Happy New Year...Starting Over

It has been nine months since I last made my presence known here and I have resolved to change that this year. As I try to think back over the past year, I struggle to recall all that occurred over the past year. And because of this, I must make myself document the coming year...so prepare yourselves for months of tantalizing self reflection about working from home and watching the dog sleep with a snippet of creations that I'm working on (quilting, knitting, and with any luck some ceramics if I get the kiln up and going). 

With that promise made, here are a few things that I recall from the past year...

First, some of the quilts that I did complete:  

These are all small art quilts that I have been challenged to do. 

Second, I had a wonderful trip to Alaska with my mom, sister, and niece.  

And just because I can't leave without at least one shot of my love...

This is an example of what I see ever night as I eat my dinner...

In The Garden

The current challenge from Art Quilts Around the World is called "In The Garden". I had a great time doing this quilt. I originally thought about doing a keyhole that you are looking through to see the whole amazing garden but couldn't figure how to do that on this scale. I then decided that I wanted to go the route of a secret garden and finding the door to it hidden along with the key. 

This is the quilt that I came up with. 

The first thing I did was quilt the wooden gate by taking hand painted brown fabric and tracing the grain of the wood on my table onto paper, pinning that to the brown fabric, in sections, and quilting. Here is just the wood. 

Next, I cut the piece down to the correct size, and added the lock and vines. 

Then I sewed individual leaves using fusible web to make them two-sided. Once the leaves were made, I determined how best to place them on the vines and sewed down only the stems so that the leaf can blow in the breeze. I then attached a red ribbon with a small key with the word "dream" on it that I purchased from a store on Etsy onto the vines. 

I decided that I didn't want to do a conventional binding on this, so I just satin stitched all around the edge and left it a little rough. 

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I really liked doing this challenge and think that this is one of my best pieces to date. 

What To Do....

I am constantly struggling with finding my path in life...my purpose....my raison d'être. This is something that I've been struggling with since college and my current spot in life is really one that I basically stumbled into. My choice in colleges was based on a football game. My degree was based on the fact that I just needed to pick something and get a degree since I was doing it all on my parents' dime and they were only so patient in letting me dilly dally around in school trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I got my first real job because I needed to have insurance. From there, for the most part, jobs came to me because I knew somebody who liked the job that I did and would hire me away from my previous position.. I really only sought out a couple of jobs....everything else just kinda happened to me, not that I can really complain because it has allowed me to have a pretty good life. 

However, that doesn't really help with my search. I mean deep down, as many of you are aware, I want to be an artist...but how to do that and continue to earn a living and not become a drain on the rest of societ in my later years. So, for the time being, I've implemented a mandate on my own time that inset aside a certain amount of time every day to be creative and to feed that inner artist. Primarily, I set a timer mid-morning and go up to my studio and sew for 25 minutes each morning. I know I should probably feel guilty doing this, but I justify it by telling myself that if I were going into the office that time would have been spent visiting or, if I were a smoker, going and taking my smoking breaks...I just take sewing breaks. 

So, along with these thoughts, there are so many other things that are on my mind....do I find a way to downsize....do I move....how do I find my zen? Today, I watched a couple of documentaries that made me stop and think about these things again. First, I watched one called "A Mile, Mile and a Half". This movie was about this group of hikers who hike The John Muir Trail in Yosemite. Watching this makes me want to get all athletic and outdoorsy and take up camping and hiking and take a month off and go rough it through the mountains....won't happen, but I can dream. 

The other documentary that I watched was on tiny house movement and this is something that I could actually consider...okay, maybe not a tiny house, but downsizing to something more reasonable and getting rid of so much of my stuff.... This movie really made me think, again, about how ridiculous it is the way I buy things...I have way more than I ever will need or use....except fabric. So, do I start taking steps towards downsizing? And if yes, what to do first...

Criminal Minds

I've been binge watching the television show Criminal Minds over the last couple of weeks while working. I just started Season 8, which is when Jeanne Tripplehorn joined the cast and Paget Brewster left. There are a couple of things that come to mind as I am saturated with this show....

• Two of their main characters have the same name. Aaron Hotchner, the team lead, and Erin Strauss, his boss. 
• The writers of this show are sick, sick, sick....Who is able to come up with and write this stuff? 
• I really need to update my dental records for possible identification, if it comes down to it. 
• I would never hold up to any form of torture. 
• Maybe it is because I'm watching these, but I really think that people are idiots....they always get into cars with strangers, or leave with strangers, or pick up strangers, or leave their kids alone, or run upstairs instead of outside....why do they always head towards the second floor? Oh, and there seems to be a lot of men out there that cheat on their families. 
• I want to be Penelope Garcia...she is totally cool and smart....oh and she has a really special relationship with Derek Morgan (hubba, hubba). 
• I always love the quotes that they have at the ends of the episodes. 
• If these stories are based on real stories out there, this is a truly weird and broken world. 

I'm going to have to find a much lighter show to binge watch once I'm finished with all of these.