Some of my friends know that I love to sew. I mean, LOVE to sew. I had actually forgotten how much until this weekend.

Our house has this HUGE rec room (30 x 24) and roughly half of is has been taken over by my craft stuff. This includes an old dining room table I “inherited” from my friend when she got a new one. It’s got a burn spot in the middle where she let a candle burn too long and the side leaves don’t stay level with the rest of the table, but it’s great for hard use like to cut out patterns or for craft stuff.

Anyway, over time, because it’s a horizontal surface, it’s become covered with all kinds of stuff – papers, magazines, boxes, whatever.

When my mother died, I inherited all her sewing stuff as I’m the only one in the family interested. My mom was a widow, lived alone and sewing/quilting was her passion. So, now I have a computerized sewing machine and TONS of stuff added to the ton of stuff I accumulated.

At the end of last week, I found myself sitting at the table which has now pretty much been cleared off so I can use it to take pictures for my Etsy shop and just to show my husband that there actually is a use for it other than as a landfill! I pulled out a length of fabric from on of the five cabinets he bought me to store my stuff. I decided to make something out of it, so the next day I went to Hancock Fabrics and got a blouse pattern for myself and a pajama pattern for Noah. I KNOW there’s a lot of stuff I bought to sew for him.

Yesterday, I spent the whole day playing with my fabric and rediscovering projects I’d forgotten about. I found a dress I cut out for myself years ago, which was all ready to go, and started working on it.

I realized that there was only half the instructions and started to panic. Then I calmed down and thought, “Hey, I’ve been sewing almost 40 years. I know how to do this. I don’t need the instructions. I wasn’t really reading them anyway; just looking at the pictures.”

I think I need to think this way more often in my life. I know what I’m doing and I shouldn’t let the lack of confidence paralyze me. In fact, I shouldn’t even have this lack of confidence. The worst thing that could happen is that I make a mistake and toss the dress, and where’s the loss then? I didn’t remember I had it; I don’t know how long those pieces have been waiting for me; no one would be hurt.

It’s the same with everything. Take a chance, trust yourself, and you might be surprised what you can do.

I’m a major procrastinator, in lots of things, but this year, I’m turning over a new leaf.

On New Years’ Eve, my brother and sister-in-law, who had been visiting us for a week, left to go back to Ohio.

I think partly because of that and that I felt like I hadn’t had enough time to just blabber with my brother, I was very depressed that day.

I looked back on my year and didn’t like what I saw.

I hadn’t finished a new book. My weight loss had stopped or gone backward. My house wasn’t in company ready shape at all times.

Frankly, I felt like I’d failed that year.

Of course, I hadn’t. I finished Sword & Illusion, a book I’d been working on for about four years and I do believe it’s the best thing I’ve written. Now If only I could find an agent to even request pages…

Anyway, I decided it was time to finish all the things I started – all the craft projects, all the book ideas, all the things I keep saying I want.

Today, I uploaded a bunch of pictures to Facebook and scanned some other old photos I’d inherited when my mother died.

The last few days I’ve been thinking about her. I’m her oldest child and with both her and Daddy gone, that kinda leaves me with a lot on my shoulders – yes, this is a self-imposed burden perhaps, but I feel it.

My mother was a quilter. An amazing quilter. Very prolific. She never made art quilts and she didn’t like applique that much. She made quilts for her family to use. When I pointed out to her that the first quilt she made – which she gave to me after my sister died – was falling apart, she said, “Then I guess it was loved.”

She never wanted her quilts to be put in a box on a shelf and treated like a precious treasure. Therefore, there are about 7 or 8 quilts in my son’s room – several of them baby quilts – that she made him and when he has them all on the bed, he says, “I sleep in love.”

There are three quilts on our bed she made and one I did (I made my husband a king sized quilt to commemorate when he got his PhD.)

There are four quilts my daughter has that Mom made. One of them, a Sunbonnet Girl quilt, was a combined effort. I appliqued all the blocks while sitting in a recliner on dialysis. Mom put it together. Another one, a quilt for the Girl’s graduation from 8th grade, she made after the Girl and I picked out the pattern and fabric. We had adopted the Boy by then and my sewing time was limited, so Mom took the fabric and pattern and made the quilt.

The other night, I was sick in bed and I put my hand on the quilts and realized that the one I’d made was falling apart. Interestingly, the fabric I bought at a fancy quilt store began to tear before the fabric I got at a chain fabric store!!

