Wednesday, February 27, 2008

WITW - Week 6, Discovering a Sense of Boundaries

Here I am to check in, but no grandbaby yet! Mom is having regular contractions, and everything looks ready to go, yet we are still in waiting mode. I'll have to say that's one nice thing about planned c-sections. At least you know you have a finish line, which is what Joellen really needs, but the Lord teaches us patience in his own way. I think He is reminding her at this time just who is in control and that she needs to rest in knowing that in His timing this will be complete.


Week 6 was a little crazy. I tried taking my notebook with me, but doing morning pages in a motel room with two other people distracting me just doesn't work. I really need my alone time to do the writing. Technically the week-end pages probably belong to week 7, but I want to start that week with a clean slate! I like spending that thinking time alone with myself in the morning. I really feel centered and ready to start the day after taking the time to look inwards.

Weekly walk, didn't happen. Not sure why? It is sure hard to fit in my day, I hope the longer days will help and I can start walking in the late afternoon before I start dinner. The mornings just don't seem to work when my schedule is full.


Artist Date: I'm considering my trip to Bridgeport Mall my artist date. It was grand! I went into so many stores and saw wonderful things, pretty pillows and vases, clothes in all the hot colors and styles, and just enjoyed people watching, too! I found a fabulous red coat in Urban Outfitters, it was marked down to $50.00 and I just had to buy it. It has a lovely soft furry white lining and just a little bit of embroidered ribbon trim on the top. It's not bulky or puffy, just pretty and bright, and it makes me happy just to think of wearing it!


My thoughts on this chapter was that maybe I'm not so bad at having boundaries after all! I usually don't talk a lot about my projects, at least not the ones that are really mine, until they are complete. Usually if I have a project I am stuck on it is because of a problem I have with it. I enjoy my private little space (when it's halfway clean anyway!) and am able to escape there fairly often. I can even close the door and be all alone if I want to! I have pulled out a couple of things I want to finish up. One is a pattern for a quilt that I want to market along with my other two. I have a second pattern to work on also, but I need to finish the quilt first. My to do lists are long because of the long weekend, but I am carving out a little time every day to get these completed.


Definitely too much inflow in my life, and I really need to work on allowing myself more space and setting some limits on what I will do and when. As a people pleaser, it's too easy for me to say, "sure, I can do that this week" when in reality it means sacrificing the time I set aside to do what I want to do. I really do need some quiet and time to just piddle and putter with fabric, or play with EQ5.


Community is pretty much my life. In a small town everything is community! I like it, though. I like knowing the grocery clerk, and the librarians. I like reading the paper and seeing what is happening with people. We really are connected to our neighbors and schools and church, and it is wonderful how we can all care for and about one another.


As requested here is a photo of my sketchbook pouch. (Still no sketches, though!) Sorry for the dark pictures, it's a little hazy out this morning so the light isn't the best.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Going to be Grandma soon!

No check in yet, but exciting news! My daughter is in labor and we are going up for the arrival of our grandson!!! I'll catch up as soon as I can! I am so excited I can't tell you - I buzzed around the house, cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed the upstairs, cleaned the catboxes, dusted, and generally straightened up. We are headed up to Portland for the big event, say a little prayer for Joellen and Mark, and Asher Avery!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

WITW - Week 5, A Sense of Personal Territory




Wow, this chapter really grabbed me by the nape of my neck and brought me to attention. I am guilty of ovecaretaking (and feeling angry and drained by it, but unable to say no). I am also too nice, which again drains and angers me, but I feel helpless to say no to the demands and requests. So it was very empowering to have explained to me what these things do to me and why I am a better artist, and a better person if I just an have the courage to take care of myself and do a little self nurturing. Now if I can actually take these thoughts and follow up on them. I can't wait to get into Chapter 6 and set some boundaries!




Morning pages - going quite well, have almost filled up another notebook. But my next notebook is college rule, not wide rule, so 3 pages will suddenly be more work. Maybe I need to go buy some more wide rule notebooks! I did miss a day last week because of our trip to Medford, and if I was thinking, I would have brought it with me and done it on the ride. Oh well, next time I will try that. One interesting thing I see coming up over and over is that I did not accomplish as much as I wanted to the day before. I think I am overloading myself, and stressing out by trying to do more than I can in a day's time. Either that or I am wasting time on things that aren't helping me to reach my goals. Food for thought.




Artist Date: I had the opportunity to take a long arm quilting class! It was really fun! I am going to rent the machine for a few hours next monday and quilt a blue and yellow star sampler quilt - we'll see what I can do. I was a little surprised to see that the very basic nature of my quilting is still very much the same on the long-arm machine as it is on my home machine. I really don't thing I can quilt any faster on it, my Juki seems to keep up just fine, but the huge advantage is no pins! Loved that aspect of it - it's been very frustrating in my home quilting to have to continually stop to remove pins. I don't really think I would want to own my own machine, but being able to rent one is fabulous. I don't think I'll ever abandon the table quilting I do, but this is another nice option to open up some different techniques and try out some things that are just a little harder to do on a home machine.




Weekly Walk: Absolutely fabulous! A wonderful sunny day, really lifted my spirits to get out into the sunshine for a while and just enjoy the beauty of the day. I can see buds starting to come out on the trees, and spring is just a few more weeks away. I know we still have rainy days coming up, but it's wonderful to have the sunshine for a few days!








Wednesday, February 13, 2008

WITW-Week 4,

I guess my life is just too adventurous for a check-in! I wish that I could say I went to Paris for the weekend, and visited museums and that's why it took me over a week to get this done, but no such luck. The truth is that I had a baby shower for my daughter and it took up a lot of my time for a couple of weeks! When I wasn't atually doing stuff for the shower I was thinking about doing stuff for the shower and it really shot holes in my book work!

So in order to get going on week 5 I need to do my week 4 check in, which really sucks!

Morning pages: Still done, except for the actual day of the shower and the following day which was a volleyball tournament, up early drive for three hours, sit on a hard bench for several more hours, drive three hours home. Should have brought my stuff with me. Could have done several chapters while we were watching other teams play! Still enjoying, gives me a sense of purpose to start my day, and helps me clean my mind out of junk. Also helps me get organized, but I need to tuck some extra paper in for lists to take with me - then I can actually get done the things I think about!

Walk - had a lovely walk last week, nice sunny day, I put my headphones on and toured the neighborhood. Loved it, and would love to make time for several more walks a week.

Artist Date - No good. Going to dollar tree for baby shower stuff was as close as it got. Oh well, we all have those kinds of weeks.

As far as all the other stuff goes in the chapter, didn't get much done, but I'm ready to move on and will get going on ch 5. Oh, I made a nice quilted pouch to hold my (unused!) sketch pad and a box of pencils. Does that count? It was fun and artistic.

I'm trying to think of a way to incorporate quilting into some of the exercises and maybe a small quilt a week that focuses on the theme of the chapter would be fun. I miss quilting. I've been working on lots of pillows for other people, and haven't had much time for doing the quilting that I'd love to do. Now that the baby shower is over I hope life settles down a bit and I can squeeze in some more fun sewing time!