Sewing Playtime

I finished the Halloween table runner top. It still has to be sandwiched with batting and a backing. I am also going to add some quilting to it even though quilting isn’t called for in the pattern.

I love that eyeball fabric. 👁️

Now on to the next project. This is the kind of sewing playtime I’ve been craving, where I can spend hours making and experimenting.

The fight to maintain control over my time and my schedule is a daily battle. People ask me to do stuff simply because it is the path of least resistance. It’s that whole “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it” thing—and that just annoys me to no end. I do not exist to be everyone’s personal assistant.

I called a halt to it last week when the decision was made to move church outside to our peace garden for the next two Sundays. Normally, I don’t mind changing things up every so often, but the past two months have been a nonstop hamster wheel for me. I am also scheduled to give the sermon on the first Sunday in August. The decision to have church in the peace garden was made and presented as a fait accompli, with an accompanying e-mail asking if I could bring the keyboard outside for both services and also set up and monitor the wi-fi and Zoom connection during the services. (I set up my laptop with Zoom the last time we had a service outside because we were singing with guitar and I didn’t have to play.)

A very wise friend of mine from church who is no longer with us once said to me, “When someone asks you to do something and you feel like crying, that’s a good indication that you’ve got too much on your plate.” That’s how I felt reading that e-mail. There are other people in our congregation who could be tapped to handle the computer end of things, but asking Janet—because she did it last time—is the path of least resistance.

I would like to be able to go to church on Sunday and not have it feel like a job—at least not every week. I decided I needed those two Sundays off. I’m going to spend those mornings in my garden.

See, I just gave a sermon. 😇

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My friend Robert, who is visiting, is a very accomplished musician. He and I played three trombone-piano duets for prelude last Sunday. He played my trombone, which I’ve had since I was 16 but haven’t played for a few years. I bought that trombone with money I made at my after-school job working at the library. It cost me $1200, which was not a small sum of money in 1982.

Robert also likes to sing and asked me if we could have a hymn sing, so a group of us gathered at church Sunday evening for an hour and a half and sang. Elaine’s family has their biennial family reunion this weekend and her sisters are visiting, so last night, another group of us gathered around Elaine’s dining room table to sing out of one of the old Mennonite hymnals. Everyone in that family is very musically literate, so we had a lot of fun talking music theory and messing around with key changes and other things that music geeks find entertaining.