And Now It's Back to Work

The husband spent all day yesterday outfitting the new truck and getting it ready for work tomorrow. He needs to buy one more specialty toolbox to hold his set of wrenches. The one on the gray truck was destroyed in the accident. The wrenches were okay, but they spilled out all over the highway.

The generator cover is back in my queue, probably as tomorrow’s project. It’s not complicated, just a bit unwieldy to sew. I’ll sew it on the Necchi industrial.

I put together a Bear Paw baby quilt top yesterday morning:

The pieces were already cut and the top didn’t take long to assemble. Sewing with the Essex Linen is a bit different than sewing with quilting cotton. The weave is looser, so it tends to torque a bit if you’re not careful. I put this together using the Accufeed foot on my Janome 6600P and that worked really well.

[The “claws” look pink, but they are actually a light gray. I’ll be glad when I can take pictures outside again in natural light. Our carpet isn’t that yellow, either. I did adjust the color balance in Photoshop, but I can’t get it where I want it.]

This finishes at 39” x 39”, which is a great size and only requires a bit more than a yard of fabric for the backing. I haven’t decided how to quilt it yet. I did a square spiral with straight-line quilting on the one I made for Susan’s grandson, but I might try some custom quilting on this one. I chose this color combo to coordinate with a nursery-themed fabric I picked up on clearance at one of the quilt stores.

I worked on the Candy Coated quilt again yesterday, but I got into the weeds with my quilting. I suspect that happened because 1) it had been almost a week since I worked on it and 2) I am overthinking it. The problem is hard to describe other than that the quilting pattern varies ever-so-slightly from one side of the quilt to the other. I think I know what I need to do to get back on track. The quilt is going to be donated, and no one besides me will ever be able to tell what happened, so I am going to finish it today and be grateful for the learning experience.

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Nicole Sauce had a great Living Free in Tennessee podcast on Friday. In a time when the media wants people to focus on the latest crisis, it’s important to remember what is within our sphere of control. Please note that she does not advocate sticking one’s head in the sand and ignoring world events. I have to say that because someone will deliberately misunderstand the point she is making. Instead, she reminds her listeners to keep those events in the proper perspective and avoid becoming paralyzed by the what ifs. The husband and I listened to Sirius radio on the drive over to Seattle (Outlaw Country), and we heard the DJ say that her mother spends most of her time in a state of anxious terror because all she does is watch mainstream media and The Weather Channel. Having 24/7 access to news is not necessarily a good thing.

If you are feeling anxious, maybe that’s an indication that you need to take some kind of action. That has always been my coping mechanism for difficult situations. When the bottom fell out of the economy in 2009, I doubled down on my penny-tracking efforts. Knowing exactly where we stood financially—bleak as it was at the time—was better than not knowing. Focus on what is within your control and do what you can to move forward, even if it seems like you’re taking baby steps.