To Do List for the Week of 06/17/2025

Do you ever look at your calendar and realize that you don't really have that much time to get ready for something?  Grad Girl will be moving home next month.  She's been applying for jobs and has had one video interview so far.  With the current job market, she's probably going to be here for at least a month, likely 2 to 3 before she finds a full time chemist job.  I've been using her old closet as storage for some of my quilting supplies, I'm going to have to find someplace else because she's going to need the closet.  I have time, but will need to add that to my decluttering to do list.  

Maybe it goes on my qulting to do list too?  It certainly wasn't on last week's to do list.  

To Do List for 06/10/2025

1.  2025 Guild BOM: finish cutting, finish assembly - progress

2.  Kate's Choice: Continue quilting blocks - no progress

3.  Old Town: Work on blocks at late night sew ✔

4.  Embroidery or Cross Stitch: Stitch one night this week ✔

5.  Wild and Goosey: Finish red blocks - progress

6.  Summer Scrap Quilt: Continue as leaders and enders ✔

It wasn't a bad week, three check marks, two with some progress and only one with no progress.  I'm finding it hard to get back to the quilting because I have deadlines with the Guild BOM blocks. My next deadline is in later July, so hopefully I'll have some time to quilt this week.  So it will stay on the to do list for this week. 

To Do List for 06/17/2025

1.  2025 Guild BOM: Finish July blocks, start cutting for Sept. 

It will take an hour or so to finish up the blocks for July. That's doable before tonight's meeting.  I'm going to try to get ahead on August. July will be busy.  

2.  Kate's Choice: Continue quilting blocks

The plan is to change over to the walking foot tomorrow and spend a couple of days quilting.  I'll just have to be disciplined and do it.  

3.  Embroidery or Cross Stitch: Stitch one night this week. 

I made a little progress Sunday night.  It's slow going, but to be fair that's only an hour of stitching time.  But progress is progress even if it's slow.  

4.  Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Finish piecing red blocks, start sashing red blocks

Just one last red block to finish paper piecing and I can start sashing the blocks with black.  Orange is this month's RSC color, but I finished all the work on those blocks.  So I'm continuing with a different color.  I'll be paper piecing a couple more green blocks this month too.  I'd really like to see this project be ready for assembly sometime next year. Hopefully, by doing a bit each month, I'll get there.  

5.  Old Town (Bonnie Hunter): Continue assembly during late night sew.

All the gold/neutral flying geese are made and I've moved on to making these subunits.  Hopefully assembly of the blocks will start in early July.  I've been working on this at late night sew because it's the only non-guild project I have everything cut for.  

6. Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter): Continue as leaders and enders. 

Yesterday's blog showed the progress from last week.  The only change is that some of the yellow border blocks are sewn together.  It's been fun to see this start to come together.  It feels like I've been making all those 4-patches forever!  

It's the same list as last week, though I'm hoping to do a bit better on the quilting and the cross stitching this week. We'll have to see how that works out.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday. 

Not Much on the Design Wall

It was another wet weekend here. The kind that's perfect for just hanging out in the sewing room.  Sewing time was spent working on the 2025 Guild BOM blocks for tomorrow's meeting.  I'm making good progress and if I can work in a good afternoon of sewing, I'll have them done.  Other than those blocks, there's not a lot going on in the sewing room.  I did finish stitching all the flying geese for clue 7 of Bonnie Hunter's Old Town mystery.  

I've been stitching a few flying geese with every BOM block I've been making. Normally the previous year's mystery becomes my leader and ender project, but in an effort to empty my blue scrap bins, I've been working on the Sensational Summer Scrap quilt (Kevin the Quilter) as my leaders and ender project for most of the year.  

The scrappy center is now all sewn together and the borders are now in the works.  This is the only project up on my design wall currently.  It's been fun to finally see this project start coming together after months of making the four patches.   

I'm not planning to start anything new for a couple of months. I really should get back to quilting Kate's Choice, but the guild BOM takes precedence.  I'll need to do a better job of keeping up as life will be busy in July. One lesson I've learned is it's wise to work ahead on the guild BOM. I've already started on plans for next year's.  It will be a sampler, which means a written block pattern each month.  Best if I get on jump on that this year.  

Linking up with the usual suspects for Monday: Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts.  

Stitching Stuff: Week 24 of 2025

 

It was another good week on the playing with thread and fabric week. Except I did a lot more playing with fabric than with actually sewing it.  I need to get a start on next year's BOM.  There is no way I'm going to be able to make a block and write a pattern each month.  I'm going to start early on that.  Still it kept me spending time in the sewing room and playing with my stash. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/June = 14/14 days
• 15 minute days/2025 = 157/165 days
• Success rate = 95.76%

It hasn't been a bad year on the stitching time front.  I may not be 100%, but 95% isn't a bad place to be approaching mid year.  

