Here it is, nearing the end of February. I am still staying close to home and not making any effort to keep up with many people. I have not made any attempt to see anyone but family in almost a year. I am well enough; experiencing a few annoying but not fatal old-age-female-specific health problems, a chipped tooth, cataracts and hearing problems. I frequently wish I were someplace warm but am too tired or lazy or disinterested to travel. So in some ways I am still in a slump of sorts. But I am still sewing!
I’ve made a few more simple quilt tops, and I’ve started an embroidery-machine quilt for my daughter in law’s 50th birthday in August. A machine-embroidered quilt like this one is simple enough to do, although frustrating (machine glitches and thread changes) and time consuming. But she liked the embroidered quilts I made for her kids during the pandemic, so I hope she will enjoy this one, too, because I love her very much. I wish I could think of something special to make for my son, too, so I am still pondering that.
I’ve purchased two “Brown Bag Mystery” quilt packets, for a national quilting project involving numerous small shops. This is something I‘ve never done before - participants purchase a brown bag of fabric, most of it unseen (except for one clue), without knowing the pattern. They (and I!) will start receiving clues in March for what to do with the fabric in the packets. I’ve never done one of these before and hope it will be fun. I also hope I will actually finish the quilts!
Meanwhile, all three of the finished quilt tops intended for Jack’s 3 kids and the picnic quilt for my daughter in law are off to the longarm quilter, and I have the other quilt tops that I've finished so far measured, packed and ready to go as soon as the checkbook allows (hoping to find a promo code or sale price, too!)
I also made another simple tote bag, made less simple by a missing page in the instructions, but finished nonetheless. I have other little odds and ends - a purse strap, pillow cases - ready to finish but need to wait for my "regular" machine to come back from the repair shop, since I’ve got the embroidery machine already in nearly constant use.
In between, I’m working on cutting and designing another simple tumbler quilt with scraps. I’ve bagged and gotten rid of a large volume of the scraps that had been piling up, but still have more than enough to make a quilt . . . or ten, I suspect. I have a long list of projects ready to go but seem to keep adding more.
Weather-wise, our false Spring has ended and it is cold again. The creek out back is glazed with ice but not fully frozen, and the chipmunks are in and out of hibernation, depending on how cold the day is. The squirrels never disappeared this winter, which is unusual but not too surprising as it has been unseasonably warm. Too cold for me, but not cold enough to freeze the lakes and rivers that usually freeze over for part of the season. Jack is ill yet again with some kind of respiratory 'bug'; this "up and down" weather has not been friendly for him. I recall that when I was a child the old family doctor used to say that people get ill in the winter when it isn't cold enough to kill the things that make us sick that time of year. Old folk wisdom that may lack any firm scientific basis but perhaps created an explanation for what he had seen connected to weather patterns even then. We have been fortunate in Michigan, spared the extremes that other parts of the world are seeing. Here, in my little bubble, we are starting to see the green shoots of daffodils, so Spring is surely on its way.
