Too Many Hobbies, Not Enough Time: Born to knit, forced to work

I purchased a motto button a few years ago at a knitting show with the above slogan on it. I've always been tempted to wear it to work one day - maybe in my final week before retirement... My long two-week holiday comes to an end today and it's back to work tomorrow. I think it is going to be a horrible shock - I have slipped easily into a low-stress relaxing lifestyle with lots of hobbies and have even been on a huge reading jag. Not looking forward to returning to the world of commuting, mildly annoying colleagues, repetitive work, stupid customers and having to sit at a desk staring at a computer all day. Just a few more years to go...

I have actually managed to work through most of the jobs on my holiday list so I feel like I have accomplished quite a lot. I put away the huge stack of filing, have cleaned both the dollshouse room and sewing room, deep-cleaned the fridge, took down and put away all the xmas decorations including the tree and outside lights, did some housekeeping on my PC and email folders and tackled various other things I've been procrastinating about. I've tried to keep up with Japanese practice but that has been slipping without a weekly class to go to.

I've even been tackling the enormous and overflowing box of scraps that has been building up for a few years in my sewing room. I'm slowly cutting them into hopefully more useful strips and squares for scrap quilts. It is a thankless, tedious job even with DH helping by ironing them flat for me. I feel like I've been doing it forever and we're not even halfway down the box yet. Partly it is so full because when I tidied up my sewing room last Christmas, I demoted various older fabrics and project leftovers to the scrap box. I'm cutting squares and strips in 1.5 inches, 2 inches, 2.5 inches, 3.5 inches and rectangles in 2x3.5 and 2.5 x 4.5. I've also started cutting some 5-inch charm squares. Hopefully it isn't all a total waste of time and I will use them for projects.

Even the cat is 'helping'

The backing fabric arrived for my Let's Bake Quilt so I sandwiched that up ready for quilting, using the dining table. My plan is to quilt this on the sit-down machine once I get through all the scrap cutting and get my sewing table cleared off.

While I was waiting for the backing fabric to arrive, I started on the Janet Clare Block of the Month being published in Today's Quilter magazine. I've collected three instalments so far so I have six blocks to make to catch up. Here are the first three. I don't know how many blocks there will be - if it lasts a year then I suppose there will be 24 blocks. I'm not sure about the different toned back ground fabrics, that's what it looked like in the picture of each individual block but perhaps the tones are meant to be closer. I'm making this from stash rather than using the designer's fabric line.

For this project I have started using the Bloc-Loc rulers that I bought at the NEC quilt festival. They make trimming the half-square triangle to size so easy! My HSTs never turn out the right size or even square (unless I use Thangles or some similar grid tool) and it's harder for my eyesight now to exactly line up a diagonal line along a seamline for trimming. But with the Bloc-Loc, you just butt the groove in the underside of the ruler up against the ridge of the seam allowance and trim away to create an accurate square. It was great, especially for the little 1-inch finished HSTs in the middle block.

I finished the decorated quilted hanger that I was working on last week with a strip of vintage crochet lace from my collection, just a bit of fun. The flowers are decorated with yo-yos and some beading, and a bit of embroidery. It seems really 1980s-interprets-Victorian to me for some reason. Too pretty to use.

Just before we took the tree down, I managed to finish up the two free cross-stitch kits and put them into the Boots photo display ornament (half price in the sales) like the one I saw on Facebook. So it was briefly hung on the tree overnight and will be a nice suprise next year because I will have forgotten about it. It's a clever way to display some stitching - thank you anonymous Facebook creator!