Finished

When my sleep app and phone alarm went off, Chris was already up. I thought about staying in bed, but time was short. I got up for the usual morning routine. Chris asked me what I wanted on the grocery list. I listened to an episode while checking e-mail. But before it was over, I had to pause it to shower and dress for church. As I got out of the shower, Chris brought my phone over, saying a man was called about a party. I was about to ask him how many kids we were making quilts for and he said there would be 58 kids and they already had 35 quilts. I thanked him and hung up. I dashed off a note to Dinah asking how many quilts she had. But there wasn't time for a reply. I sliced up some cheese and put it in a bag with seed crackers. That went in the trunk, and I went to church.
I got there in time for the choir warm-up. Then I visited the fellowship hall where Aggie's Arts was selling necklaces, crosses, small bowls, and ornaments – all made of paper. It was a fundraiser for their organization. The cost was a donation. Having to choose what to buy and how much to pay for it was too much effort for me. I talked to Tim about counting the offering over the holidays. Then I went to the sanctuary and sat down.
Don was there, and I gave him the blank check he had put in the offering plate last week. Then I read my bulletin.
There were a lot of announcements before the service, so it got started late. It went well. The pastor talked about cooking a turkey at 500F. After the service, I promised Don I would see him next week. I talked to Ron about Stewardship. Then I headed out to Renegades.
I parked and brought in my sewing gear and food and gift bag. The ladies were still sewing and there was no room for me to set up. So I stood at the cutting table trimming blocks. Soon it was lunch time. We put out the food and got in line. Then we sat around 4 large tables and shared our meal. After the meal, there was a small break, during which I trimmed more blocks. Then we gathered at the tables again for the party games.
For the first game, we got a paper plate and a sharpie. We put the plates on our heads and drew elements of a picture as she described it. Then we looked at our pics. She had us grade it by certain criteria, like did the tree touch the floor? How many ornaments were actually on the tree? Was the star above the tree? Did the stocking touch the mantel?
Then she passed out paper and we had to write sewing lyrics to “These are a few of my favorite things”. We got points for mentioning certain things, most of which I didn't. There was an ugly Christmas hat contest. Since three of us didn't wear anything on our heads, we were appointed judges. It was tough. Finally we voted the leader's hat as the one we would least want to wear in public. Then we drew numbers and chose gift bags. Each one had two fat quarters in it. Since we weren't supposed to open them, the ones that got stolen were the best decorated.
Some people left after that. I set up a table with Lynette and sewed the trimmed blocks together. But before I finished, it was time to pack up. I ran the vacuum while others took out the trash and put up chairs. Then we all left.
When I got home, Chris was cooking beef and onion soup. The weather was so nice that I wanted to go for a walk, but did not have time. I set up stabilizer in the hoop, then realized it was too small and changed to the bigger hoop. Then the image came up sideways on the sewing machine screen. So I had to re-save it to the card with the background turned the other way. But then I couldn't move it around on the screen. So back to the computer. I saved in yet another format. Then I ironed the figure on the napkin to the stabilizer. I futzed with the machine to get the design centered on the image. There was more to it, but eventually I stitched out a heart shape around the figure, trimmed the rest of the fabric away, and satin-stitched around it, and embroidered the words. The satin-stitch was too narrow so I widened it on the second one. I took a break to eat soup and finished the episode. Then I played around with the second one and finally stitched it out. But it wasn't centered as well. Then Chris and I watched DS9 while I stitched the hearts to the blankets by hand. Chris thought the result looked really good. I hoped she wouldn't like it too much.
After TV and stitching, I retired to my laptop to type up my blog and swish. Then I took progesterone and went to bed.
* It takes a lot longer than it looks. *