What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Excuse my obsession with the house fire thing. Lexi and I walked past the houses yesterday, and oh my. I will spare you the heartache for the families. It was a devastating fire, and I'm pretty sure that three of the four will have to be torn down and rebuilt. The fourth one can probably be salvaged, and the fifth one had a tarp on part of the roof, and you could see where the siding melted. That fifth house is for sale! 

It's already tough to sell a house these days, but one damaged by fire and ...

Yesterday was a transition day. While I accomplished stuff, I was almost like a slug on a rug! I wasn't going anywhere fast! But that's OK. I don't really have any time-sensitive stuff to deal with, but there are always loads that I want to accomplish. 

I started by spending almost an hour in the backyard weeding and cleaning up! I decided to cave and call the gardener guy, who will come next week, but in the meantime, I'll continue to clean up so it doesn't look like a complete jungle. It's really not ...

I am definitely a creature of habit, and if I go outside that world, I'm in big trouble!!!

I had pretty much packed my suitcase the evening before, so not much to do in the morning except have breakfast. But I thought I would give the wardrobe one last look. I checked the drawers - nothing. But when I opened up the hanging clothes area, there were THREE of my things in there. Good grief!!!!! 

I never, never, never unpack my suitcase, and so all my clothes are hanging around or in the suitcase in the room. That would not ...

While I had a great sleep, the day did not start well. Remember how I said that everything has a home - at least in Studio B? Well, it's the same when I travel; I am NOT one to unpack my suitcases in the hotel room. I leave everything in the suitcase, and there is zero danger of me leaving something in the drawers. It's one less thing to check. 

So yesterday, when I was looking for my conference T-shirts and then my yoga pants, they were not to be found. I thought the pants had been left in ...

Progress was made, but not nearly as much as I wanted. I've just come to the conclusion that what I get done is what I get done! I am not going to sweat it, and there is a lot of "new" stuff that I'm working on. By "new," I mean techniques I haven't done in a long time, a new design I'm stitching out, and so on. 

But first, let's discuss this quote that Jackie posted in the comments. 

Drop the weight on your shoulders and put it under your feet to rise to the ...

I typically stay at Holiday Inns, and when I arrive in the room, it is COLD, so I have to turn the thermostat up a couple of degrees to turn the fan/air conditioning off. I have no issues putting on a sweater, but I am not a fan of cold rooms when I'm traveling, since I don't typically have my warm clothes with me. 

Something very unusual happened on my reading lists. I typically have an e-book and an audiobook on the go at the same time. BOTH books I'm currently reading are related to a ...

 Yesterday did NOT go as planned. Where have you heard that before? I would be embarrassed to check the date the box of long-arm supplies arrived at my house (Nov 21, 2021), but let's say it was a few years ago and it's been sitting there in pristine shape ever since. 

So imagine my surprise yesterday when I opened the box to pull out the leaders, only to discover that I had bought ONE leader, not a set of three. Good grief!!!!! 

Here is the situation with the long arm. You can see that the bottom leader is ...

Happy Canada Day!!!! Look—I found a new pattern yesterday, and while I won't have time to make it for this year's Canada Day, it would be simple to make next year. I got it at Stitcharie, but I think I bought the last one, as someone else in the class purchased the second-to-last one. And we can celebrate Canada Day any day of the year! It will be great to use up some red and white scraps. 

New Canada pattern

I'm home! It sure feels great to be home, and I didn't find the drive ...

OH MY ---- shipping to Canada. I didn't even think of that, as some companies won't ship to Canada and vice versa because of high shipping costs. Isn't that just the silliest thing, considering we are next-door neighbors? 

I have found a solution: an account with a cross-border shipping company. If I want something from the US and the shipping is high, I send it to my "address" in the US. Then I pay about $10 to have it shipped from the warehouse to Canada, and that warehouse is about a ten-minute drive from my house. 

I recently ...

I'm home, and the girls are happy! 

As far as travel days go, it was pretty uneventful, which is exactly how I like them. The only issue was getting all that luggage home. I love traveling light, and so when I have three suitcases and two carry-on items, that is a LOT to manage. Thank goodness for carts at the airport. 

I got everything packed into the three suitcases and my backpack, except for a few things which went into the handy-dandy tote bag that I had with me. 

