The Zodiac Quilter

 Happy longest night of the year to everyone. Snuggle up! The days get longer from hereon in.

Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. So long, perhaps, that I was afraid that I might forget how to do this!

The fact that my computer is dying doesn’t help me. However, we’ll forge ahead.

I may have been absent from my blog, but life hasn’t slowed down. Being retired only means that I no longer have an income. Good thing that I built up my stash while I was working. The above picture is Rusty (of course) making himself a nest in a very small part of my fabric collection – the part that covers the dining room table. I’m very bad, I know. I’m trying to use it up as fast as I can, but it doesn’t seem to make a dent in it.

In my spare time from my retirement activities (which I’ll tell you about one of these days), I’ve been making bags – more bags. I found this pattern from Around the Bobbin for The Annalise Bag over the summer while I was visiting my brother and his wife on Vancouver Island. It looked like it would be fun  to make, and it was! I made a practice bag – the orange one – before I made one for my sister-in-law, and I was very happy with the way they went together. I added a couple of pockets for my SIL’s bag, and included this little zipper pull that used to be an earring. The bags have given me the opportunity to use up lots of heavy duty “upholstery” fabric that I buy as cheap remnants. I used linen for the lining of her bag. I also made my very first yoyo as an embellishment for the front of the bag, and attached it with a metal “brad” – the circle has two metal prongs on the back that split in opposite directions.

I was happy with the first two I made, so I did two more. That was, as you can see from the photos, over the summer. Since then I’ve wandered on to some different   bag patterns. I was hoping to move onto some baby quilts and other “flat” pieces by now, but finding the time to commit to them is still hard to come by. In the past three weeks alone, I organized one indoor market and one Christmas concert, was involved in three more concerts, and spent today tromping around town looking for birds for our annual Christmas Bird Count. That was in addition to several other activities I was involved in as a town councillor, as I was elected to the municipal council back in June.

Like I said, life hasn’t slowed down any. And I don’t really want it to, either. It’s slowed down enough that Rusty and Ginger get a lot more lap time, and I have a bit more time to work in the yard in the summer. I actually got my vegetables planted on time this year, and planted flowers as well! It was a nice feeling. I’m hoping that I’ll get back into the habit of blogging as well. It’s not like I have nothing to blog about! Just as long as my computer keeps working.

Until next time,