What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I love all your comments about being busy in retirement! I will always be busy, but I guess my point is that I see retired people constantly signing up for commitments. They head up a committee, take tons of classes, or make themselves accountable to SOMETHING or SOMEONE, and that accountability fills their day. It's almost like working again. 

You need to be busy, but if you decide to take a day off from quilting, who will care? I want to be busy, but free of deadlines and headaches! And being accountable to others. While I still have responsibilities ...

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who believes that if you fill your retirement with busyness, it's not right! WAIT --- I get it -- it's your retirement, and you can do whatever makes you happy, but why would you want to be filling the days with running around and not have time for spontaneous stuff? Nope --- I will not let that happen to me. 

And I stand corrected, the movie with the book communication is called Interstellar! Thanks for the correction!

Speaking of free time, I sometimes have to double-check my calendar to make ...

There are no coincidences -- things happen for a reason! I hope you watched the movie! It's kind of freaky when stuff like that happens. Is there a parallel universe? Are you in the past or future, trying to send messages to yourself? It reminds me of that movie about space, but one of the characters was trying to get a message to their family through a room of books. Or something like that. Hmmm -- I think the movie is called Contact. 

Well, I have to say that I am thoroughly enjoying all this FREE time! Yep --- I'm not ...

FOCUS --- it's a tricky thing! But I have my visual list and my blue UFO bin, and I refuse to let anything get in the way of finishing those projects. Oh -- there are loads of things to do, but I know I can't do them all, so I picked a few, and that's my goal! It has taken me a very long time to get to that point, but I refuse to get sidetracked!

Just a teaser: this is the project Dede and I worked on. Wait—soon you'll get to see it yourself. Absolutely stunning ...

I won't bore you with the details, but I LOVE cleaning up the digital mess. In a way, it's the same deal as with a physical mess. The task is daunting, and you have no idea where to start. But once you make a plan, then it starts to fall into place. I find I'm spending a little more time than I have at the moment on this task. It's therapeutic and FUN!!! OK - I must be mad!

I can see there's a lot more work ahead of me. Duplicate and triplicate files, stuff in ...

Regarding my parents' anniversary (72 years), my Dad is 92, and my Mom is 90. Married young! 

I have to tell you a story about my Dad. For the most part, he has been getting around pretty well - no cane, a replaced hip, and a knee, but lots of aches and pains - darn arthritis. And he still drives himself to "work" (the Museum), where he volunteers rebuilding stationary engines. If he can't find the part, he makes it. I see him slowing down and often does the supervising rather than the work, certainly anything heavy. 

Before Christmas, he started ...

Well, I'm determined to make those visual TO DOs happen this year, and one of them is a dosey - cleaning up my digital machine embroidery files. 

Since I only needed to keep an ear open to what was being said in the meeting yesterday, I sat in the back of the room, and I focused on cutting and pasting FILES! All I can say is that over time, I have created a massive mess. I had files scattered across multiple USB drives, external hard drives, online locations, and the internal hard drives of multiple computers. It was a digital ...

Yep --- I'm a believer in the scale as well for keeping weight under control! I check at the gym twice a week. But in all fairness to myself, I don't really need to lose weight—OK—10 pounds would be amazing, but I want to tone up, and that is measured by BMI!!! 

It doesn't matter what measurement type you use, but sadly, we need to keep on top of it! As we age, our metabolism slows, so we have to be even more diligent. 

I don't let pain stop me from walking. There are days ...

 Oh shoot -- I forgot to post these other empty things from the previous day! I emptied TWO bobbins from my machine embroidery project!

Two empty bobbins

Yeah! It's always exciting when you actually use/finish up things that you have. No -- it doesn't mean I can buy more as I do not need more. I have loads of bobbin thread. 

As for that digital sorting? I'm making progress. While I'm good at creating file structures, I'm equally as bad at randomly loading files in the root directory for convenience. So, I went through my OneDrive ...

 AHA  - a helpful observation in the comments about my scrap quilts. I do not appear to be an "anything goes" scrap quilter! And for the most part, that is 100% true. I like to curate my colors, I don't mind mixing several colors together, but I've found that throwing all colors into one quilt can make it look - well, scrappy! But coordinating the colors makes it more cohesive. I guess it depends on which style you like. 

So -- I think I will sort by the scrap size I cut and then sub-sort by color -- or at least keep ...