Opening My “Too-Hard” Basket

When I worked in an accounting firm, one of my managers would show up about every two weeks with the fateful words “be in my office in 15 minutes and bring your too-hard basket with you”.   This particular basket held all of the little tasks that had been built up in my mind for so long that I simply couldn’t bring myself to attack them.   The sad truth to this scenario was that most of them could be finished in a very short time and I just needed the “push” to get to them.

This post is the opening of my current too-hard basket.   It has been almost FOUR months since I wrote a blog post and so much time has passed that I have had a hard time getting motivated to catch up.  But, just as in accounting, I know that writing the first post will unleash many posts to come……so, here goes……

The first week in March, just after my last post, I had a complete knee replacement.  Since this was done during the middle of income tax season, I was VERY busy trying to recover while keeping up with my work.  I had a wonderful Physical Therapist who worked hard to help me get my mobility back quickly.  She even used some “dry needling” to try to loosen up some of my muscles……

I quickly moved from using a walker, to a crutch and finally to a cane for a short time…..

Now, three months later, I am back in the gym five days a week and doing almost everything that I was doing before.  There is still some swelling and stiffness but overall I am happy with where it is now and I cant wait to see where it will be in 3 more months!!!

My reward for making it thru tax season was to attend a 4 day Quilt Guild Retreat.  The schedule was magnificent…..Sew,  Eat,   Sew,   Eat,   Sew,  Eat,   Sew,   Sleep….repeat as needed!!!   I spent the entire time working on a Christmas Pineapple quilt that I started several retreats ago and will probably not touch again until the retreat next April. 

In the last month my husband was out of town for 12 days and I spent a good amount of time in my studio working on several pieces which I will talk about in the next few days.  I will however show a Quilt of Valor that I strip pieced…..I used Bonnie Hunter’s “Basket Weave Strings” pattern as the idea for the quilt and did the paper piecing on blocks cut out of an old phone book.

The piecing was fun especially because I could just put the pedal down and sew as fast as I could go……

  The paper was also super easy to remove and the blocks went together perfectly.   And, as an even better perk, I really was able to clean out a bunch of my scraps.

To come, there are two challenges that I have worked on, another QOV, some great quilting time with my friend Claire and two new projects that I have just started having ideas about……..stay tuned.