Mid-August 2020

Good morning! It has been a busy month so I thought I'd pop in before it ends and share a few things with you. Work has slowed down a little bit - the long, long days have turned into mostly normal with a few long days, which is pretty good one month after launching a new global system. My team is amazing and they really get the credit for doing all the hard work. One of my primary goals at work this month is encouraging everyone to take a few days off as many of us have worked with little or no vacation most of the year. That includes me, so I am enjoying my first full week off for the year. It coincides with school, so no travel for us, but that's okay - it has been a great week to work on a few things around the house, as well as having lots of good stitching and quilting time. 

So, let's dig into the projects that I've worked on so far in August - as I write this, I've stitched or quilted every day this month! All of the finishes so far are stitching related, but there will be a few things coming from the sewing room by the end of this week. 

I finally picked up the last thread I needed to finish this piece, which I worked on earlier this year. I came very close to a finish, but didn't have one thread, bought it, and then couldn't find it anywhere! I finally gave up and bought a new skein a few weeks ago and this one is now finished. Where Liberty Dwells by Hands On Design - stitched with some called for colors and some subs from my stash, and on a mystery piece of linen left over from another project. This one will finish into a pillow...once I find the velveteen that came with the pattern to make the pillow! (I usually do not lose things, so this is driving me a little crazy!) I made one adjustment and changed the color of the quilt block stars to red. The colors are a little off in this picture...but I really love the letters and the great variation in the thread color (Wood Grain I think) and the flowers with their red backstitching. 

The next project is my Months of the Year Stitch-a-long from Stitchingly, created by Durene Jones. I saw this and bought it on impulse at the start of the year, because I loved the first block. I used stash fabric (that will probably be really tight when I get the fourth row in!) and had most of the threads. I just love the bright colors in this piece - it took me several months to realize there was a flower in every month, and now I look forward to seeing what's next! I was a little behind on this project which releases a block monthly, but I caught up thanks to some long stitching sessions over the weekends and on my week off. Here are July and August, with a shot of the piece in whole before I started on August. 

July - Delphinium & Int'l Friendship Day

The first 7 months

August - Poppy & Obon-bon Festival

August also found us at the start of school. In Indiana, we usually start school in early August (sometimes very late July), and have a couple longer breaks in fall and spring, then end the school year in May. Due to the state of our state, they pushed school start back a week and it is online only until at least Labor Day. After that, they will re-evaluate based on local illness rates to determine if it is safe enough to return in person. Even when that is the case, my daughter has decided to do the full semester virtually. The day starts at 7:15 with Orchestra, so we hear the lovely sounds of the violin each morning in our house! I have to give huge props to the teachers and administrators, as we are doing live-streaming of all classes, so it really feels more like a full school day. The IT teams at the school have done a great job of providing resources and help to ensure that all kids can get online and learn. The kids have both found a group of friends to have a virtual lunch with, so they manage to include some social time in the day still. This year is 8th grade for my (tall) son, and 10th grade for my daughter. I am also super grateful for having older kids - it is far easier to send a teenager upstairs to "go to school" than it is a younger child who needs help logging on, joining calls, muting, etc. It will be an interesting school year for sure. 

Start of school 2020 - out for a picture and back up to their bedrooms!

I'll finish this post with a relatively rare picture of me - I created a list of things to do this week and one of them was a long bike ride on a local rail trail - my husband and I went yesterday on my birthday and I got in a nice ride to start my 46th year. I also started a new stitching project, which was just as much fun!