I didn't get any stash stuff done, other than sorting through what was in the fabric closet that could be used for next year's BOM.  I found some, but ended up buying a bit too. But that's OK, sometimes you have to buy to use.  

I shared one sign from our Texas trip last week. I have another for this week. 

This little carton was painted on the west side of an orthopedic surgeon' s office.  I bet that office is a fun place to work and the surgeon is probably pretty entertaining too.  

So how was your stitching week?  

Week 143 Photo Challenge: Old Book(s)

We've managed to keep up with the photo challenge for 3 weeks. It does make a huge difference that Grad Girl is mostly done with all her stuff for the master's degree and she has more time to contemplate photography.  Last week's challenge was one right up our alley. 

All three of us are bibliophiles, big time.  Grad Girl is at a disadvantage as most of her older books are here and not in Texas.  So she'll get a bit of grace with this week's post.  

I raided my professional library for my photo. 

Kate: Chemistry Tomes

These chemistry books were written in the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's, These weren't purchased because I collect old books, no I collected these to use.  When I was a refinery chemist, we didn't have a lot of high tech equipment in the lab, but I did have access to a lot of chemicals.  These books included a lot information not only on how to test for certain chemicals, but the chemistry of some basic reactions that don't get included in modern text books.  When I had the refinery job, the Internet wasn't the World Wide Web just yet, so these old books were the quickest way for me find ways to answer questions about what was going on in operations.  

Similarly My Guy's photo comes from his professional library. 

My Guy: The Classics

These are his physics undergraduate and graduate text books for the most part.  There are a couple of older classics that he has added to his collection over the years.  So these are probably not what you'd consider classics, but they are the go to texts for physicists.  My Guy doesn't have much reason to consult them these days, he pretty much functions as a weird mix of chemist and engineer.  He has used my stack of chemistry books more than once over his working years.  

As I said Grad Girl's oldest books are still here in her bookcase.  So she improvised.  

Grad Girl: Old is Relative

Now that she's mostly finished with school, Grad Girl spends her days applying for jobs and occasionally treats herself to some time out of the apartment for coffee and a good book.  That book came out last year, so it's not a new release.  For the purposes of our challenge that counts as old.  

My Guy and I took pretty much the same range of photos.  But then again how many ways are there to photograph old books?  

This week's challenge card is the last one in the deck. 

We should have some colorful photos for next week.  

Photo Play 2025: May Summary

May turned out to be a reasonable month on the photography front.  I took the camera out early in the month and then we were on vacation at the end of the month.  Nothing from my early in the month photography efforts made the cut to my curated list.  At least I have a few photos for the end of the month.  

The following photos were taken with either a Canon 70D DLSR with a Tamron 14-400 mm telephoto lens or an I-Phone 12.  Some photos have been cropped.  

The following three photos were all taken in Norman, OK when we stopped for lunch on our way to Texas.  These were all taken with the I-Phone. 

The first two "chalk" paintings were taken from one of the buildings. It's hard to ignore the brilliant colors in those.  The fish in bottles (do you see them, took me a bit to figure out what all the white "dashes" were), was on the side walk in front of the building.  I don't do a lot of graffiti photographs, but these were too good to pass up.  

This last trip to College Station we were going to have a lot of time on our own early in week since Grad Girl was preparing for her thesis defense. My Guy dearly loves to walk and hike. So I asked Google to find walking/hiking trails close by.  It came back with Lick Creek Park, which was about 20 minutes from where we were staying.  It had wonderful walking trails with lots of wildflowers and birds.  My bird shots didn't come out so well, but I did get a lot of wildflowers photos.  

The following photos taken with the Canon 70D with a Tamron 18-400mm lens. 

Blanket flower

Horace's Dustywing

Rock Rose 

The following photos taken with an I-Phone 12.

Green Lynx Spider on a Black Eyed Susan

Partridge Pea Flower

American Beauty

Bee on a Blanket Flower

Buttonbush

It's obvious that I enjoy wildflower photography as I certainly have a lot of photos this month.  There are some just good luck shots with the insects, those can be hard to catch no matter the camera you have with you.  I used the I-Phone a lot on close ups. The Tamron telephoto is a wonderfully versatile lens, but it does struggle with the extreme close ups I love to take.  Thankfully the I-Phone does pretty well at close range.  

How's June looking on the photography front?  I've picked up on the photography study a bit, so the cameras been out a bit more.  There is still more than half the month left to see what I can come up with.