Advance or Retreat!?

My household has taken a dramatic turn!

I've gone from just me and the boys -- easy living, really.  There's the running, but we mostly foraged for food and went to our corners of the house:  Sam with his drums, Will with his video games, and I in my sewing room!!  So from me and the boys to me and the boys and the husband (home on Sunday)and the college age daughter (home on Wednesday) all home at the same time!!

Yesterday morning I was struck the by the CROWD!!
In my little sewing room, first one boy then the other came in.  Then Emily, then Jeff....FIVE people in my sewing room. Asking me stuff.  Needing or wanting my attention. All talking at the same time.  Wanting to be fed!!

Calgon take me away!!!!

Advance or retreat?  Too late.  I already retreated BEFORE they came! LOL  I spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday at a retreat center in Central KY far out in the country.  I live in the country! This was even further out in the country. And it was lovely!  The gals were such fun. Games, giveaways, stories, projects, food -- all the good stuff!

I mostly worked on one UFO -- my Thimbleberries Hometown Christmas -- and a new project, Spools, from Edyta Sitar's book, Friendship Strips and Scraps.

Autumn took some great photos of the different projects and quilts at the retreat and you can see them here.  I took photos while I was there, but hers were so much better than mine. So pop over and take a look!!

I came home from retreat on Saturday and picked Jeff up on Sunday.  Then Wednesday, we packed up Emily's dorm room at Asbury and headed south. 

It really is good to have the whole family under one roof again for the first time in over a year!

It will take a while to get back into our routine.  Jeff will return to his "real" job in a few weeks; he's an Agriculture Extension Agent for a local county through the University of KY Cooperative Extension Service.  He'll take some much needed R & R time at home, though. :-D  My sewing time may get curtailed a little! :-D

Emily is spending her summer home with the family, too.   In previous years she did summer missions work with a camp in Lafollette, TN, but this year the luxury of our family being together is one she's going to take advantage of.  Jeff says there is work enough here at home to keep her busy if she doesn't find a summer job locally.

So advance it is!
Into renovated routines.  Into postponed projects (UFO #9 - the Circuit Rider and another recently  "discovered" (that's what I get for cleaning out the closet! :-D)  UFO, Star Sprinkles from Adkinson Designs).

Into the haven of home!

I am so very, very, blessed!

Psalm 13: 5-6
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD,
for he has been good to me.

Blessings!

Blockhead

This time of year my son, Will, is immersed in Charlie Brown world!! He loves all the Peanuts' holiday classics, and he watches them over and over.  While Will watches the dvd's in my sewing room, I've been busy throwing blocks up on the design wall -- trying to make a decision about which UFO is next!!

Judy over at Patchwork Times has issued a UFO Challenge for 2011. And as I try to decide what 12 projects go to the head of the line, I hear echos of Lucy van Pelt in my head:

I think I have an obsession with making blocks.  I store them on skirt hangers and put them on pegs on the wall to keep them in front of me -- seeing them everyday is supposed  to motivate me to take the final step and set them up in a quilt top.  Not my most effective plan to date. Sigh.

Let's see...

There are my Victory Quilt blocks, Quilt in a Day's 1940's sampler. 18 blocks completed in lovely patriotic colors, mostly Thimbleberries fabrics (I thought that would be interesting -- to make a QinaD pattern with TB fabrics :-D).  The pattern calls for sashing and cornerstones and a cool "ribbons" border....I have the fabric. I have the tools.  I've let this thing hang on a peg for two years or more.

There are my Biblical Blocks. A great group of gals and I did these at Paula's Quilting Pantry with a Bible study that corresponded with each block.  We met every other week for several months, then weather and circumstances had me calling a halt to the class.  We finished 19 of the 32 blocks in the book by Rosemary Makhan...and I pulled another ten patterns from other sources (for those who didn't want to attempt the harder blocks) and there are a couple of those hanging on the peg with the others.  Three years....? Maybe more.  It's languished for a while.

There is Hometown Christmas.  It's a little newer on the UFO list -- only 18 months or so.  The pattern is a little older than that, but I collected the fabrics I wanted to use in it over time, and finally started it last year.  I have 9 of the twelve sections completed on it.  The other 3 are cut and ready to sew.  It, like the others, got pushed to the back burner for whatever interesting thing or class idea or deadline took my fancy.

And there are still others on my pegs (and in boxes, and drawers and bags and closets)....

 

Paul writes in Colossians 4:17, "Tell Archippus: 'See to it that you complete the work you have received in the Lord.'" (NIV)

Traditionally, Archippus is thought to have been a pastor at the church in Laodicea -- the one that the Lord said was "neither hot nor cold" (Rev. 3: 15) -- the church that kicked back, was self-satisfied, in need of nothing, whom God challenged, "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline" (v. 19).

As I look around my sewing room I see that I, too, am "in need of nothing."  It's easy to become a "blockhead," satisfied with the status quo...going along and getting along, while needful things languish like projects on pegs. 

The Lord's admonition to the church at Laodicea is to exchange the illusion of good living for more difficult -- and more lasting! -- things.  "I counsel you," the Lord says, "to buy from me gold refined in the fire so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness, and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see." (Rev. 3:18 NIV)

I'll be joining Judy's UFO Challenge.  It's too easy to get caught up in the latest excitement and to ignore those things that need our attention, that have been let go for too long.  (And I ain't just talkin' about quilts! :-)  If I complete the work I have received from Him, as he told Archippus to do, I can look forward to the greatest of all compliments to a believer (or a quilter!):

"Well done, good and faithful servant!"

Blessings!