Weekend Progress Report #26

It is already halfway through the year ... as I age, time has a nasty habit of accelerating ... when all I want to do is slow down and savor the moments.

I am again a day late in reporting on last week's progress ... but this time for the very good reason that my 4th of the month giveaway preempted this post ... and not because I am just too disorganized to get my photos taken in the proper time frame. Anyway, that's my story.

I have pretty much been ignoring the stated goals [sometimes I wonder why I bother setting them when I am so quick to abandon them as the mood suits] and am still playing with luscious color. Mermaid Solo from Workbasket's leaflet I Heard the Mermaids Singing has been my primary focus.

I also managed to sew together the baptismal stole for the young 8 year old girl I have been preparing for the sacrament. Now, all I need to do is embroider her name and an appropriate baptismal symbol on the piece ... I plan on stitching a simple shell in bronze metallic to match the one that will be used in church and some water droplets in the same pale Belle Soie Bahama Blue I am using for her name. Her mother assures me she is NOT a very girly girl [hence the very subdued lace trim] and she herself told me her very favorite color is light blue. Since the baptism is on July 11, this will be my primary focus over the next few days.

In addition, I downloaded and printed all the remaining lessons in my Encrusted Crazy Quilt online class ... I'll be working on that for the remainder of this month. I did run out of page protectors as I put them in the binder ... but then I went through my stash binders, clearing out all the charts I plan to add to my monthly giveaway tote and discarding all the old magazine charts I'll never stitch again [mostly Christmas stuff from the days when my children were young]. Voila, more than enough page protectors. I have only two binders left to go through and reorganize. Right now I have my to-be-stitched charts organized by theme. I want to set up one binder of already stitched charts organized by designer. Even though I have been culling charts ruthlessly, there are still some I have no intention of parting with ... I guess there is still some of the greedy acquisitive collector left in me, in spite of my best efforts to simplify my life.

And, I tried to kit up my next piece for the Town Square SAL, Val's Stuff's Train Depot, only to discover that the fabric I had planned to use, though the right color family, was the wrong count: 36ct while the other two pieces I have done were on 28ct. So there is some stash diving in my future as well. And, in spite of a fairly deep stash of WDW, I found I am missing three quarters of the fibers necessary to complete this piece ... I'll be calling the folks at 123 stitch on Tuesday.

All in all, not a stellar week so far as stitching progress goes. Summer does tend to slow me down. More reading & container garden puttering, less stitching. Then, too, during the most brutally hot days, after the workday ends, I have parked on the sofa in the air-conditioned living room to watch our current Netflix subscription arrivals: 10 episodes of Law & Order season 7 as well as 4 episodes of House season 5. Not the most productive use of my time, to be sure, but as I approach the six decade mark I find I am wearing down a bit.

Next week, I will be tackling housework during the day, now that I have closed my office for the month of July. So the only stitching goals I am setting myself for the coming week are:

1] finishing the baptismal stole so that it can be used in next Sunday's ceremony

2] stitching Dolores's piece in the RR since it needs to be mailed by July 15th.

3] finishing the Mermaid Solo.