Well, it has been a month and a week since I've last blogged. It was a good month. I promised myself I wouldn't do anything out of habit, not quilting, not blogging, not playing the violin, not running, not anything. I would do just the things I really felt like doing and there would be no guilt attached for anything left un-done. I was even going to quit blogging if I didn't feel like coming back to it. Well, I've come back to everything. It seems everything I was doing out of habit was things I really wanted to do. As many of these activities were on my life list of "things to do," I find my life list depleted. I need to start considering what to add to the list.

This past week I worked on number two in a series exploring the theme of realities. The idea behind the series is to capture the feeling of a person who is trying to understand the point of view of another when the other person's view of life is so very different from their own. In other words, it is the age old theme of two people who see the same thing VERY differently.

This was the first quilt. I haven't made friends with it and may not actually quilt it.



This is try two. I think it is a huge improvement but find there are some design lines that bother me. So I have fodder for the next in this series. I want to use my dyed fabrics as I've done here so I'll have to wait till may when we go to the cabin. That is where all my dye supplies are.



The first quilt and pattern was small and I decided that for the second quilt, I didn't want to fuss with small pieces. So this is the first time I've made an enlargement using the photo copy machine and tiling. I used my picture window to paste it all together before I traced a master onto freezer paper and then traced the pattern again in reverse to cut up and use on the fabric.



other stuff:

It has been cold, as you all know, in the midwest, down into the teens at night. This is very hard on my daffodils and I am very sad. Please oh please let all my other plants survive for most everything is up. . . . . .

This has been the week of doctors and dentists appointments all so we can get this done before we leave town. My physical was on monday. I've been good, not eating french fries for a month so my cholesterol levels would be low and I'd feel good. Immediatley following the appointment, I went to the Java House and bought a latte with whole milk, real caramel and real whip cream. Then I headed to the grocery store where I bought a bag of potato chips and two frozen pizzas along with a copy of Bon Apetite. . . . . . .

Time is marching along and my body is too. I now require more exercises on a regular basis to keep my back feeling good and I will have to add hip stretches to my routine. My eyes have joined the ranks of the ageing. I ordered my first pair of bi-focols, and not without a lot of fussing over the frames. I have this special internal torture I save for small decisions in my life and I sometimes bring others along for the ride. Big decisions are just not hard for me to make. The decision to change careers from accounting to photography took all of five minutes. The decision to quit my full time job as a photojournalist and give free-lance work a go also took only about five minutes. Ask me where I want to go to dinner or which frames to buy opr whether I should spend $7 on a magazine and I absolutely freeze. . . . . . So I'm picking out frames and I brought my husband along, the one who really doesn't care about fashion stuff and realizes the silliness of it all. Every time I said ok, I'll get these, I was only thinking out loud. I didn't REALLY mean it. And REALLY, he should have known. Anyway, he'd drift off and I'd find another pair of frames for him to look at. I realized I'd lost him when he stood at the entrance to the store staring off into the mall and he would no longer answer to his name. I should have tried calling him Walter Mitty, he just may answered.