The Office Update

 

I've been faithfully working in the office every day and now my desk, and the file drawers under it, are all organized and cleared of clutter.

I've donated a lot of my "older" Art books to a local Art teacher. I haven't opened them in ten years, so there was no point in keeping them. If they can be used, and they will be, I am very happy for them to go. Now I can organize the bookcase.

I also gave away my big easel. I can't use it, so has gone to an Artist who loves to paint. She was overjoyed.

Here's an Action Shot of a Quilt at Work. This is my son and granddaughter playing a game at the park on one of my quilts. Heartwarming in so many ways.

Slow but Steady- update with photo!

 Well I upgraded something on my computer and it won't let me upload any photos, so until I get that worked out, you'll have to use your imagination and I will have to be very descriptive!

Fortunately I do not have anything Quilty to show you.

I have been diligently spending an hour in my office each day, clearing out old stuff. I spent two days going through the contents of one file drawer, sorting what I wanted to keep, and shredding a lot of personally identifiable very old stuff. I have gone through three drawers of the bureau and got rid of maybe 50 pens and a dozen highlighters. I've cleared out the container I use for tubes of wrapping paper and discovered that something sticky had fallen into the container and some of the items in it were covered in whatever it was. Now that's been sorted and the container has been cleaned.

I have asked a friend to recommend a local art teacher so I can donate some old art books, and I've sorted those.

I've gone through the shelves in my bookcase and removed what I no longer want.

I'm putting all the old electronic devices in one pile so I can get rid of them all at the same time.

I've decided to donate the painting easels I have to the college where I got my degree. I'll call them tomorrow to see if they are interested in receiving these items and find out when I can drive over and deliver them.

I've done a lot of work and the room still looks messy! No real surprise there, though. 

I really enjoyed the Men's Final between Jannick Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz at the French Open Championships at Roland-Garros on Sunday. It was a tense five set match that lasted over five hours. I worked on a jigsaw puzzle (that I can't show you) while I listened.

I've got the studio clean enough so I can start adding the binding to the brown Kangamangus quilt. I'll "watch" television as I sew.

Speaking of which, I have discovered a terrific show on Amazon Prime Video. It's called Extraordinary Portraits. Artists are paired with sitters and do their portrait. We hear about the sitter and the artist. They get to know each other and a portrait is created. Now if you are an artist, like me, and you used to specialize in portraits, as I did, this is fascinating stuff. You may not be so interested, but I have loved watching. I'm going to hate for it to be over.

I'm not done with Vera. I only watch one episode each day (kind of tough to watch more in one sitting) and I'm up to season 11. I've already watched seasons 13 and 14, but I will re-watch them when I get there.

I've really been enjoying Colleen Cambridge's mystery series. Both of them. She has one where here protagonist is Agatha Christie's housekeeper and the other is a friend of Julie Child, back when Julia was studying cooking in France. I'm all caught up with both, and only recently figured out that both series are the result of the same author. The first of the Phyllida Bright one is Murder at Mallowan Hall, and the other is Mastering the Art of French Murder.

That's it for now.

Critical Mess

 I was talking to my friend about being retired, and she said it takes about a year to figure it all out, and I have come to believe she is right.

My whole working career I was doing so many things at once that I always kept a very well stocked kitchen pantry, but now that just seems a bit ridiculous, so I have been meticulously planning my menus and only buying ingredients I need for the meals I have planned. I figure it's going to be a while before I get down to the bare shelves, and it will be MUCH easier to find things in my freezer, but that's my plan. The side bonus is that my grocery bills have been much smaller, and that's been fun.

While working through my pantry, which lives in the closet in my office, I've also realized I've got papers and boxes and stuff in there that needs cleaning out, so I've been spending an hour in there each day going through stuff. Today I found a stack of old pay stubs from 2018!! Needless to say those went directly into the shredder.

There are Art books I may never need, so I have to rethink all those too. And I found, count them, NINE boxes of notecards! I think getting that room reorganized will take all summer. That's OK. It's overdue. I've got a TV in there, and I can stream something mindless while de-cluttering, so I don't feel like a lazybones when I sit down on the couch and actually WATCH something.

I've been listening to the tennis at the French Open (Roland Garros) and that's always fun. It means I haven't been getting as much reading done, but that's fine too. I have to keep telling myself that I am retired, and I earned this time off, so I don't have to feel guilty if I am not as "productive" as I used to be.

I don't know what my next quilt project will be, but I have decided to let that sit for a bit and not worry about it.  (Ergo, pillow covers.)

I've also been writing the quilt stories of quilts I have gifted in the past. That's been fun and interesting. I'm glad I was blogging because half the time I go back and read about what I was doing and discover things I had completely forgotten.

The garden is shaping up. The zucchini is doing well, as are all my herbs, but the basil and some of the peppers do not seen to like being planted in the ground. So I moved them to pots and have my fingers crossed.

I have been trying to walk at least a mile each day. Very easy in my neighborhood, except for when it rains. After my walk, I water the garden. On not so hot days I go out later and weed and do the other things the garden requires,

As I was cleaning the studio after my pillow cover making extravaganza, I found this fabric. Don't remember WHY I bought it (except that it so reminds me of Millie...) but I realized it would make a perfect pillow. So I stopped cleaning and made the pillow. 

Working on a jigsaw puzzle is the perfect thing to do while listening to the radio. This is the most recent.

So that's what's been happening in my neck of the woods.

Reaching Critical Mess

 

My pal Julie asked if I sorted my Orphan blocks by group. Um. No. But it was such a good idea I grabbed some bins and started sorting.

I set aside one big bin for scrap bits I could cut up to use to make slabs.

As you can see, I made labels for the bins.

But it was still messy. So I decided to sort the stuff in the bins by color. But that means only one thing...

There is really only one way to organize the scraps in the big bins. Dump them all out and put them where they belong.

Game On.