Monday Meanderings

This morning I was out of the house early to meet up with Erik for breakfast. That alone would have made the trip worthwhile, but as long as I was already out, I ran a few errands. I bought 80 pounds of black oil sunflower seeds for my piggy birds. The Backyard Bird Shop is right next to the grocery store, and so I got the things on my current list. I was home by 11:00 a.m., started the laundry, and was ready to start hand-stitching the Sew Powerful piece before noon. To quote Jimmy Durante, Ha cha cha! I'm not exactly sure what he meant when he said that, but it popped into my head. You're welcome. And if you're not old enough to remember Jimmy Durante, I have two words for you: Shut up.

The piece is small, and so it took me only about an hour to completely hand sew the binding. I might have done it faster but for the cat on my lap. For him, it was a Herculean effort not to bite the tail of thread dangling so alluringly behind my needle. And here it is...all finished, and ready for hanging.

Here's how it looks from the back.

Once I had that done, I printed off the label and fused it to the back.

And there you have it: my first finish of 2015.

Then, I was kind of at loose ends. I wanted to keep sewing, but somehow my motivation was lacking. I decided to start on my doll quilt for January's swap. The optional theme for January's swap is "A Good Book". I'm sticking with the theme, and I already know what I'm doing. Once I got started on this, it went pretty fast, and the top is made now. It's an applique piece, and so it still needs top-stitching. Then I'll be able to finish it off and get it into the mail to my partner. I'm not sure if she reads my blog or not, so I can only give you a peek for now.

Any thoughts?

For Christmas, Mike gave me some waterproof headphones. Tomorrow I'm going to make my way back to the pool and try yet again to get an exercise routine established. If the headphones work, it might make the difference. I like swimming, but it's a hard workout to keep doing over time because it's so danged boring. The headphones work like this: I'm going to use an old iPhone...it no longer functions as a phone. I just use it for music and audio books now, although I can still get on the internet with it, which means I can also listen to podcasts. The phone goes into a waterproof pouch. There is an internal jack that plugs into the phone, and you seal it up inside the pouch. Then, you plug the waterproof headphones into the outside of the pouch and, with any luck, you can listen to music, or a book, or whatever.

The phone attaches to a lanyard that I'll put around my neck, and then stuff the phone into my swimsuit between my boobs. Sounds attractive, no? Fortunately, I go to the old people swim. I doubt anybody can see me let alone leer at me. And I'd have to say anybody leering at me would have to be off his or her rocker anyway, so what do I care? It does bring a picture to mind, though, doesn't it? So more on that later. I'm suffering with a stiff neck the last two days...probably in anticipation of going swimming. If it doesn't feel better tomorrow, I might have to postpone my start date. I would not consider this a tragedy. If I'm really lucky, I might postpone it until 2016.