See - too much

When I got up this morning, I saw the bag that I brought home from the shop on Saturday with my samples and I realized that I forgot to list my Wizard of Oz One Block Wonder in my previous post. On Saturday, I discussed the quilt with Jan and we picked borders and I have a game plan for finishing the top. It's going to be very out of the box for me, but I am excited about it!

So, this needs to be added to the mix, too.

Jen left a comment on the previous post about going back to the One Hour a Day and I think that this just might be the ticket to get me back on track! Great thinking!

June Accomplishments

June was a very productive month, if I do say so myself. I think that July looks promising, too, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Here is what I did in June:

1. Realized that I have a ton of things in my stash that I haven't even started. Resolved to get my rear in gear and get some things done.
2. Bought the Viking Mega Quilter and Grace frame
3. Successfully set up the Viking Mega Quilter and Grace frame, Lenny and Squiggy, all by myself with only a small injury that healed up nicely.
4. Finished putting the fruit table runner and place mats together. 2 place mats are completed and the table runner and remaining 2 place mats just need to have the last part of the binding stitched down.
5. Cleaned the basement to get it ready to receive the Viking Mega Quilter and Grace frame.
6. Learned that there is a trick to loading a bobbin into a side loading bobbin machine. But once I learned that, the machine works great!
7. Loaded some muslin successfully on Lenny on the first attempt!
8. Made pretty pink and green striped leaders for the frame.
9. Began practicing free motion quiting on the frame and big machine.
10. Made a pink and black run around bag to use at the NQA show in Columbus.
11. Took a bus up to Columbus for the show and had a great time, got some awesome things and enjoyed the company!
12. Met Eleanor Burns!!!
13. Began working on the Wagon Wheels quilt again. Got the blocks mostly put together.
14. Finished A, B and C in Sue Grafton's alphabet series. I had listened to all of the books a couple of years ago and then about a year and a half went by before the next book came out so I decided to re-read/listen to the series again. I am enjoying them again!
15. Listened to the Jane Austin Book Club. That is 15 hours or so that I won't be getting back.
16. Quilted/sewed/prepped the basement for a total of 43.75 hours for the One Hour a Day Challenge! Awesome!

Well, I think that is it. I can't wait to see what all I can get done in July!

Musings

I didn't get any quilting done this weekend. I spent way too much time at work. And the rest of the time was sleeping. And a tiny bit of relaxing. In preparation for the month-long sew-a-thon where I will be kicking Jen's and Moneik's rear ends into the middle of August!

I really did spend a lot of time working. I may have a couple of late nights this week, too. But there is an end in sight. June 30th is the fiscal year end for my company and, since I am the fixed asset accountant, I have a lot to get done so that we can start depreciating some assets. Hopefully, tomorrow will go well and then Tuesday and possibly Wednesday will be the only late nights and even then, it shouldn't be too late.

Fear not, R the I! I will be in tip top shape by Thursday evening and ready to put in some long hours at Bubba and Lenny and Squiggy! But I am going to have to stay off the phone with Jen. I can't take Cindy in the background yelling, "you're goin' down!" while trying to have an adult conversation with Jen!

So, speaking of challenges, I have done pretty well for June with my Hour a Day challenge. I have slacked a little bit this last weekend, but with work that is to be expected. Let's see how July goes, shall we?

Frame and July's challenge

What excitement! Today, the Cruise Control for Squiggy came in and I left work a little early to run out to the shop to pick it up before they closed. The lady at the shop also gave me 6 bobbins for free when I looked to see if they had any extra ones for the machine. This should tide me over for a while. I have been looking online for a good source of the right size bobbins. I haven't found anything yet that will sell less than 100 at a time.

Anyway, while I was at the shop, I stopped at the Joann's that is in the same shopping center and bought some fabric to make leaders with. This is several shades of pink on a white background with a light green mixed in. Very pretty! And the lines will help load the quilts in straight. I already learned that trick from the Viking Mega Quilter Yahoo group that I joined.



