ThreadNest

.
It is 1:30 in the afternoon. I've been awake since 3:30 AM. And Uncle Sam has been the cause of my sleeplessness. Because we own a small company, taxes (really the recordkeeping of the taxes) take a huge bite of my time. I do all of the quarterly payroll & sales tax for the company. At the end of the year, I roll it all up and send it to our accountant to do the year end returns. So, in the wee hours of the morning, I start churning about getting all of the paperwork, files, spreadsheets, etc. ready for the accountant. So downstairs I headed and began slogging through the work. I've been working steadily all morning...the result is pictured above. A whole year of my life is now in this Fed Ex envelope. Kind of depressing.

The good news is that it is done. I have a clean slate work-wise. I hope to get some quilt work completed now....but must have large cup of coffee first!

.
Here is my accomplishment for Saturday, when I volunteered at the museum...doing a machine quilting demo. With me were Cindy Garman (a fab hand-quilter) and Betty Jean (doing bobbin lacemaking). This is the poor quilt that was handquilted and then ripped out (see the January blog entry on "Junk Day". Nylon smoke thread on top and metrosene on the back. I drew the spine and kind of "winged it" on the feathers. A few feathers are a bit wonky, but this is practice and I don't care too much.

My goal is to get ready for the large quilt I'm making for the Museum to auction off. I don't do this kind of more heirloom-esque machine quilting often, so I need to get in the groove.

If you're heading to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Fest, be sure to stop by and see Amy at Brubaker's Sewing. Not only are these the nicest people around, but they are graciously selling my fabric at fabulous prices.

Here it is all ready to deliver to Brubaker's tomorrow. This also proves that exercise equipment is useful for many things!
.

.
I really thought we'd get through this winter without getting dumped on...
The house looks so cute in the snow...after spending three hours clearing the "driveway from hell". Winters can be very tough here.
.
Even the birds got a "lid" of snow.
.
Pets have the right idea. "Hmmm. I'll just stay inside and watch my humans bust their butts."
.
But the view off the back deck is beautiful and makes up for 11 inches of wet heavy snow. You can see the mountains outline through the trees.
.
Snow is good for some things!