I love September

Since I was in junior high.  I clearly remember the pleasure I got from the crisp air, the sky the color of my blue jeans.  I didn't learn about apple picking until I moved to New England in college.  Actually, that's probably when I started spending more time outside, walking to class, wandering around town and campus.  That's when I started exploring (in so many ways).
So for me, September still brings that freedom, deep breaths of satisfaction and appreciation.  A desire to spend hours outside doing absolutely nothing but enjoying myself.
I hope we can go apple picking this weekend but I haven't spent much time researching U-Pick options on Long Island.  Suggestions welcome.

This week I had my last Home Ec. Club meeting with the Elementary girls (in November a new group of students can sign up).  We made these..

I found this apple coaster pattern at Purl Soho.  I liked that they were cute and felt and looked easy enough for my 4th, 5th, and 6th graders to assemble.  I didn't really want to make coasters though.. (I mean, how much use do little girls have for coasters?  Maybe I'm wrong.) So I scaled down the templates 75% and we made magnets instead.

I made some other adjustments too, knowing that some of the students have an interest but not aptitude for needle and thread, and we tried using tacky glue to assemble a few.  I also played around with stuffing them and painting on the seeds rather than stitching them on.  Trial and error, right?
The Home Ec. Club only meets for 45 minutes, but after all the students get to the room and I explain the project, it's more like 35 minutes of actual crafting time.  The paint didn't dry that quickly and most students ended up smudging it a little.  The glue worked out great though.  If I try it again, I'll definitely glue on felt seeds next time.
I like that I get to be crafty at work, share my knowledge and passion with the kids.  If there was a jr. high Home Ec. club.. you can bet we'd be doing EPP.  But zakka is so much fun, quick and satisfying.  I don't find much time for it in my personal sewing anymore, so I'm grateful for Home Ec. Club and excited about the next session.

Tuesday Morning Star Count 2014/40

Who are we kidding here, this post never gets up on Monday mornings anymore.  For some reason, the kids get the best of me, every weekend.  Here's what our Sunday night looked like..

Second ER visit in 24 hours.  He's fine, but gave us quite a scare.  Would you believe I brought my sewing kit in my bag, just in case they kept us over night?  Thankfully I didn't have a chance to use it.

Before all the drama, I did manage to find time to stitch at work(!) a bit on Friday..

 I know I've been adding stitches to this same block for weeks, but I finally got the outer ring attached.  Now to see where it fits in the rest of the puzzle.  Part of me wants Travel Quilt #5 to "read" chronologically, but that may not work, color-wise.   I guess I'll have to lay it out again and see.

Has life been getting in the way of your stitching too?  If you've made any progress at all, even just basting, please show us!

Traveling Pic-Stitch Bloghop

It's my turn~~
Time to show off what I've come up with for the Traveling Pic-Stitch Blog hop!

Since Laura contacted me about the blog hop, I've been taking photos that could work as palette inspiration.  Sure, I travel a whole bunch and could use any of the ones from our spring in Greece, but who needs to see another beautiful coastline?  Maybe it's precisely because I DO travel so often that I really really enjoy being at home, in my own  neighborhood, and in my own routine.  So a lot of the photos I took were of flowers I passed by every day.
See, I work at two private universities.  Both have beautifully landscaped campuses which are full of seasonal colors at every turn.  I feel blessed that I get to work in such pretty environments.  (Though they've got nothing on this campus.. that's heaven on earth) So my first palette photo was this one:

It's nice, but I don't have that cool ipad app that let's you tweak colors, and I wasn't really happy with the generated ones.  Maybe I don't want to do a flower block afterall..

 

Then I was lucky enough to get to go into Manhattan last weekend for the NYC Mod guild meeting, and I got this shot:

Again, love the photo, but completely disappointed with the palette it generated.  So I decided to take some creative license, and this is what I came up with..

It's got yellow for the taxi, blue for the neon sign, and plenty of grey for the heart of New York City.
Sorry it's not all stitched together yet-- this is exam week at work and I've been a little busy (today I've got to grade 35 poorly creatively written essays).  I promise to post a pic of the final block once it's done though.

