A Couple of Days of Mindless Activity

My brain needed a couple of days off. I’ve been asking it to learn new quilting skills, crank out ideas, and teach people, and it was tired. We got an unexpected “winter storm” on Thursday—perhaps it was the one that we were supposed to get Monday which never materialized—with a few inches of new snow followed by a messy rain/snow mix. I decided it would be a good day to stay put.

[The husband poured a footing at a property around the corner on Thursday. They got it done, but he came home cold and soaking wet and then had to go to CPR refresher class.]

I spent Thursday morning sorting paperwork into file folders, a mindless activity if ever there was one. I’ve got a few entries to make in Quickbooks and then last year’s financial information will be ready to send off to the accountant. Yay. I am glad to have that taken care of. My Accuquilt cutter is back in place and ready to cut fabric.

After lunch on Thursday, I pulled out my red, pink, and orange bag of strips and did nothing but sew strips together. Miles and miles of strips. I started a Candy Coated quilt from that bag a few months ago, but the bag is still overflowing and needs to be dealt with. I sewed Thursday afternoon and again yesterday morning. I gave myself until noon yesterday to see how far I could get. I finished all the rows:

These just need to be sewn together, basted with batting and a backing, and added to the queue. I didn’t empty the bag completely, but I put a significant dent into it. The next bag of strips I tackle will either be the cream/white ones or the blue ones.

I need to finish quilting the wallhanging, though, and then start quilting the tumbler top. While I was sewing, I was also watching Amanda Murphy videos and now I have a whole collection of new ideas to try out. I’ve got something fun in mind for that tumbler quilt.

In one of her videos, Amanda demonstrated how to combine free motion quilting—she was quilting loops, my favorite—with rulerwork motifs like stars and flowers. I can’t wait to try that combination. In one of her books, she made the comment that rulerwork tends to appeal to quilters who love piecing. That totally makes sense now that I think about it. I am not an improv/free motion kind of quilter AT ALL. I can do it, but rulerwork makes my brain happy.

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I have two trays of lettuce seedlings:

I’ll start the next tray in a couple of days. Once it’s all up and growing, this should keep us in lettuce until I can get some planted in the greenhouse or outside.

Our fire department is planning to have its annual fundraising auction again this year. We’ve had to cancel it for the past two years because of the pandemic, but we’re trying to build a new station and we need to get money coming in again. My auction job for the past decade or so has been to run the Finance Trailer, where all the money comes in, because I like counting pennies. The husband has a new job, though, as the person in charge of the equipment sale portion of the auction, so I am moving over there to be his assistant. I need to get up to speed on the equipment sale software and the whole process of verifying titles and checking in equipment. The sale is the first weekend in April.

Can we work together? LOL. Sometimes there are too many generals and not enough foot soldiers in our relationship, but he knows more about the equipment coming into the sale than anyone else, and I’m good at administration. It makes sense for me to be his assistant. I am the closest thing to a mind reader he’s got.