I have to say we have another weekend of dreary weather coming after a few days of sunny weather. Yes, we may get a little snow tomorrow. I went out to the garden yesterday to check on the flower beds and the poppy and iris are starting to come up. There is a little sign of the garden waking up and I will be out in a few weeks’ time doing a bit of cleaning up and clearing out the leaves. I always look forward to spending time in the garden in spring. Once summer hits, it does its thing without me, lol. I do need to do the annual thinning of perennials and waiting to see what didn’t make it over the winter. The areas of the garden where we changed the shape of it and relocated plants a couple of years ago is really filling in and this is the year it is going to look really good. Still hoping we can get some clover planted in the lawn this year to convert it over from grass.

I decided that I am really focusing on the slow and incremental changes of completing goals vs the way I used to do the which was to just work really hard on making it happen on one sitting. Like cleaning out an entire room in one weekend of all its clutter, clean it and redecorate it. Now I am happy I sent two boxes of kitchen glasses to Goodwill, I have started to poke through another space of the house and threw out a trash bag of old bills and papers. I am not thrilled that I have become the tortoise in the story of the tortoise and the hare however, it is working. Incremental change done consistently produces results vs constantly rushing about doing things does not make change that lasts. And with all of that change I hit the goal of losing 10 pounds and have been doing 10 min exercising more often.

I am still working on my first slow stitching project, and I am not rushing it. I really enjoy the process of not having any preconceived ideas of how it will turn out and letting it evolve as I work on it each night. I am going to add more colors to the embellishments after I finish doing the base of pink floss embellishment stitching. I did sew a rice bag on my sewing machine last week to keep the slow stitching in. I want to wind my strips as little scrolls on wooden spools and keep them in the bag.

I have been following K3N Clothtales on YouTube and that is where I saw this project. I was inspired by her meditation scrolls and the Japanese rice bag to store them in. She hand stitches everything. I love sewing on my machine so I plan to add a few hand stitched embellishments to the bag over time. But I had to read a little more on what the Japanese rice bags were and this is what I found: Komebukuro bags were often used in Japanese culture to carry rice as offerings to temples and shrines during festivals and ceremonies.

I have also sewn part of my St Paddy’s Day quilt for wall display. I am not sure if it is done yet. I will think on it.

The clover blocks are 5 inches …. should it be bigger, what do you think?

Vicki