Have you stitched up your photo inspiration block yet?

If you need more ideas, be sure to check out who's bloghopping this week:
 

October 7    Sarah Fielke @ The Last Piece

October 8    Jo @ My Bearpaw

October 9    Kirsty @ YouHadMeAtBonjour

October 10   Ramona @RamonaRose

Me!

October 12   Fiona @ Celtic Thistle Stitches

October 13   Catherine @KnottedCotton

October 14   Amanda @ AmandaMillar

Wait, you have no idea what the blog hop is about?  Here are the details:
 

This post is part of the Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop.  From 1st October - 30th November we are hopping all over the world EPP-ing in some fantastic locations.  Check out the full list here and be sure to check out the other participants. On 30th November it's over to you to link up for a chance to win these fabulous prizes! Sponsored by Paperpieces.com, FabricwormPink Castle Fabrics ,  Marmalade Fabrics, the Fat Quarter Shop, WantItNeedItQuilt, and Aurifil.

Full details for competition entry can be found here.

Up

So I've been having a bit of insomnia lately.. a bit more often than I'd like actually. Two or three nights a week I find myself up from 3-6 a.m. or thereabouts.
Makes me wish I had maintainted that twitter account a bit better and had friends to talk to at this hour, but then again, I really wish I were sleeping.
I think I know the reasons behind this crazy messed up sleeping pattern, and I'll be ready to share most of them in the next few weeks, but for now let's just call it "stress", ok?
This has been one intense, full, and hectic year.  One in which my life has grown and changed in so  many ways, but this blog which has been my daily companion for 6 years now, has gone by the wayside.  I feel.. disconnected. 
So out of the loop.
And I miss it.  I miss it on nights like tonight when I'm up with time to kill, reading blogs and seeing what everyone else is making and doing.  Now I've been doing plenty of making and doing myself, none of which I can show you because no one appreciates a 4am photo shoot, right?  But I'll show you this..

My latest impulse buy (thank you Joann's sale emails), a 40 yard roll of Warm & Natural.
And it's not just sitting there either, I've been cutting off this roll left and right.  Things are getting quilted, things are getting done.
But life moves too fast to blog about it all. 

The new semester is starting next week, and I've been trying hard to prep ahead of schedule this time around so I can avoid late night lesson planning (which never really goes as well as I'd hope in class the next day) and give myself some breathing room (maybe even blogging room) in the new weekly routine that's about to work itself out.  I've got 6 classes at 2 different universities this year.  All ESL, mostly writing and grammar, with a fair amount of accent reduction thrown in.  (Lesly, if you're up in the middle of the night and want to chat about teaching stress-attracting suffixes, lmk!)
I'm really looking forward to school, and fall, but mostly to the end of this chaotic summer that I've had.  I'm just not a summer person and I realize this more and more as I get older.  Is anybody else looking forward to putting this hot muggy season behind us?

I think I sleep better with cooler weather too.  Well, I know I sleep better under a quilt anyway.

Summer



Our last week in Greece was spent here:

Santa Maria Beach, Paros.



 And not surprisingly, I didn't get a lot of quilting done. 

Adjusting to life back in NY took a lot longer than I was expecting, jetlag was harsh (almost 10 days to get over it) and our new summer "routine" kinda hit me like a ton of bricks.  For weeks I've felt like I've been trying to dig myself out from a constant avalanche. 
I am very very happy to be home though, and happy to be working again.  My summer job rocks and I get to spend my mornings busy and surrounded by fun people.  I've also had the chance to meet up with many many quilting friends who have been coming over to help me finish a big project, like a good old fashioned IRL quilting bee.  I keep meaning to take pictures, but we're usually too busy stitching and gossiping to remember to take any. 
When they come over again, I'll put my camera (or I should say my phone) on the table so I don't forget.
My sewing room is a bit of a mess and I'm quite behind on virtual Bee obligations, which I hope to get to soon.  There are only so many hours in the day though, and you can't spend all of them inside, right?  Here's to hoping summer's intensity wears off soon..

