Monday, March 28, 2016

Catching UP

Wow, I sure lose track of time! Last post was almost 2 months ago, so have a lot to catch up on. I'm still working on the resolutions (goals) I set out for myself.  I have lost 15 pounds so far, but this past month has been a struggle.  I'm still losing weight, but very slowly and that's because I haven't been exercising as much as I should and I also fell back into my old habit of not eating enough!  Imagine that -- not eating enough -- but it's actually not eating enough of the good food, so I end up hungry and snacking. I need to fill up at each meal.  This vegan diet does not mean eating salads all the time -- salads don't fill you up.  So, almost every morning, it's oatmeal made with soy/almond milk and dried dates and cinnamon topped with a fruit - today was strawberries.  I just finished lunch which was a vegetable soup including beans, which is actually very good, a piece of whole wheat bread with organic and natural peanut butter and a banana. That should hold me over til dinner which tonight will be another bowl of soup and a salad.  (Today's my cleaning/laundry day -- I like to keep dinner simple!)

I'm also still cleaning out one drawer/bin/shelf a week.  Got behind during the 5 weeks of classes, but have caught back up.  I'm working on the shelves in the basement that hold decorations for each season and all the other stuff I should have thrown away when I moved!  I have 4 lamps that I will be either donating or selling at a garage sale, and various other "stuff"!

In the meantime, I've been quilting tons of kids quilts and homeless quilts for donation.  I still have a pile of probably 10-12 of each to do.  I took a break to quilt some quilts for a friend.  And we're also finishing some quilts of a good friend that died last fall.  She has two daughters, so her friends and I have been finishing her quilts for them.  These are two I quilted last week.  Rogene was an excellent needle-turn appliquer - I envied her talent.  She had some beautiful quilts that I loved!

This second one was a struggle for me -- took me 3 days to finish it.  I'm still learning the Statler stitcher, and in order to do the backgrounds behind the flowers, you need to use either fill or trim.  In this case, the pattern used was a trim pattern (you place the background pattern and then click all around the flower and "trim" it out so there is no stitching on the flowers themselves.  My machine did not like trimming!  In fact the second day it decided to quit on me and after calling Gammill, they walked me thru a couple of fixes and then we decided I just needed to uninstall the Creative Studio program and reinstall it!  That worked and I managed to finish the quilt the next day.
So, now hopefully, I'll be able to get back to doing homeless quilts again!  I've also been pulling out my unfinished projects -- mostly applique for now.  I finish whatever block I was working on before it got set aside -- in most cases, years ago - and then prep the next block.  I'm doing them in a rotation - so I have two that have moved to the next block and one that I'm working on right now.  I think I'll have a rotation of about 6 projects going, so it'll keep me from getting bored with one and eventually I'll have them all finished!  It took me til a couple of weeks ago before I actually tried to applique after my thumb surgery.  But I'm happy to say I have no pain and can applique with no pain whatsoever!  Really glad I had the surgery!

And speaking of surgery, I'm scheduled for cataract surgery in May.  I'm paying a lot out of pocket to get the Restor lenses put in -- they have the capability of letting you see close up, midrange, and far away with out glasses!  I've worn contacts for 50 years, and my friend that has them did too, so I think that gives us a little edge on getting used to them.

I guess I need to keep up with the blog -- maybe not write a book each time!
Until next time....blessings.

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