So, where have I been?

I haven't really dropped off the face of the earth, honest. It's just that life kind of speeded up a bit around me and I had less free time to post.

The biggest reason for this is that work is finally actually giving me work to do. Most of my surfing and posting is done from my desk so less time to do that means less time to write blog posts. Still, it's a good thing as it means my job is a little less unstable. I'm also working out of a different base quite a bit which adds another 60 miles to my daily commute - it's not so bad as I get a mileage allowance for it and the travel time comes out of my working hours but it's still a contributing factor to me feeling much more tired than usual.

I have also been really busy on lots of sewing / quilting projects in a bid to get the pile of things lying around in our living room down to some kind of managable size. I've done lots but I still have three largish quilt tops to put together before I can declare myself free to start new projects. I have lots and lots and lots of bag patterns I want to play around with as well as many other small projects but I'm determined to get the big stuff finished first. Of course there's also my Baby Jane quilt which I need to focus on - I have only completed two blocks and the next ten (making the total 30) are already on their way to me so I need to get moving with them.

I've also come to realise that if I want to get on with Baby Jane and other sewing things I really do need to tweak my rotation schedule as there is no way I can do everything. To this end I have removed two items from every month between now and Christms - a week of stitching on a current 'small' wip and also the alphabet baubles. I'm hoping that this will free up enough time for me to get the 10 Baby Jane blocks done a month (although this month I have to more than double that number to get back on track).

Hopefully this will do the trick as I was starting to find that I didn't pick up my stitching as much just because of the fact that I couldn't give it the focus I wanted to.

Also this month saw Lia turn 4! I'm such a terrible mother that I didn't post on her birthday but I'm sure she'll forgive me. We had a BBQ for 45 family and friends on the weekend before her birthday and thankfully the sun was shining for us. I loved my house before the BBQ but I love it even more now that I managed to have 45 people around (including 14 kids) and it wasn't crowded or problematical in any way.

The second exciting event of this month was my weekend away with 17 other crafting friends. It's our third time away together and, as usual, we had a totally fantastic time. We stay at a set of farm cottages that has a conference room attached that is big enough for us to all fit comfortably in (which was great as this year, for the first time, we had torrential rain for most of the weekend).

I can honestly say that the only other times I have laughed so much are the two previous weekend GTGs. I returned on Monday evening absolutely knackered! Three days of laughing so hard breathing became a real issue really does take it out of one. When I tell people I go away every year with a bunch of cross stitchers, knitters and quilters they all think I'm mad and, if truth be told, that they can imagine nothing more boring. Well that couldn't be further from the truth - very little actual crafting gets done when you can't see the holes on your fabric because you're laughing so hard.

It's the funniest, rudest, most surreal weekend of my year and every time we go we think it can't get any better than the previous one but we manage it. Next years weekend has been booked...

So, it's now just four and a half weeks to our Devon holiday and then after that it's four weeks until our Greece holiday which marks the end of me working full time. In total I have 11.5 more full time working weeks, three of which I'll be on holiday.

I also have three quilting courses in Sep, Oct and Nov, a stitching GTG in Sep and Ally Pally in Oct to look forward to so the rest of this year is likely to fly by. I'm going to have to be careful about my spending too!

So, the long promise picures of WIPs and stuff will materialise soon, I promise. I shall be back into full blogging mode from now on. Honest.