puck:

A big part of it is that I have my own sewing room where I can leave everything set up and ready to go. So I can cut everything I need at one time, and leave it stacked up, and then sew for a while when I feel like it. Those 15 blocks represent two Sunday afternoon's worth of sewing, several hours at a shot.

Before I had a sewing room (when I lived in small apartments or when I lived with my folks when I was in grad school) and I had to set up and take down the machine, and put everything away in boxes, each time I started and stopped sewing, I didn't get as much done.

I think the other part of it is, once the cutting is done, the piecing of this quilt is fast. I didn't bother to do the lay-it-all-out-on-the-floor-and-crawl-around-changing-things. I just grabbed two pieces of fabric, and a piece of sashing, and sewed, and kept my fingers crossed that when I got to the bottom of the pile, I'd not have two of the same kind of fabric left that I'd have to sew together.

It also helps that I like piecing. There's a sort of meditative quality to sitting at the sewing machine: it takes attention but not too much attention. You can see the progress you're making. It puts my brain in a good place.

I also did the cutting on this with a rotary cutter. I didn't like to use one; it felt like I was wasting fabric. But a lot of the rotary-cutter-specific patterns are designed to make best use of the fabric (i.e., not waste any). And it's a lot faster (and easier on my hands) than tracing the shapes and then cutting with scissors.

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another thing I'm thinking about for another time: last night I happened to see an ad from Half-Price Books where they were talking about combating "Aliteracy." Yes, aliteracy. Not "illiteracy." Aliteracy being that people know how to read but choose not to.

That struck me, because I've never seen a PSA (this was really more of a PSA than an ad; Half-Price didn't mention their affiliation until the very end) like that.

And I realize, there are some people who simply do not like to read, or some for whom reading is unpleasant because of eye conditions or learning disabilities. But for me, reading is such a big huge part of my life that it's kind of hard for me to think of choosing not to read.

I suppose someone somewhere will come out with a snark against the ad, reminding people that "it's a free country and we can choose not to read if we want to! Gosh!"

But then again. There's so much that reading can do, and so many different "uses" of it...I'll have to write some time about some of the different times and places I read. From one of the greatest simple pleasures I know (getting into a bath with either bubbles or aromatic bath salts and a paperback mystery) to reading-to-feel-less-alone-in-the-world.