Giving thanks

It was a wonderfully productive holiday weekend. My friend Pat, who beat me to the punch and posted pictures of all we accomplished, came out for Thanksgiving. I have since decided it is the most perfect weekend to really be productive. I had some of the cooking tasks already done, and Thursday morning I put the turkey in. It roasted and filled the house with aromas while also providing much needed heat. Our unseasonably warm weather had come to an end.

My sewing room is a 12X24 ft. room attached to a detached garage. An 8 ft. baseboard heater is usually sufficient to get going until the south facing slider door starts the solar gain process. Unfortunately winter decided to descend upon us with gray skies and much cooler temperatures. My electrician husband split one of the outlets so that we could borrow the garage circuit to plug in another electric (fan)heater, and after we got going enough to generate some body heat it was enough. In the future that room will have a gas heater that used to be in the house, but we're trying to get more of the house done before running the gas out there, and some of the "stuff" that's out there needs to move back into the house to create space for the gas heater.

To say we were productive is an understatement. Thanks to Pat's already finished blocks, we were able to put together 11 quilts. There is only 1 left to finish quilting, and one that Pat is putting in her quilt bank is just a top since it's easier for her to store it that way. I feel privileged to hand off these quilts to my daughter's pediatric endocrinologist to give to newly diagnosed juvenile diabetics. Just a bit of thanks for the wonderful care we have received since we've been going to her. Lindsay, at 22, is past the pediatric doctor stage, but Dr. K. wants to keep her at least until she's graduated from college, and we're all cool with that. This picture is from this summer when we gave her the first of the kitty quilts! Pat is a prolific piecer and fortunately she is my generous friend.
After we ate our big meal, we were able to just sew and sew the whole weekend and graze on all the leftovers. I did make a Minnesota style wild rice soup with some of the leftover turkey, but other than that we just heated the leftovers. Luckily we all like and eat leftovers. There was not much cooking done after Thursday, and we weren't standing in check-out lines or otherwise fighting the crowds of holiday shoppers. I think I'd like to make this a tradition.

Albuquerque Friday

It's going to be a long day away from home. I'm due for my two-week post-op check. Won't they be surprised that I don't have any sutures for them to take out. Since reading that 8-10 days was the norm I decided to take them out myself, and sure glad I didn't have them poking and pulling for any longer.

I didn't post yesterday, but did have a somewhat productive day in my sewing room. I'm working on a piece to cover foam insulation that we use at night to put in our bedroom window. It was a necessity when we had the old single pane windows, but we find it helps keep the house temperature more stable if we still use it. Maybe tomorrow I'll have made enough progress on it to post a picture.

The weather continues to shift towards winter and more normal temps rather than the unseasonable warm temps we'd been having.

And a picture because a post seems so sparse without a photo. We stopped at a beautifully desert landscaped rest area after a camping trip in the Gila Wilderness area. There were so many bunnies hiding and moving around the cacti. I don't know how they do it.

Slow progress

Well, I knew recovery wasn't linear and only in an up(beat) direction. So I have a day of progress, and a couple of days of stagnating. I'm glad I didn't create a traffic jam for all the people beating a path to my blog for the PIF challenge. ;-)

For lack of anything better to post about, I'll include a picture of all the postcards I got from the Dia de los Muertos postcard swap that I hosted on About.com. It was a lot of fun, and it's great to get such a variety of creativity. I can also post the cards I made for the swap now that it's over. There was much discussion about postage rates, and I mailed all of mine for the postcard rate, which the postmistress of our little post office thinks falls within the guidelines.

It was windy with a cold wind blowing from the east all day today. Still our days are warm and sunny and we haven't used the heat except for a few days when it got down to 15. I think winter will eventually catch up to us. I hope by then to be more productive...Christmas is just around the corner.

Pay it Forward Challenge

I was lucky enough to be in on Sophie's Pay it Forward Challenge, and so here I am posting my own.

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet–though my intention is to make something for you that you will know to be useful or believe to be beautiful–and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

I love making things, and I think they will probably all be different since I keep wanting to try different techniques. I know my blog doesn't exactly have a huge (ha!) readership, and so I'm sending out a notice to certain people (that I would love to make something for)to let them know that I've posted this.

Well, this makes two posts in two days. I wonder if I can keep this up for the rest of the month! I should strive for it, since I don't seem to very productive in anything else.

Another month...

The days just seem to pass, one after the other. I love reading so many blogs and feel like I know some of these people, and envy their easy, frequent writing styles. I have to push myself to add another blog post. I thought about joining NaBloPoMo, but I really didn't think I'd pull it off. I think the only time I blogged regularly was when I was participating, along with other quilters on the About.com forum in The Artist's Way exercises. That kicked off the blog, and then I just let it fall by the wayside.

So now I'm recovering from arthroscopy of my knee, and have all this rather unproductive time, but still have to push myself to blog. I guess having two close friends that I email daily leaves little else that I feel the need to write about.

Our house remodel and renovation is coming along, with little participation from me. My husband, who I've recently started calling, the keeper, since it was pointed out to me that he was "a keeper," is the one who makes the changes happen. He is nearing the completion of an added three-quarter bath to our little abode. He works day after day, and the changes keep accumulating, all I have to do is feed him! I need to follow his example more, and plow along and make progress with my quilting. I've committed to make the girls a quilt each for Christmas. One is ready to be quilted on the long-arm, and the other hasn't been started, still an ever changing vision that comes and goes from my head! And my mind is a bit addled with pain medication!