A Whole Lot of Nothing

Happy Thursday everyone!  I hope that you're staying warm or that it's warmer where you are than it is here.  We are really experiencing a blast of Arctic air here - it's miserable.  Probably 10 degrees with about 25/30 mph winds.  BRRRR!  Is all I can say!!

I really don't have much to talk about this week.  Stitching has taken a backseat to a million other things.  No surprise there!  But I've managed a little bit more on The Yellow House Sampler:

I really thought that I would whip through this one, but it's taken me a little longer than I'd thought - plus not a lot of stitching time.  And this chart is a real adventure with some mistakes in the key and a symbol totally missing from the key!  But it's fun to stitch, but that border is looming in the horizon and I don't especially like borders even though they're so essential to the piece.   And because the borders are really making my skin itch, I think that I need to start something else.  I am realizing that a lot of people just have a lot of WIPs going and I think that I need to adapt this philosophy in stitching.  But I need smaller things and I've pulled a couple out.  Who says you have to stay on one project to the end (not that I ever do, but......what's a few more???)

Anyway, part of the reason there has been no stitching time is the fact that I've been spending the evenings with my son honing his entries into the Business Professionals of America competitions.  He recently won 1st Place in Entrepreneurship for a business plan that he put together and 3rd Place on his speech on the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis in the Regionals.  The State Competitions are in March and we're just trying to get a jump on fine-tuning them because, as luck would have it, the ACTs and a couple other things he has going on are also about that time and I prefer he doesn't have a lot of stress with all that going on.  Anyway, he's looking forward to the State's  - he gets to be away from Mom and Dad (and pesky sister) for three days!  So by the time homework is over, we go over those papers and it's after 10:00 before the stitching chair can even become part of my evening, and I'm usually dead tired by then.

I want to thank everyone for their wishes about my oral surgery.  It went very well - much better than I anticipated.  When they told me it was going to be a three hour ordeal, I had some fears, but it only took a little over an hour and I felt pretty good after (although don't think for a minute that I didn't milk the whole thing for what it was worth for a day or too!)  LOL  My periodontist sent me flowers once again:

And once again, my husband said that he should keep the flowers and spare us a little on the total cost of the whole thing.

For all my attempts to get into the sewing room and whip up marvelous quilts for you to all ooh and awe over, I got this far:

Sorry for the dark picture - but it's only 16 squares - 9-1/2 inches square.  That it's.  All I got done.  I have 16 light squares the same size to do and some miscellaneous strips, etc., but the rotary cutter gave up the ghost and as luck would have it, I didn't have another blade.  So that's all I got around to this week.  Pathetic.

But as I was cutting these squares out, I had a lot of fabric ORTS, so I ended up thinking about ORTs and those SALS where you show your ORTS.  So we have quilt ORTS:

And we also have thread ORTs:

I put them in a Longaberger basket I have.  I also think that it's fun to dump the whole thing over some times.  Hey, different strokes for different folks, right?

You wouldn't believe how compacted this mess of threads is.  In a couple months, in the spring, I scatter them in the backyard and let the birds take them to make nests out of them (just have to keep metallic threads out of the ORT pile).   I may do that with the quilt ORTs too.  I think it would be kind of fun to see a piece of my fabric hanging from a nest!

The only excitement I really had this past week was getting some new scissors that Yuko had for sale on her blog.  Being a scissors whore, you know that I just had to have them.

But I didn't want to display them in one of my frogs, and found this cabinet at Home Goods to display the prettier scissors that I have.  I'm also going to cover the back with a better fabric than the beige that is in this.

I have to thank Kim for her help last week in identifying some of the fabric that I had AND also giving me a clue as to where I could find the pattern - RIGHT UNDERNEATH THE FABRIC - DUH!!!

These fabrics:

Will make this quilt:

The pattern was right underneath those rolls of fabric the whole time.  Thanks Kim!!!

Well, as you can see it's a been an unproductive and boring week.  It hasn't helped that just as I get my stride every morning this week (i.e, a few cups of coffee, a hot shower, etc.), the kids have been back in the door because of finals week.  UGH.  Next week should prove to be better.

Thanks again for all the wishes for my surgery, and all your wonderful comments every week.  I love getting them.  Hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend.