Some very random thoughts

I've added a slideshow of pics of my projects at the bottom of the blog, which necessitated changing how many posts show on the page when you visit. So now you'll only see the most recent post and will have to dig through archives to find older ones.

To be very honest, part of the reason I haven't been writing lately is because I'm trying to take the concept of "summer" very seriously this year, and that means actually walking away from my computer when I'm done with work for the day and doing other things like sitting in our rope-swing hammock chair with a mindless book, hanging out in the pool, or--yes--even quilting. My quilting is a little less exciting these days as I'm playing catch-up at the moment. Trying to catch up with my guild's block of the month activity (I think I'm finally up to April!), catching up with finishing up several UFOs that have been languishing as I've been in a flurry of new creativity, and catching up with sorting and neatening up my quilting area after said flurry. I'm trying to knock off a lot of unfinished business now--I'm traveling for business for a couple of weeks in August and am taking that immediately following week as vacation. No one else in my family has the week off so I'm planning on spending it as a quilt-retreat-at-home; I want to get all the old stuff done now so I can have fun with something new that week.

I did attend my first-ever quilt retreat last month and although my first day was a test of endurance, I pretty quickly got into a rhythm and accomplished quite a bit. And I've already signed up for my guild's quilt retreat in the fall. I'm hooked! A couple of the photos in the slide show are quilt retreat projects--one of which I completed beginning-to-end during the retreat itself, the second one I started on the last day and finished at home a couple of weeks later. (Look for the triple-rail on point in reds and greens, and the stack-n-slash in batiks, if you know what those are!)

I will say that one thing I've learned about myself in the last year is that the quilting techniques I love most are the ones that pull me completely out of my super-organized, pre-planned mode that tends to be the rest of my life. In "normal life", I prefer to more or less know what's happening next, I live by to-do lists and spreadsheets and my surroundings are pretty well organized. But the things I enjoy doing most in quilting are almost always the free-form, the random, the "just run with it and see what happens next" techniques. Very releasing! I suppose that's a left-brain-right-brain thing although I can never remember which side of my brain is supposed to be responsible for what. But there's something to be said for the fact that if I have to spend my day attending to my organized self, I will relax most attending to my "bag the organization and just have fun" self!

So, speaking of summer, it's time for me to walk away from my computer and go do something completely unproductive--be a beach bunny in my own back yard. Catch ya on the rebound, hang ten, don't worry, be happy, n' all that. Dude.