After I got home, I ate dinner and spent about 30 minutes moving the frame and then trying to level it out so that the carriage would ride smoothly. Once I had it pretty level, I finished the assembly of the carriage by adding Squiggy and the laser pointer and a couple of other things that will hold Squiggy in place. Then, I got the box for the Cruise Control. It turns out that I should've done this first because I had to take Squiggy off the frame and then load him right back on it. Oh well, it's all done now.

Here is Lenny and Squiggy. Basically ready for a quilt to work on.



And a closer view of Squiggy. All of the black pieces around the top of the machine remind me of a halo that they put accident victims in. Very odd. I will have to try to not think about that.



Now, onto the challenge. I have been doing fairly well with my one hour a day challenge for June. I am hoping for some more time to actually sew one of these weekends. Well, Jen and Moneik and I were talking about this challenge in May and we decided that we would have a challenge between the three of us in July. We had to wait until July because Moneik went and got married and Jen up and moved in June. I haven't done anything exciting except work and buy a Viking Mega Quilter and Next Generation Gracie frame. Well, that and cut my foot open while assembling said frame.

Anyway, we are doing this challenge and the losers have to send the winner a present. So far this week, there has been a ton of trash talk about how Jen thinks that she is going to outsew Moneik and how Moneik is going to outquilt Jen ... They should just relax and send me the presents since it is obvious that I am gonna win! :) We also have come up with rules about what counts as quilting time and what doesn't and we have a google spreadsheet with the rules and marks to show who has agreed and who has not.

And now, we have tickers. We have already loaded the tickers onto our sidebars in anticipation of the work that will be done starting in 2 weeks. Jen put all of our tickers together and we have an emblem and you can check all of our progress from each of our blogs. It's all very high tech, I can assure you!

Tune in to see how it all goes! And to watch me wipe out the competition! :D

I did it!!

I bought the machine and set up! I am now the proud new owner of a Husqvarna Viking Mega Quilter with Cruise Control and an Inspira machine quilting frame! They didn't have any more at the shop so they have to order it and they said that it should be there in a week. I am very excited, but this also means that I am going to have to do a lot in the basement to get it ready for my new toy! It will probably mean a couple of nights spent in the basement cleaning and moving things around. But for the frame and machine, I can handle that! Plus, since I am cleaning to make room, I think it totally counts as hours spent towards quilting for my OHAD challenge!

One Hour a Day

I think that I did fairly well in inaugural month for the One Hour a Day challenge. As a reminder, see this post. That is where I explained what my goal was. I ended up quilting/sewing 39.5 hours. And I didn't count any of my hours at the Miami Valley Quilt Show. And I think that I only counted a cleaning hour once. But my sewing area desperately needed the cleaning so I think that it was acceptable to make that one hour count.

So far, I haven't done very well in June, but I haven't been feeling like myself either. Have you ever had a couple of days in a row where you just didn't feel like yourself? Like anything and everything someone else did was going to set you off? Seriously, on Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was ready to rip off the head of anyone that I came into contact with and then hand it back to them and send them on their way. And I still can't figure out what was wrong with me.

Mary Beth, my co-worker, gave me strict orders to stay in my office and shut my door and then to go home and not do anything. Monday, I ended up working late and by the time I got home and ate, I was in bed by 9:30. Tuesday, I could tell that I was feeling a little better because I was really restless just sitting on my bed and watching TV.

By Wednesday, I was laughing again and getting a lot done at work and was able to keep my door open for most of the day. And it was only the usual people who were irritating me so I knew I was feeling better.

Here are some of my gripes just to give you an idea of the crap that was setting me off:

