I'll never keep up with my reading now

I emailed pictures to myself at work this morning so I could post during lunch. When I tried to bring up Blogger I discovered - to my horror! - that the new firewall installed over the weekend now blocks all "newsgroups and discussion lists", which includes all blogs. When you work for a financial institution you accept the fact that Internet restrictions will exist because the member database computer must be protected from viruses at all costs. This, however, seems a little extreme. Blogs aren't deemed to be "of business use" and are therefore blocked. During work sure - but lunch time?

Anyway - lunch is when I did most of my blog reading. Now it must be at home, and I'll have to choose between reading and sewing. A terrible dilemma? I'll still read all I can, but I'll have to be less generous with my comments. I hate to do that! Another reason for the fabric diet and a big push for retirement!

I'm back to typing with 10 fingers all of the time - thank goodness, as larg bandages result in terrible typos - and have only a small band-aid on my finger. I can now get it wet - no more showers with my hand in a plastic bag! I spent 2 1/2 hours cutting scraps last night and don't have that much to show for it. I keep telling myself lots and lots went into both the string and the crumb box. Also big square and rectangular hunks of leftover strip sets went into the orphan block drawer. That left the meager collection of squares, bricks and triangles you see here. The pile of ironed scraps doesn't look that big - but let me tell you - take your estimated time to cut your scraps and multiply it by a number between 5 and 10 to get the real number of hours it will take. I'm trying to do at least two, 15-minute sessions a day. One in the morning when I'm usually on the computer, and one while dinner is cooking before evening activities begin. Hopefully those short segments of time will result in a much smaller stack by the weekend - a stack I can easily finish by the end of the weekend to come.

In the pictures you see my string box (with the last bin of scraps hiding below it), my crumb box, my stack of pressed fabrics still to cut up, and my meager piles of cut shapes. I think it's a good thing the piles are so meager - there is next to no room left in any of my "shape boxes".

I'm dreaming of all the wonderful scrap quilts I'll piece once I'm finished with this cutting. The possibilities are almost endless. It's going to be so hard to choose - and so much fun choosing and stitching! I can hardly wait!

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Gratitudes:

1. A wonderful warm day of 65 degrees

2. An old friend from work has returned to work for us again

3. An excellent steak for dinner

4. New pictures of Sophie

5. New challenges at work

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