Author: Teresa

Quilts, good books and dogs. Plus a cup of tea. Life is good.

Be resourceful

September 20, 2024

Sometimes the best laid plans don’t always work out as you intended.

The Asheville Quilt Show is next week. This event has been on my calendar for several months. Originally, I’d planned for an overnight stay in Asheville and hubs would be home to keep the dog. He now has an event with TR next week.

The sticky wicket: What to do with Sadie?

It’s Fall Break for our local school district. Our doggy day care is full. Friends who could keep her are on vacation themselves. The college student who occasionally housesits for us, now has a full-time job. Even Grandma and Poppy are away next week.

I really didn’t want to cancel my trip, so Sadie is coming with me. I understand Asheville is a super dog-friendly city. We’ll see if that is true. I have a pet-friendly hotel arranged AND doggy day care session(s) reserved for her while I attend the quilt show. The weather is also cool enough for her to safely sit in the car if I want to stop somewhere along the way. Let’s hope the 10 day weather forecast is wrong about the rain. We’d both appreciate getting to explore Asheville without getting soaked.

The “hard” therapy dog visits

September 18, 2024

The bulk of our visits are the feel-good type where everyone is smiling and happy. Then, there are those that are a bit uncomfortable at first, but end up being so worthwhile.

GEMA requested our therapy dog group deploy therapy dog teams to Winder to provide services after the shooting at Apalachee High School. The students, families and other community support organizations in Winder were so appreciative that the therapy dogs were there. We were stationed at the community resource center, schools and the courthouse.

The Georgia State Conference on Family Violence invited CAREing Paws teams to help attendees destress after some very involved conference sessions on difficult topics. At the conference, I learned of other organizations that would welcome our visits and connected with community representatives from my own part of the state.

Another type of hard visit is the one you worked to make happen that didn’t get off the ground. The invitation to visit was rescinded last minute. This happened multiple times in my former school district over the past year. No reason was ever given, of course. We thought the one school district was just a fluke. Then, it happened with a different district this week. Guess what? The two local school districts share the same outside law firm for legal work.

If we’re asked by GEMA to come provide therapeutic support after a school shooting and you invite us to attend your big reading event every year, please explain to me what the issue is with us coming into one of your elementary schools each week to have kids read to the dogs? The kids and staff will benefit. But never mind. You’ve had your chance (multiple, actually). I will not be doing any visits to my former school district or the small city school district. Period.end.of.story.

I’ll go where we’re wanted and appreciated.

My date with Jack

September 17, 2024

Quilters (and probably other sewists, as well) have an inside joke regarding “a date with Jack.” It merely means we’ve had to spend WAY too much time with our seam rippers (aka “Jack the Ripper”)! I’ve been working on a set of fall placemats using the Mini-Yellow Brick Road pattern from Atkinson Designs. Last night, I quilted three of the placemats with no problem. Placemat #4, however, decided to be difficult.

I quilt using a large cone of thread on a thread stand that sits next to my sewing machine. Somehow, the velcro closure on my quilting glove caught the upper thread and pulled it out of the upper thread guides. I didn’t notice it until I was 2/3 of the way through quilting the placemat. The top side stitching looked fine, but the back was nothing but eyelashes. It took a while, but I managed to remove the stitching and quilt the placemat again.

This evening, I started binding said placemats. Another date with Jack – WITH THE SAME PLACEMAT! I was listening to a podcast and hadn’t paid attention to which way I’d lined up the binding when attaching it to the placemat. I sewed 3/4 of the way around before I realized I’d sewn it with the folded edge against sides of the placemat instead of matching raw edges together.

After yet another date with Jack, I decided to call it quits for tonight. I’ll finish binding my placemats tomorrow.

Day 3 with Jack. Binding attached, but Jack’s assistance was needed relocating a join spot so it would not be at the corner of the placemat.