Come Stitch With Me

My local grocery store shelves are bare. Not merely an empty spot here or there, but entire sections where products are MISSING. Refrigerated biscuit dough, butter, cream, yogurt, crackers, potato chips, paper products, soup, cereal, granola bars, breakfast meat and juice to name a few categories.

It’s like reliving the early days of COVID-19 all over again. What gives?

Is it supply chain woes?
Is it lack of staff to restock the shelves?
Is it holidays and just needing product deliveries in order to restock?
Is it due to winter weather predicted for this evening?

Whatever it is, it’s disheartening. Hopefully, it’s merely temporary.

Today, I took Sadie to visit Miss Pat to wish her Happy New Year and buy some fabric that I needed for upcoming projects. Sadie got her allotment of cookies and lots of pets from customers in the shop. As one of the employees was ringing up my purchase, she asked, “Are you planning to teach again?”. I paused for a minute and responded that I probably would teach again, but right now I was enjoying sewing for me.

That’s the truth.

The monthly table runner club is strictly for me. I’ve already pulled fabrics for the next two projects.

I have to add the finishing touches to A Quilter’s Cottage, which I am going to submit for entry into the Georgia Celebrates Quilts Show in June. Then, I have the two neighbor girls who want to make blocks for the show’s children’s exhibit.

I committed to making a charity quilt in January/February with an online group affiliated with Quilts for Kids.

The other truth is I do miss teaching classes.

I have ideas for projects, but samples need to be made and I’m really not in the mood to do that right now. COVID is running rampant (again). I scheduled classes for spring, summer and fall of 2021. Only about 1/3 of the classes were actually held. I’ll just wait it out this time. It could mean I don’t teach any classes until summer or fall. I’m good with that. There are projects on my biz calendar for 1st Qtr 2022 – technical editing, t-shirt quilts and reopening the Etsy shop. These are all things that involve minimal F2F contact. Then, there’s the day job. Who knows what will happen spring semester? Hopefully, not too much drama as I wind things down.

Hmmm…fall and holiday project classes are starting to sound like a possibility.

Happy New Year!

One thing about quilting – there’s always more than one way to accomplish something. How many different ways can you make HSTs? This is particularly vexing to newbie quilters who are like, “Wait, what?” when a teacher deviates from the published pattern. For me, it’s usually because the instructions are not well-written. Sometimes it’s because a certain tool, fabric or component isn’t available and I had to figure out another way to make it work. What matters is that you completed the block – not how you got there.

This holds true in other areas of life, as well. One of the perks of being married to a road warrior is the amount of travel rewards that can accumulate over time. The bad thing about COVID is that we’ve not really been able to use some of the awards. I didn’t want a companion pass and a travel credit to go unused, so I booked the airline tickets for my parents and me to travel in June, 2022.

We wanted to fly into one particular location, but weren’t able to use the companion pass that weekend for some reason. The ticket agent couldn’t figure out the reason behind the block either. Her suggestion was to fly into the nearest airport, which was only an hour away. The downside would be a limited flight schedule. Fortunately, we were able to make it work and saved about $300 on airfare to boot.

With our travel plans slightly altered, we were able to carve out time for me to spend a morning at a local sewing & quilting event. It just so happens that attending a show put on by this particular group is on my quilt travel bucket list for 2022. No need to take an additional trip! Woo-hoo!

Sometimes the alternate route is the one you should have taken all along. Interesting how life works that way, huh?