Anyway, I realized that when these quilts fall apart, that could be it. There’s no one else who is retired, living alone, and spending hour after happy hour sewing and quilting for us and other people she loved. And herself.

One of my projects to finish is a quilt. The pattern is called Cinderella, and I made it YEARS ago, but stopped quilting it when we adopted the Boy. That was 8 years ago, so I decided that is one of the projects I’m going to finish this year.

I’m also getting my sewing area back in shape and I’m going to sew again. I may not be able to replace all the quilts, but I can leave something for my family, and I can get back that part of me I’ve missed.

I inherited my love of sewing and crafts from my mom, and I want it back.

Just called a magazine I’ve been getting for years, but haven’t received for several months. The subscription is supposed to run out in July this year so I called to find out why I hadn’t gotten any for the last few months. First, they couldn’t find me in the system, but they found another woman in my zip code with my name but a different address. However, they had no record of me, my account number, nothing. Here I stand with June 2009 in my hand with an address label on it and the woman on the phone is puzzled. She even got a copy of that issue just to be sure I was calling the right magazine. At this point, I’d begun to doubt that I was although the publishing info from the old one matched the issue I bought at the store today!

Finally, she put me on hold for a couple of minutes and came back and said, “Okay, would you like me to send you the back issues you’ve missed or extend your subscription because your last issue will be mailed in a few weeks?” I told her I want the back issues (it’s a cross stitch magazine) and I’ll renew it online.

Then I asked if she could tell me what had happened.

“The system changed your address.”

Hmm…I’m wondering if someone found my magazine by accident and changed the address to “steal” my subscription!

Anyway, I don’t know how the “system” changed my address any other way.

Just an interesting event in my day.

How’s your day going?

I’ve listed a bunch of my old cross stitch magazines and books on ebay. I may be doing more things later as I try to declutter and clean up my sewing/craft area.

My ebay name is romarite if you’d like to take a look. If you want something, let me know you read my blog and I will take 10% off your purchase.

I threw my back out, somehow, on Saturday, and today is the first day I’ve actually felt like doing anything. There are still some twinges in my back and right hip, but I can walk around and do some housework. I even cooked dinner tonight.

Whenever I get over one of these things, illness or something that keeps me out of commission for awhile, I always come back feeling all “nesty” like I have to clea everything and get everything back in order. Of course, it takes more than one day, and one day when I’m not 100%, to show any progress, but I did get a load of laundry done and cleared off the clutter from the kitchen table and got some work done for my writers’ group.

We’re teaching Natural Family Planning tomorrow night, so I have to get the dining table cleared of all my stamping stuff and the little penninsula in the kitchen cleared of the accumulated junk.

WRITING UPDATE:

Chapter Six of Sword & Illusion has been edited. Still plugging away. My chiropractor read Attack of the Queen and it dying for the second one, so I really need to get moving.

I’m working through First Draft in 30 Days with a new book, Gingerbread Hearts. I’m not sure I completely understand everything she’s suggesting, but I’m giving it a shot and we’ll see what happens.

KNITTING UPDATE:

No pictures as the Girl has the camera and apparently is keeping it hostage. I’ll get it back after the weekend. I’m still working on a pair of worsted weight cabled socks. I’m not sure I like the way the first one turned out, but I’ll finish them and wear them around the house. I put the first one on and it did keep my foot warm, so that’s all that’s necessary.

I’m making a hat for the husband. He said this morning that he has about a mile walk from where he has to park to get to his office and even though it’s Louisiana, it’s been pretty cold around here in the mornings, especially.

CROSS STITCH:

I’ve been working on the Boy’s Christmas stocking, but I lost my reading glasses and the linen is such a close weave it’s hopeless to try to stitch without them. I really need to make a new appointment at the eye doctor for both me and the Girl. We had one last week but my fever was back and I felt miserable.

Yesterday was not a great day here. I mean, I wasn’t feeling bad or anything, just wasn’t motivated to do anything – housework-wise. I did work on the slipper socks I’m making for Noah. I was attempting this cool thing of knitting two socks at once on double pointed needles and had actually been doing well until I realized that I’d crossed the yarns back a ways. Sigh. I just ripped the whole thing out and found a different, simpler pattern and am knitting them one at a time. I like the idea of getting two of them done at once. I definitely have second sock syndrome – reluctance to cast on a new sock of the same pattern because you are ready for a new challenge – but kniting them both at once was so slow. I couldn’t really get into a rhythm where I didn’t have to watch my knitting all the time. That’s one of the things I love about knitting is that I can do it without looking most of the time, unlike cross stitch, which pretty much requires me to keep my eyes on it. Knitting is so much easier to take to things like bowling practice or the car pool line.

