Oops, I Did it Again

I made Yet Another Candy Coated Quilt, or at least most of one:

This is what happens when I get into cleanup mode in the sewing room. I started putting together the rows I’d made and realized I was close to a finished top, so I kept going. I’ve got another hour or two of work left.

I also matched up the stack of quilt tops with backings. Some day when I have nothing else on the schedule, I’ll pin baste each of them with batting and roll them up to be quilted. I’ve got four of them ready to go—five, if I add in this Candy Coated. I am not counting the Noon and Night quilt, because we’re going to do that one on Tera’s longarm.

I am still kicking around the idea of getting a sitdown longarm machine. I don’t want to devote the space required to a frame system. As I said to the husband, though, every time I clear one bottleneck, another one appears. I bought a Studio die cutter so I could cut fabric faster, but now I make more quilt tops. More quilt tops means I need a way to quilt them faster.

He nodded and said, “Yes, that’s how it goes.” (He is no help at all.)

I am going to go talk to the owner of one of the quilt stores next week and see what my options are. The quilt store in Spokane where we took the collage class sells Juki machines. I love my Juki sergers, but with these indefinite lockdowns, I am reluctant to buy a machine there in case I need service on it. I won’t use the Juki dealer here. Right now, the HandiQuilter Sweet Sixteen looks like the best choice, but I am still researching.

Now that the sewing area is cleaned up, I can make a priority list of projects without getting distracted—in theory, anyway.

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I canned the rest of the beef broth the other day, for a total of 23 quarts. The canning supplies will go back into storage now, only to be brought out if we run out of canned beans. Everything else is done.

I am still waiting for the rest of my lettuce-growing supplies to arrive. I have the net pots and the lights, but not the totes. We continue to have issues with our mail delivery here, and I may have to pick up the box of totes at the post office. I wish Amazon would just ship via UPS or FedEx. They are far more reliable.

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I was a participant in a very interesting chat Thursday morning in one of the liberty-leaning groups I belong to. The topic was politics and religion—a third rail if ever there was one—but it went on for over an hour, and afterward, everyone agreed that it had been enlightening and enjoyable. People shared a wide variety of opinions. No one got offended or started slinging insults or calling names. I find it sad that a discussion like that is so rare nowadays that it requires me to remark on it. I also think that those are the only kinds of groups left where civil discussion can take place, because they hold as a fundamental principle, “Don’t tell other people what to do or how to live their lives.” Telling other people what to do or how to live their lives seems to have become the favorite pastime of many Americans these days.

I’ve decided that I am a digital extrovert, which is a new term I have come up with for myself. I am fairly introverted. Being around people in real life is terribly draining for me. However, I do tend to interact quite a bit with others online. I think the difference is that online, I can get up and walk away when I have had enough. Being without the internet for a few days was hard for me because I was missing those online interactions. And I have some really interesting online friends.