Time to Redeploy a Planner

While my kids were still at school, Life was pretty busy, getting them to where they needed to be, running a business and entering quilt competitions but at least there was a schedule. These days, I don’t have many time commitments so I can please myself how much work I do. The trouble is that I make myself try to get too much done, all at once, so I hardly ever allow myself any down-time. I felt so harassed that I dug out a planner that I used to have in 2019 up until Life came to a grinding halt when Nella was ill. I don’t know whether keeping a planner again will help but I think it is good to see what can be done realistically when it is written on paper. The thing is – I do keep a notebook where everything I think of gets jotted down but it is a bit messy and difficult to see what are appointments in amongst the scribbles.

I have in fact got all sorts of things done work-wise but I have not brushed Nessie every day, gone swimming, caught up with friends or done any fun sewing! That is not a good balance between Life and Work…

The BIG job that I had to do this week was a custom red and white quilt. The blocks were too big on-point to quilt in one go so I decided to use triangle blocks instead. These had to be precision placed so everything would line up. I also had to fit in a border and corners, do stitch-in-the-ditch and a million one-inch circles. It all took almost 20 hours!

It was a relief to go from that to all-over basting a quilt that a customer wants to tackle herself with straight line walking foot quilting on her domestic machine. 

I had to finish making and photographing samples for my Zoom lecture for the Scottish branch of the QGBI next weekend. I also had to write instructions in case anyone wants to make the whole quilt. This involved working out fabric quantities which I did not do in advance when I made it;) Two slideshows will accompany my lecture; one of step-by-step photos of the construction process, the other showing the development of the original ”Help ma Boab!” quilt.

The other major task was to sort out all of the “Tech” that I plan to use for my lecture. I have a lot of Tech but I needed to round it all up, charge it up and work out how to place it. My plan is to have a laptop so I can speak directly to it and show slides but also a wireless mic so I can move around and 2 other cameras (with lights) at my cutting table and sewing machine! The Go-Pro cameras also need battery packs because they use up their batteries too quickly. Of course, it should all be straightforward but isn’t – despite having the correct cables the laptop would not pick up the mic I wanted to use so that took a lot of time faffing around until I found the solution. Afterwards I had a whole lot of reorganising to do. My plan is to practise on Tuesday so I can sort out any glitches.

I hope this week is less frenetic – I have even managed to write a meal plan to take out the stress of deciding what to cook at the last minute. One thing to be positive about is that we have now passed the darkest 10 weeks of the year and there are signs of Spring:)