Packed and ready to roll!

Phew—yesterday was a whirlwind of a day, although I certainly took my time doing things, and now I'm going to pay the price this morning as I finish the tasks that I was supposed to finish yesterday!

There is nothing like having several open suitcases and mad packing! Actually, what I love is being able to change the number of suitcases I bring—I'm bringing samples—lots and lots of samples, so I have three suitcases. Two with samples, and one with clothes, which I still need to pack, and I'm leaving in three hours! 

There ...

I'm exhausted this morning! I seemed exhausted all day until it was time to sleep! I just woke up - the blog is going to be late!!!

Travel days are long, and even though yesterday was a short travel day, we lost three hours due to the time change. It was easy - we got up, caught the hotel shuttle back to the airport. We hung out at the lounge for a bit, and then I suggested we go down to the gate to try something new. 

DH is always grumbling about having to stand in the Zone 2 boarding lane ...

Travel days are so much fun! OK -- I know I shouldn't complain, and I'm not because I'm fortunate enough to be able to travel. I would say that half of the travel I do wouldn't be necessary if my family lived close, but we are all over the country, and hence, travel is required. For those of you with family within driving distance? You are lucky! 

Anyway -- the first thing was to get the girls walked and finish tidying up stuff around the house. Can you believe I even vacuumed quickly before I left? It's ...

Don't you feel great when you discover (reaffirm) things about yourself that make you happy? I have always been a neat person. By that I mean, I love having my stuff organized, in place, and readily available. I love organizing. 

However, when I started quilting and had a baby around the same time, my brain went totally mush, and my organizing skills went downhill rapidly. On top of that, I became something of a collector (OK—read: hoarder). And while I had great intentions of getting everything I had accumulated read or made, that wasn't happening. 

And then ...

OK --- you know how it is when you come across a new word, and you wonder about it, and then POOF -- that word comes up again! In this instance, the word is actually a name - Eilidh - pronounced like Hailey, but without the H. I thought it was a strange spelling, but it popped up this morning on something I was researching, and what are the chances of that? I'll probably see that name and that spelling in many more places now. That's so weird. 

It was a decent day - I managed to solve some of the problems that ...

THANKS to all who gave me great suggestions about the witty comments. I will reread them and memorize them because they were great!!! You are the best, and thanks for putting up with my little tirade yesterday!

And yes -- it was just a question of time before I approached the CJPA (Canadian Jigsaw Puzzle Association) to help. I love helping out, and used to help a lot with the quilt guilds I belonged to in the past. Then, when it became too political and cliquish for my liking, I stepped away, and I don't regret that decision. 

Thankfully, there ...

I will be the first to admit that there are days when I should be enrolled in anger management training. However, I will say that it's not because of what I do - it's what others do to me. Within the last two weeks, I received SIX requests for information on my personal travel plans from the same person. I'm past the point of caring if anyone else knows.  

I asked why they needed to know that information, and the answer I got was lame. I decided (spitefully—I admit it) that I wasn't going to provide ...

OH MY --- I was exhausted when I got home. I had a decent sleep the night before, but it was short. Can you believe I went to bed at 6:30 last night and got up at 4:30 AM—that is a rarity for me. I had five minutes of awake time and 1 hour and 13 minutes of deep sleep! Phew --- I feel great this morning, and that was probably my best sleep score ever. Those sleep scores only give you excellent if the sleep duration is long. 

But let's step back and see what happened in ...

OH MY --- there are so many stories of how people just "randomly" meet, and it's meant to be. The blog is going to be late, as I listened to another story of just such a situation. Life is so full of coincidences, or are they really coincidences? The next time a coincidence happens --- think about it --- that happened for a reason.  

I am not sure that I'll go for a walk this morning - at least not in the direction that we have been going - down the local road. The black flies are out, and, well, I had a ...

Thanks for the suggestions on computers—I'll look into them because I'd love to get the old computer off the second desk! It takes up a lot of room! 

There was a lot of trepidation in the house as I unboxed the second HP printer. This time, I took pictures as I unboxed it. There's that heavy paper strap around the shrink-wrapped printer. And it worked like a charm. No need to bend deep to pull the printer out of the box. I was very impressed. 

Pull on the heavy cardboard strip to remove the printer

Then ...