Woe is Me

This my sewing room in a normal state of mess. The photo is from more or less a year ago. The quilt on the wall has been finished, shown at our guild show and I just took it down from a six-week display in the lobby-gallery at the Academy of Lifelong Learning.  On the floor is a quilt (hiding the  dhrui rug) that was given to the guild's Quilt Bank, which backed and tied it and gave it to a vet (as they do donated red, white and blue quilts).  The bed is always a catch-all, no apologies. Often the pink covered ironing board is stashed in a closet. The picture of Rachel and Finn is well loved failure in portrait quilting -- from this distance that's not so obvious but, trust me, it's very obvious closer up. 

I moan "woe is me" because missing at the moment and for probably a few more days, is the sewing machine. It had an undisclosed illness. I could tell it was not the motor but something in the thread-feed system so I took it to the one and only place on Cape Cod that has a regular repairman. That was last Tuesday. As of yesterday I'm told it was on the repairman's table "taken apart" which can only mean he's waiting for a part. I am bereft, as if a good friend who stops to chat for an hour or two a day has gone to Florida to escape the cold. I don't know when it'll come home. Not that there aren't plenty of interests  to keep me busy but I like a little sewing time. Ah well, it will return.

This post has nothing to do with the weather except that while I sit here bereft, I see on the lawn the first robin of this season. He seems perky taking little dashes across the brown, but greening, grass that is surrounded by melting snow.   I guess the moral to this is not to become fixated on the absences in our life; notice the serendipitous simultaneities and be glad it's another morning with a promising day ahead.

A bit late, but the weatherman doesn't know that

Valentines day has come on gone

but the snow lingers on.  Stella's red

umbrella is little protection.  Baby!

it's cold outside.

Working on It

I haven't posted anything for a while but I am working on this flying geese quilt.  It's on the design wall, as is obvious.  Actually I got it all put together yesterday and it is now on my sewing room floor. I've decided I need another row or two on the bottom and then a six inch royal blue border. 

Making the geese has left me with a pile of cut off triangle sets that I will sew into half-squares and turn into another quilt. It's already planned. In fact the flying geese were inspired by Leisure Arts' book Devoted to Scraps (best of Quiltmaker) although the arrangement is all my own doing. But the next quilt in the books uses the half-squares in a Rail Fence pattern which I will do. These are super simple quilts and are satisfyingly quick and easy when I'm suffering increasing bouts of cabin fever here where the snow just doesn't know it's time to stop and let the crocuses start their pilgrimage up to the sun.