeting put in and moved some of the old stuff from upstairs to my sewing room, including the walk-in closet. I wonder if you can begin to imagine the mess going on with regard to the sewing room. The only sewing that has gone on are a couple of DJ blocks I had prepared prior to the carpet fiasco. I hope to show them to you soon.

My friend, Rana has given me her old dining room table to use as my sewing table. I might paint it before putting it together, so I have no idea how long this disaster might last. Tonight I'm hoping to tackle cleaning out the shelves in the closet. THAT should take days. Ugh....But oh how happy I will be when things are sorted, folded, thrown out and organized!!

Melanie

Full Circle

 Well, I'm back at work. It's been 5 1/2 months. When I think back to how I felt and all that was happening when I left work, I just thank God that I'm still here! There was so much unknown when I left. What was that growing in me? Was it malignant? What were my chances of survival? What was my life going to be like? What about my husband? Was he going to be okay?

Today, I'm happy to say that I'm done with my chemo and my prognosis is very good. I'm back at work and it's good to see my coworkers and my customers again! Lots of hugs all around! God is good!