Along that topic, I ordered myself some more hand dyed yarn from Etsy. It’s become my favorite place for sock yarn. That yarn can get a little expensive, but I feel so good knowing I’m supporting a small business person or an artist doing what she loves.

I have two skeins of hand dyed yarn I haven’t used yet, but things, financially, are going well for us and I can afford a little luxury for myself once in a while.

Noah and I stayed while Juliette had bowling practice. It was actually nice. There is an arcade near by where I sat and Noah spent most of the time playing in the arcade without any money. He just enjoyed playing with the machines. I worked on a pair of socks for me, made out of one of those skeins of hand dyed yarn.

I don’t know, yet, what the holidays did to my weight. I had all kinds of intentions of going to the gym last week and this, but between the inlaws here (and the eating out that goes with that) and Steve being ill and unable to care for Noah and me being ill and tired and really unable to work out, things just didn’t happen the way I planned.

I was reading Lazy Daisy’s weight loss blog this morning and realized that my reluctance to get on the scale at Weight Watchers on Monday is silly. No matter what happens, it doesn’t affect who I am as a person nor in the eyes of God. He loves me no matter what. Why is that so hard to keep hold of?

I can start over every day – both in my weight loss journey and my Flying – as long as I wake up each day.

HEALTH UPDATE:

Started the day feeling better but by afternoon I was tired and had little energy so I took it easy.

WRITING UPDATE:

Rewriting Chapter Five of Sword & Illusion, should be finished tonight. I’m adding a battle scene tonight. My editor (read: husband) thinks I shy away from battle scenes, which are essential in fantasy novels. I think he’s right because I’ve recently realized that I don’t want to hurt my characters or really make things tough for them.

THOUSAND GIFTS #6

97. I got a very nice phone call from my chiropractor. She bought a copy of Attack of the Queen right before Christmas and she called today to say that she’d finished it and said it was too short and read too fast. She even quizzed me a little on the next one, like when is it coming out! I am still writing it, so I guess I’d better go faster.

98. Last night as I was in the kitchen getting ready to shut the house down for the night and talking to my darling husband, Noah played the first line of Joy to the World on the piano! Apparently, Steve and his mother taught him out to do it and he remembers. Today he was asking me what comes next.

99. I got the craft tote I ordered from Joann’s online with the gift card my mother sent me for Christmas. I love it and it will work perfectly for my cross stitch just as I’d hoped and I ended up with five plastic storage boxes that I can use for something else.

100. I’m learning how to knit two socks at the same time on double pointed needles. I’m making a pair for Noah because he is usually running around the house either barefoot or in school socks. He needs some kind of slipper thing, so this experiment is for him.

101. I returned all the library books today, so that’s off my mind.

102. Juliette’s bowling coach is going to have the drug test paper for me to sign tomorow. Juliette had brought one home but in the midst of the holidays we lost it so I emailed her coach and it’ll be okay.

103. Juliette’s feeling better with her cold today. She was even in that euphoric mood she gets into after a migraine or illness. It’s fun but annoying when it happens at bedtime.

104. When Juliette was 6 years old, we moved to Germany. There’s a TV show there (I think it started when it was EAST Germany) called the Sandmann. It comes on EVERY NIGHT at 7:50 pm. Every kid in Germany knows Sandmann. It’s so hard to explain to Americans. He’s little animated guy (like an elf in Rudolph – that kind of animation) who is the Sandman. He goes to a bunch of little kids who sing a song that it’s not bedtime yet. They watch a cartoon or too, then he sings that they’ve had fun but it’s time for bed and he throws sand at them (magic, glittery sand, you get it) and all the kids in the country know it’s bed time at 8 because Sandmann is over. Today Juliette found that you can see Sandmann and some of our favorite cartoon characters from his visits on youtube.com.

105. I taped a bunch of Firefly episodes on the DVR so they’re mine to watch whenever I want!!

I’m going to take a bath now and got to bed. More news tomorrow!

My newest craft obsession is knitting socks. Here is a pair I’ve made to be slipper socks for a Christmas gift for a relative.

I’m not sure they are exactly the same, but as they’re just to wear around the house, I’m pretty proud of them!