Saturdays are busy

Yesterday, I spent quite a few hours in town at the store.  First, I helped  unpack some new orders, and then we had a staff sewing get together--all the 8 staff that work in the front of the shop, plus me were there.    
During our sewing party, we talked a bit about working the shop on Saturdays.  It is a busy day.  Weekdays have their own rhythm, with deliveries, phone calls, a lot of regulars stopping in, and some flurries of activity during the day, often around lunch hour.  Saturdays are often strikingly different.  Often they can be hectic, even with 3 or 4 staff working to help people.  The twice-monthly Saturday block pick-up days can be very busy, but often the same people come at the same time, so there can be quite a bit of socializing.  Sometimes a group of 4 or 5 will come in together, either coming from breakfast, or before going for coffee.   No deliveries, but lots of quilts being planned out.  Sometimes it is busy all day, sometimes a real rush at 4 or 4:30.  By 5:30 you can be very tired out! 

 Do you see that box of envelopes on the table? It was so much fun to open the box and find it.  It is a selection of Hot Iron Transfers for embroidery.  There are 20 dozen, which is 240 of them, and almost all are different!  We all had to pick out some favorites to take home.  (At less than $2 each it was easy)

After 5 years of working nearly every Saturday, I decided to spend Saturdays at home.  But Saturdays at home can be busy too. 

So far today, I have pin-basted two lap size quilts, sewn on some borders, browsed through some books to get some ideas for a new quilt using large scale prints, baked some home-made granola bars, started reading a novel by Laurie R. King, got caught up on Facebook, admired the sunshine, played with my camera and the collage creating features of Picasa, and watched some Olympic skiing on t.v...

I recently purchase this little toiletry pouch made by Fossil.  It is a great size and shape, I was thinking of trying to make one similar to it out of felt and one of the fun-colored zippers I picked up recently a year or two ago. Maybe later.. michelle

Filling the Forms

Several years ago while working as a potter, I read the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.  Or perhaps it was another book by her.  She was talking about how to keep being productive when you're self-employed, or how to keep producing things if you're a writer, or artist or something else.  One of the points she raises in this book has always stuck with me.  She called it Filling in the forms.  Basically, you have to show up for work every day and just stick it out even when it's not too exciting.  That's what today has been like.  I've been plodding away for 7 hours now without a whole lot to show for it.  And I'm not done yet.  Some days I end up with a beautiful finished object, and other days I just have more numbers filled in onto pages.
 
However, Yesterday I had an exciting afternoon! I had quite a large gift card from Christmas that I was thinking about using for a camera.  So I went to London Drugs and just asked the salesman in the photo section about what camera he would recommend as the best buy for the money.  It was quite interesting to go camera shopping and ask questions about it.

I used to be quite interested in photography, and remember clearly the day when I purchased my first SLR Pentax K1000 at Rexall Drugs in 1980.   When I tried out the camera in the store, I took a photo and there was that great scraping sound as the shutter opened and closed. What a difference from the little digital camera I've been using!  That sold me on it.  I also got a little tripod.  Left the store very happy and bought a latte to celebrate.
Now, I need to learn how to use it. 

Michelle