Balance sought, not yet found

At the start of this teaching session I warned you it might take me a while to find some balance, but now, here we are 7 weeks into classes and it'll all be over next week (we teach 2 sessions each university semester), and still, I never found a way to balance work, quilting, blogging, and housekeeping.  Well, that's not exactly true.  Life does have a balance, but blogging just never made it smoothly into the equation.  I go to work, prep after class, clean the house as necessary; we've scaled back on our play-date schedule, but we spend lots of quality time the 3 of us.  Every night I cuddle with George in bed as he falls asleep and I've somehow found a way to slow it down and really enjoy those moments, instead of wishing he'd fall asleep faster so I could get up and go do something else.  I think AmandaJean's new year's resolution to be more intentional has found a place in my life as well, but I'm not just trying to be intentional with my sewing, but with all of my actions.  If it's not worth it, I don't do it, and then I release myself of the guilt and don't worry about it either.

A few weeks ago I sorted through all the big pieces of fabric in my stash (haven't tackled the fat quarter bins yet).  This was brought on mostly by the fact that they had migrated off the shelves and onto lopsided stacks all over the futon and the rest of the room, and I needed the futon to be cleared off so I could use the space to organize another project.. but the process was really insightful.  I touched each piece of fabric and decided if it was something I wanted to work with this year, or if I should shelf it for "later".  I have this goal to bust stash, and you can't really bust efficently if you don't know what you have.  You can't make quilts you like if you can't find the fabrics you love, and for me, they were all there, I just couldn't find them.  So I sorted and I thought, "What colors and patterns do I want to have around me?"  Out came all the strange prints that I loved but didn't know what to do with, and a stack emerged of balanced neutrals, small prints, and sentimental fabrics collected on trips here and there.  those are the ones I want to live with..  I'd take a picture if the light in the sewing room weren't so bad (damn overcast day)..
But hopefully you'll see those fabrics put to use over the next few months. 

I'll end with a photo of the pillow I made for my mom for Christmas.  I sent it off to her before I could get a good photo, but snaped this one when we went to Chicago in January.  The center fabric is one in my "neutrals" pile.. I'd like to use up the rest of that piece this year..

september 28

No, I don't really have much to say right now.  The blog has been quiet as I try to adjust to my new life, schedule, and routine.  So many things have changed, in ways I couldn't have even imagined when I wrote my last post.  The most profound and puzzling is my relationship with the internet..
I no longer feel the need to get online first thing in the morning, or check my blog stats and favorite blogs every day.  Now even sitting down to check my email isn't about responding to blog comments or browsing new flickr photos, but instead answering emails from my students and recording grades for their homework submitted online. 
I got a new laptop but haven't downloaded photos off my camera since the Chicago trip 4 weeks ago, and I spend more time making worksheets and lesson plans than I do thinking of or daydreaming up good blogposts.  It's not that I don't want to be part of the quiltblog community right now, I do!  I even hung out at Talkin Tuesday last night on twitter, but life is very full and the stuff on my plate is keeping me more than busy, so I guess I just lost the need to look elsewhere for mental stimulation..

Before you go off and start worrying about me, let me say that I love my new job.  Love it!  I think I may have been born to teach ESL.. and I feel a sense of balance has been restored to my life, something that had been lacking since I left my old job in '08 to stay home with George.  I feel important, needed.  My knowledge matters.  I assume everything I'm feeling is just a normal part of the transition from SAHM to "working mother,"  so I'm really not too worried about any of it.  Just thought I'd pop in and let you all know that I'm fine, happy, and surprisingly, still quilting.  I've been string piecing this week, finally putting together some big big spiderweb blocks to hopefully make a dent in my strip scrap stash.

I'll leave you with these photos of George, my new favorites, taken this morning at the LI Children's Museum.  Somehow they reflect how I'm feeling these days, but in a good way..



I so wish this weren't blurry!