A Work in Progress

I was feeling that my husband and I were already settling into a little bit too much of a routine now that we're both retired.  It's great to spend a leisurely hour or two each morning reading the papers and then moving on to a few chores followed by lunch, more reading and some stitching.  But I also felt we needed to have a little more adventure, so one day this week, I told him he needed to be ready to leave the house at 9:45.  Not until we were on the train into Philadelphia did I tell him the plan for the day. Our first stop was the Philadelphia Art Alliance  to see the Sunshine and Shadows exhibit I had read about.  The pieces were created from film strips deaccessioned by the Fashion Institute of Technology.  The artist cut the film strips apart, bleached or painted them and then stitched them back together into quilt patterns.  There are only five pieces in the exhibit, but it was interesting, as was the exhibit of Lithuanian textiles on the ...

In the past few weeks, I've settled into a bit more of a routine and I'm accomplishing quite a bit on the home front.  I don't know about your house, but ours seems to accumulate piles of papers.  In between lunching with friends (most of whom will, sadly, have to return to work at the end of August), I've managed to put a lot of that paper in the recycling bin or file it away.  So our house is looking somewhat less cluttered. I've also settled into a bit of a stitching routine and am usually able to work on quilting for a hour or two each afternoon, and stitching for around two hours in the evening.  I have a quilt almost assembled so I'll so I hope to show that in my next post.  But the star of today's post is my progress on the Scottish Band Sampler (Scarlet Letter).  I'm nearly done with all those letters and the double running stitch around them.    The scalloped section below the letters is charted for eyelets.  I'm no...

Thanks for your encouraging comments about my retirement!  I finished work on June 14 and barely had time to breathe before we left for a two-week trip to Alaska and British Columbia.  Before we left, I had a dream that I had 25 minutes to take a shower and pack my suitcase before it was time to go to the airport.  Do you think I had a little bit of anxiety about getting everything done?!  Despite the packing angst, we have a terrific time on a cruise through the inside passage in Alaska and touring Victoria and Vancouver.  We were with my sister and her husband which was fun.  The weather was amazing as we only had one day of drizzle when we arrived in Seattle and then one brief rainstorm in Juneau.  In fact, the weather was so warm that I had to stop in the Hudson Bay department store and purchase a couple of short-sleeve tops because I had packed for 60 degree temperatures, not 80 degrees.  We have lots of great memories, including Sawyer Glaci...

The end is in sight for Quaker Christmas. (Looks like I have some ironing in my future!)  I'm hoping to finish this up over the weekend as my evenings this week are too busy for any stitching time.  Speaking of being nearly done, I'm writing this post at 7:30am when I would normally be at work and busily preparing my lessons for the day, getting ready to run off to an 8:00 meeting or catching up on paperwork.  But in my last week as a working woman, I've set the alarm for an half hour later than normal,  had a  leisurely breakfast and wandered into work around 8:30.  What's more, I've actually left at 4:00 instead of 5:00.  All preparation for my upcoming life of leisure.  I think I'll be able to handle it.

By my calculation, I have 37.5 more hours left in my working life.  That's right--five days from now I will be retired.  I've been quite surprised by the range of emotions that have arisen during the final months of my career.  I love being a speech therapist and that's been a huge part of my identity forthe past 34 years.  So, as much as I'm looking forward to having time to read, quilt and stitch (not to mention getting my house much cleaner and decluttered), I find that I'm sad as well.  I will definitely miss the students but I'm happy that the meetings and paperwork will be a thing of the past.  Blog posts have gone by the wayside the last two months as I've been preparing for this transition by spending long hours on the aforementioned paperwork  and meetings.  I managed to finish 40 hourglass blocks like these    that will be sewn to sashing like this to make a quilt for my daughter.  She goes to a college whose c...

I'm finally getting around to moving my blogs to a new reader now that Google Reader is almost gone.  Not sure where I'm going yet, but you can follow me on Bloglovin'. Follow">http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/1362605/?claim=8nasxa9gxeu">Follow my blog with Bloglovin

The first three months of 2013 have passed in a blur.  I've been handling a very busy caseload at work (up to 78 students as of last Friday) and that means I've had to bring a lot of work home.  Throw in doing the taxes, a commitment at church and lots of travel and you can see that there has been no time for the sewing machine.  The last time the machine saw any action was when I took a class on sewing zippers at the end of February.  So it was high time that I got back into sewing.  My quilt guild had a workshop on Friday night that I had signed up for before my life got so busy, and although I thought about skipping it, I managed to choose fabrics, load the machine into my car and go .  I'm so glad I did as it felt good to be piecing again.  The class used Bonnie Hunter's Pineapple Blossom pattern which looks challenging but is super-simple to put together.  Go check it out at www.quiltville.com (scroll down on the right hand side for the...