Stories from the Sewing Room

Not gonna lie, this has been a really tough week. I have been trying to do things to boost my mood and distract myself. 

My husband picked up the pottery he won.

I watched my niece's conference swims via livestream. I discovered that swimming commentary makes me really sleepy, just like several other sports' commentaries.

My daughter came home for a visit over the weekend. We all ran errands and also tackled the lower garden. I don't know that that task brought anyone joy, but it did bring satisfaction to me at least. My husband dug out as much of the goldenrod as he could get and also many trees and shrubs that nature planted. My daughter and I worked on pulling out weeds and my son emptied the yard cart repeatedly. I was pulling out sand burrs (so pokey) and we all got covered in stick tights that no one saw. I wasted a good amount of time on Google trying to find the correct names of those plants and was unsuccessful. It feels good to have made a bit of progress on this garden. We have a long ways to go.

I took in my Cotton + Steel Bernina travel machine to be serviced. My regular Bernina needs to be serviced too, but one at a time is good. 

We had to stop at Sam's Club to drop a small fortune on glasses. I was admiring the pretty Christmas cacti, but didn't buy one because they were about $20 and I don't have the best track record at keeping them alive. 

Here are several of mine. I treat them all the same and they are mostly planted in the same type of pot. Only one is thriving. I really don't understand what I'm doing wrong. This first one is my original. 

Here are several more recent acquisitions. They just don't look as healthy. They have whole stalks that have shriveled and died and their leaves cladodes don't look as robust as the one above.

This is one that I have been growing for a year from a cutting off my mom's plant. It's doing okay so far.

My husband brought me home this one from Aldi Monday. It was less than half the cost of the one at Sam's. I hope I have more success with this one.

This is my Pothos. These are supposed to be like the easiest thing to grow and mine is looking...not great. 

Send me plant growing tips!

I've started working on this month's Meadow Mist mystery parts. This time we're making square in a square units. Not my favorite to make. I struggle a bit with accuracy on them. I cut the outside triangles in the oversized dimension that was provided. I also ironed the center squares in half both ways to aid in alignment. I've sewn and trimmed four so far and they are close, but not exact. I will need to work very carefully to preserve the points when they get sewn into blocks. I love the blue color. 

I went and got my hair cut. I don't know what it is about me that says I want ultra-short, spiky hair, but somehow I keep ending up with this with multiple hair stylists over multiple years. I guess I need to come up with a photo of what I want since I'm clearly not verbalizing it well enough. She styled it for me and it actually hurt my head! My husband laughed at me when I got home and said I looked like Sonic the Hedgehog. My son just kinda raised his eyebrows when he saw me. It took two washings to remove most of the styling products. I guess I just have to laugh and figure that it's hair; it will grow back. But it does make the ego take a beating.

I did a lot of computer work for my businesses. 

I've made more progress on working through this season's quilts. I am so thankful to have work. The first one belongs to Amber. I quilted it with Loop the Loop.

Next up is Pat's quilt. I quilted it with Melinda, a curly feather design, and light gold thread since there were lots of metallics in her fabrics.

Keetah selected Winterfest for both of her Santa quilts.