And summer begins

My last obligation (to this semester's classes, at least) ended on Saturday. (I already submitted my grades; I remember the semester the system went down on the day they were due and the consternation that caused.)

I do have a meeting with my research student tomorrow, to work on the write up of our initial results, and I am going to push myself to start an "at least one hour on class prep for the new class" project.

I may set up a variant of the Pomodoro Method, which a lot of academics use (because there are distractions, work can expand to fill the time allotted, and you need to stand up and stretch from time to time). However, I KNOW that sitting there to wait for the timer to ring would make me tense (I wonder if there are timers that play something nice, not like a ringing bell, but maybe a little melody? That would be less agonizing). But I will need to be disciplined to get this done.

(There's an online app called TomatoTimer that you can set to different sounds; the gentlest is the "ding" like elevator doors getting ready to open. I wonder if I could hear that over music on Pandora....I might try that out at work.)

***
As it turned out, I did not have Homebound Visitation today: one person was visiting his son, one couple had their kids in town, and of the third couple, the man has gone back to the rehab center for more PT....so they were all 'good' reasons why they didn't want a visit. But that saved me the afternoon, which was a relief.

Also, an interesting thing, that makes me think differently about service and asking people to do stuff (and makes me wonder if maybe I'm trying to do too much): I was on the Nominating Committee and was charged with calling one of the women (a new-ish member; she was a member years back, moved away for a while, is now back) to ask her to be a deaconess. I kind of dreaded the call: I know she is busy, I hate asking people to do stuff. But when I called her she accepted right away and thanked me. Today in church she came up, crying a little, and hugged me and thanked me for thinking of her and offering her the responsibility. Which was a surprise to me...most things I'd be asked to do, my reaction would be, "Oh man, another thing to fit into my life....but I guess I should say yes because they wouldn't ask me if they didn't think I could do it" and it strikes me that someone was actually WAITING to be asked to do something and was moved to be asked.

I don't know. It was sort of humbling to me because so often I think of my responsibilities as sort of a burden on my time, even as I know it's important to help out....

***
So anyway, I got some sewing done this afternoon. I have all but the last two rows of the current quilt top done and sewn together. I'm pretty happy with how it's coming out; the idea of sorting the blocks by color (or one could do pattern, I suppose) and then making a grid on paper seems to work just as well as doing the agonizing "lay it out on the floor and move blocks around" process.

It might not work for all quilts but it will work for some and it means I'm a lot more likely to FINISH something than to do the blocks and then tuck them away for when I can get to a big open expanse of floor to lay the quilt out. (And also: no crawling around on the floor)

I also started planning the "birb" quilt - pulled out and ironed off the fabric and measured it.

The pattern, in the size ("throw size" - like about 48" by 56") calls for 2 1/2 yards of the colorful fabric.

Turns out I have 2 yards of the "birb" fabric. Womp womp.

So I dug like mad in the stash, half-hoping this was one of the ones where I bought two chunks at different times. Nope, or if I did, it's not in any of my typical storage places. I did find a piece of it (not quite a half-yard) in a different colorway (black background rather than the dark peach of the fabric I wanted to use). But then I found a totally different fabric, sort of deco-y circles on a plain background and in the colors used in the "birb" fabric. That will work better, and I don't have it designated for anything, so it would be a good fill in.

So I guess I do a quilt with two pattern fabrics instead of just one (The alternate is to make a smaller quilt, but the next size down is a "crib" size, which is small enough to not be that useful to me, and would leave me with a lot of fabric leftover). The original quilt is 17 full blocks and 14 half-blocks; I am hoping if I do three blocks out of the alternate fabric I will have enough of the main fabric to get all the rest. (Most quilt patterns have a little slop-over in the fabric amounts; sometimes as much as a third of a yard).

So it'll be "Birb and Orb" instead of just "birb," I guess.

***
After that I decided to go and do some brushcutting just because. I got rid of a lot of stuff but there is still more to be cut. (Again: if I can be disciplined this summer and maybe spend an hour a day a couple times a week, I can finally whip the yard into shape).