• An ignorant male co-worker had decided that he would call me Jillian. He thought that he was being cute. He was not. This was probably about 4 months ago and I politely and repeatedly shrieked at him informed him that my name is just Jill. When I was discussing this with a buddy, she said, "what? are you girlfriends that he has to give you a nickname?" (By the way, this 'girlfriends' phrase is now my new phrase at work. As in, "Are we girlfriends that you feel like it's appropriate to come past my wall in my office and invade my personal space??" But I digress....) I finally got it through his feeble mind that I don't care for him to be that familiar with me as to call me by a nickname. All was well for a couple of months. Well, said moron decided on Friday that he was going to try out 'Jillian' again and this continued through Monday. After complaining about it to a couple of my buddies, I decided that the next time he called me Jillian, I would respond with a lovely nickname for him. Unfortunately, someone warned him and I was never able to call him Jack@ss to his face.
• I am the capital accountant in my company. This means that I set up and manage the capital projects and make sure that they don't go over the allotted budget. That is really all that I do other than capitalizing and depreciating assets. More frequently over the last month or so, I have had more calls than I care to count that are related to the purchasing of items. On Monday, I had a nurse call and give me a 5 minute background to let me know that her manager had asked her to fill out the purchase requisition and then asked me what vendor she should use to buy the item. I said that I didn't know BECAUSE I DON'T WORK IN PURCHASING as I was not the person who handled the purchasing of any equipment. She then asked who she could find out from other than her boss. I said that purchasing should have that information or her boss, but that I couldn't help because I didn't have that information on any project. She then said that she would ask her boss, but she was trying to avoid that because she didn't want to bother her. Seriously?
• I also had some very interesting messages from first thing Monday morning. Now, a little background. My voice mail says, "You have reached the desk of Jill LAST NAME at COMPANY XYZ Accounting blah blah blah." The first message was from an older lady saying that she was sorry, she was trying to reach State Farm. She was also calling long distance. I didn't think much of it because I always have strange messages on my voice mail so I just deleted it. The second message is what got to me. It was the same lady who very snottily informed me that she was trying to reach John with State Farm and "she would REALLY APPRECIATE a call back." I mean, come on... Where in my message do I say that I will gladly take messages for John at State Farm and forward them on to him? I kindly called her back and left a message for her that she had the wrong number. I was a little surprised that I didn't get another call asking what the right number was.

Add in to all of these things that I had to work late on Monday and miss the Guild meeting and that the overly loud accounting manager spent way too much time in the moron's office right next to mine re-training him for the millionth time and it was a pretty bad couple of days! And I am so not joking about the training of the moron. He has been in the position for at least 8 months and can't do anything without talking with the too loud manager to find out if what he is doing is right. I mean, I could do his job without any formal one-on-one training!

Sorry about this turning into more of a rant, but I wanted to let you faithful blog readers know where I had been the last few days. Feel free to post in the comments about things that drive you batty!

To end on a bright note, this Saturday, I am meeting Maddy to go and look at a quilt frame that is set up and on sale at a local Sew & Vac shop. The price is excellent and if the set up and the machine and frame are good and the reviews and comments that I read online are good, then this is the frame that I will be getting. I am very excited to see what the set up looks like size-wise and all of the incentives that the store has to offer. That will definitely make up for the bad start to this week! :)

May Accomplishments

I think that I did pretty good this month.

1. Set a goal to quilt for an hour a day. I did pretty well until last week. I didn't have time to catch up for all of the hours missed after Memorial Day weekend. I ended up at 39.5 hours, but ended up missing hours from 2 days at the end. That's pretty good, I think!
2. Made 4 secret blocks.
3. Went to the Miami Vally Quilt guild Quilt Show.
4. Made Bengals pillowcases for a birthday present.
5. Worked at the Flying Pig Marathon to cheer on the runners.
6. Got a new 21" monitor for my work computer.
7. Finished quilting and bound the comfort quilt for my co-worker's son.
8. Made pillowcases for my brother and myself.
9. Made Bengals coasters.
10. Made 2 BOM blocks.
11. Worked on the second set of super secret blocks.
12. Went to The Dip for my first ice cream from them.
13. Finished the binding on the Spools quilt.

Well, that's it. It doesn't seem like too much. I will have to try and get things ready for my July challenge with Jen and Moneik that is coming up. I think that I did a good job!

TGIF!!!

I can't decided if this past week was a long week or a relatively short week. I guess that the days did seem to fly by quickly, but I don't feel like I accomplished all that much. And I guess that my OHAD ticker on the sidebar agrees. I am a few hours behind and need to catch up this weekend.

On Monday, my co-worker was back in the office and I took her the quilt for her son. She was shocked when I took the bag in to her because she had no idea what I would be bringing her. When I started telling her that I wished that I had had it done sooner, her eyes got really wide. When she felt the fabric, she started crying. Then we took it out of the bag. She hugged me twice and I had to leave because she couldn't stop crying. I am tearing up just typing this.

