This has been an interesting week of all kinds of strange and unusual things happening around here. The weather has been sunny and raining to windy and snowy! Overall, we are losing snow and hopefully we will be walking on bare ground soon! The sun has risen today and I am hoping it stays all day melting what is left of the snow on my flower beds. It feels like winter will never end some weeks in April but all the signs of spring arriving soon are here.

We have finches at the feeder and they are often singing about spring!

I have been healing up. I have had a cold for a couple of weeks and the cough will wreck you. I understand that the cough lingers for a month. I have also pulled my Achilles in both legs. What catastrophic event happened you may ask? I decided to do some exercises on the floor and get up. It was the getting up that felt the pull and I have been limping since. I have been getting therapies on the legs to heal them up quickly because in a week our vacation begins and that includes 3 days at the AQS Paducah quilt show! It’s going to be a dream vacation and I am going everything I can to heal up this body to go comfortably! I even signed up for a class on Slow stitching, that sure fits the theme of the week! Here is a video about the instructor, I had no idea who was teaching the class but the course description was right up my alley, fabric collage journal !

reel about the instructor: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18a7fJHfrb

What the cold and sore legs have taught me is that things change, heal and progress in very slow increments. Projects are done in micro movements on the scale in the year 2026 for me and by doing a few stitches in about 15 to 30 min. a day, Occasionally longer. I have seen so much progress on my cross stitch that I am nearly done! All completed in a few min most days!

I forgot to take pics but I went to quilt guild and sewed 9 placemats from orphan blocks. Our guild donates the placemats to Meals on Wheels for the holiday meals. That way each person has a placemat for a special place setting for their holiday meal.

I have learned that slowly, steadily things make progress. Sometimes slower than in years past and sometimes slower because of illness or injury. I am still making progress as I move slowly toward the goal! Took me the last few weeks to realize this simple, but important lesson.

For example, when I had a day of panic that I would need a scooter to navigate the quilt show I said to myself, ok this isn’t ideal but maybe I can walk one day and use a scooter the rest of the days. Then when I realized I had options, my legs started to feel better, and I have hope that I won’t need a scooter to attend the quilt show of my dreams.

When I thought my cold wasn’t going to ever heal enough to let me sleep a few hours, I was able to start sleeping several hours at a time then all night. It was a few days, just felt like forever. Today, I feel like I have turned the corner finally, and I will be myself soon!

When I got frustrated that I “wasn’t getting anything done”, I went to quilt guild and knocked out my donation goal in a day. Such amazing progress! I took a class on applique last weekend, I didn’t get to rush through the process of gluing down because I was going slow. I got home make a few decisions on changing the background, making design changes and then I started to see the hope that I learned something. I felt better about the project and now I need to practice the applique tips the teacher talked about. I also watched about 30 YouTube videos on raw edge applique and saw all of the possibilities to try out on my class project.

I am realizing that I love the energy of a fresh start and all of the buzz you get from it. But the messy middle is where I can get bogged down and if i just keep making the tiny move forward things suddenly become better, changed and morphing into a final projects and a finish! Or in the example of my physical illness and injury, time, a little work on healing and healthy interventions things got better.

There is a huge rush of feel good dopamine in the brain when these finishes occur or hge strides are made and it is harder to get that energy vs a fresh start but it is worth it. I am trying to look at each segment of a project or process as a fresh start vs getting bogged down in the middle and letting it languish there until it is done! I mean come on nothing lasts forever as my primitive brain says, “this is never gonna get done” or the classic “who’s idea was this?”

Have a great weekend and may the sun shine upon you,

Vicki

I was reminded that the current mission of Artemis II was 53+ years in the making yet the astronauts saw the far side of the moon and safely returned home