Motivation and routines

I've been in a sewing funk all week long. Well, longer than a week actually. I put together a block for my quilt guild's blotto (block lottery) and I was really hoping I'd win (they draw two names). The purple color was the fabric every blotto person was given - very pretty to me. :)

Well, I didn't get my name drawn, but I did sign up for the next blotto, due November and it's a Dutch Windmill. Maybe I'll win then! ;)

I also put $2 towards the two raffle drawings. They have a raffle drawing every 3 months and it costs a dollar a ticket. You can buy as many tickets as you want. Raffle is just stuff people have donated - fabric, books, stencils, etc. My two tickets were #0909 and 0912. Well, the lady calls out "oh-nine, oh-nine." Wow! I won! I got about 6 yards of fabric, a book, a sewing kit, a bookmarker and some lace. :) At least I could go home to my husband I tell him that I won... just not what I expected. :P But that didn't put me out of my sewing funk.

I tried to force myself to work with the exciting handdyes that my mom and I had made - should be easy right, cuz all the strips are cut. I was gonna do a Double Irish Chain, but I goofed on the color placement and gave up. When you're feeling low about sewing in general, it's sooooo easy to give up.

At least I didn't let my goof up go to waste and came up with another plan for the little 4-patches I already sewed.

I sewed a bunch of big and little squares together... but it still didn't give me a go-go-go feeling.

I tried cleaning up my tables, ironing board and the floor in general. I didn't feel like it was THAT badly cluttered, but I've heard some people say that is what gets them going in their quilting rooms. I worked on a few more blocks with my newly cleared spot... but that didn't do that trick.

So tonight I was thinking "good grief... I've gotten more fabric, a new book, a clean sewing room, lots of precut fabric to play with... what's wrong with me?!" And then it hit me - I have been dreading to cut up fabric so I can sew with it. It seemed so painful and tedious to sit at my cutting mat and slice away fabric. Then I realized... my rotary cutter blade is dull. It needed a lot of pressure to cut cleanly, it had the most tiniest little chip that caused it to skip over one THREAD of fabric that was incredibly annoying. Heck, it tooks me weeks to find that chip.

Yup... a $1.50 blade was killing my desire to sew! (Scrounge around on eBay for great deals on blades). I immediately inserted a new blade in and was feeling so much better. I whipped out a pile of fabric that I've been wanting to cut and reached my goal an hour later. Wow, that felt great. :) So tomorrow I'm hoping to sit at my machine and merrily sew for a few more hours.

School has started this week - well, it started on Wednesday, but all teachers had to report in on Monday. I have manage to get myself out of bed, with contacts on at 8:30 every morning to watch Simply Quilts (also another ploy to get me in a quilty mood). It's a great way to start off the day though! :)

We've also been going to bed at 10pm, opposed to 2am or *cough*4am*cough*. That would be my husband. :D He's actually getting more sleep NOW than he was with his summer routine. But I really like this apartment, cuz if I get the desire to stay up later than he does... I can! We have DOORS now! I just gotta make sure I'm not too noisy. ;)

The only downside of my day is that I turned in my broken hearing aid almost 2 weeks ago and today I went to pick it up. It turns out that they don't actually repair the hearing aid, but swap it out with an exact model. I'm not clear if it's a NEW model or (more likely) a cleaned up/refitted model. But while it was sounding somewhat better than the problems I was having before... it wasn't as powerful as I was normally used to. Thankfully I persisted in my complaint that it wasn't powerful enough and the guy ran a test on the hearing aid in a special machine and found that indeed, the hearing aid wasn't up to the company's standards in power levels. So back the hearing aid goes. Cross your fingers that everything will be smooth when they call again. :/

But it's nice to be back home - I still miss my family and now the trip feels like it was months ago, instead of weeks ago - but I'm enjoying settling into a routine, cuz I get more accomplished! Heck, I even vacuumed the living room and bedroom today, which is a huge deal to me cuz I already vacuumed them once earlier this week. Yes... this is the same gal who would let 3 or 4 months go by in the old apartment before vacuuming. Housekeeping is easier when you have the space to do it! :)

Leah