Her son is now in the Milwaukee area at a treatment center for his condition. She is being very hush hush about what is wrong with him and will only say that this center was the only place that would take him because the places around here don't treat males. This seems to really make people wonder what is wrong with him and to me it would make more sense to just say what his condition is than to make people wonder. All I know is that he does not have cancer.

She did say that he is allowed to have his own blanket and that he will love the colors. I just hope that it helps.

It has also made me think about the quilt that I have that I got when I was 6 or 7 years old. It was the best quilt to have when I was sick because it would keep me warm when I needed it and cool me off when I was too hot. My Aunt Linda made it for me and one for my sister that is blue. The binding is worn and probably should be replaced, but other than that, there are no signs of it's age. Especially since the Strawberry Shortcake designs are coming back. I love this little blanket!



Well, my plan for this long weekend is to quilt, clean off my TiVo, watch a couple of DVD's, have PJ days and quilt some more. So far, I still have to clean up my sewing area. I think that I can get that done before I get to bed tonight. Well, maybe...

Corrections to prior post

I forgot to add about my new monitor at work that my buddy Pamela came in and saw it and asked if we could watch some DVD's on it. I said that we could, but not if we wanted sound! I have been fiddling with the set up on it and I think that I finally have it where I want it to be able to see everything that I need to. It's very spiffy!

And I just went back and added my totals for my OHAD and I realized that I am all caught up as of last night. I am very happy about that because I know that I will have some sewing time tonight and tomorrow night. Thursday will be drinks after work for Happy Hour so there will be no sewing that night, but I am still doing good.

Now, I just have to decide if going to the Miami Valley Quilt Guild Show and shopping would count as quilty activities. Any thoughts? :)

The past week

I am not sure why I haven't made any updates this past week. Maybe I was very excited about my new toy at work...



A 21" monitor especially for me! Unfortunately, I still don't have sound, but at least I can see my files!



I have been doing OK on my One Hour a Day Challenge (OHAD) where I try to sew or quilt for at least one hour each day or I make up for days that I have missed. Last Monday was the Guild meeting and I was able to work on the Spools quilt stitching the binding down for 2 hours at the meeting. When I got home, I made these pillowcases for Jill F from work for her birthday on Tuesday.



After Monday, I didn't get any sewing done until Sunday evening. I was able to finish quilting the comfort quilt and I attached the binding to the front. I haven't been able to clear floor space to get a good picture, but I will do that tomorrow night. The quilting isn't all that great and there is a good deal of puckering and I think that it is due to the batting that I used - not warm & natural, but a lighter poly blend. The W&N tends to 'grab' and 'hold' fabric and this batting did not do that. Oh well, it's done and it doesn't look too bad.

So I still have a few days to catch up on the OHAD, but I am sure that I will be all caught up soon!

May Challenge

After cleaning up the spare bedroom and looking at all of the projects and kits that I have, I decided that I need to kick my sewing up a notch. I have to make a little more of an effort to start finishing some things and just overall working on projects.

I have seen a couple of blogs talking about a One Hour a Day quilt project and I decided that it sounded like a good plan for me to try. I have adapted it a little bit.

In May, I am going to sew or do something quilt related for at least one hour a day. I am going to attempt to do this everyday, but I am also going to catch up on previous days if I can't get to it for any reason. I will not carry hours over to future days though.

So far, I didn't sew on the first or second, but I caught up on the 3rd and 4th. On the 3rd, I worked on the binding on the spools quilt while I was at my sister's house. I probably sewed for about an hour and a half. On Sunday the 4th, I was at Maddy's and sewed for about 4 hours so I was all caught up. Yesterday, I worked on the binding while I was at the Guild meeting and then I made pillowcases when I got home. So far, I am doing pretty good!

I am going to call this my One Hour a Day challenge (OHAD) and I will keep everyone updated on how this is working out for me. Hopefully, this will be something that I will keep up with and I will be able to knock some things off of my To Do list by the end of May. And I hope to have at least my March, April and May UFO challenge projects finished! Since it is still early in the month, I am feeling very optimistic that this could happen! :)