productivity

When Everything Old is New Again

Martha
productivity

Well, I’m closing in on two years of posting on this blog almost every single week, and you, my dear readers, have been keeping up with me every step of the way. I am finding myself starting to repeat ideas for topics in my blog posts and it got me to thinking.

I seem to circle around to things in my quilting too. I will figure out a tip or technique and use it for a while on a quilt, then when that project is done, that technique gets set aside too. When the next project surfaces that needs that technique, I feel like I am discovering something new all over again. Maybe that’s one reason that after 30 some years, I am still quilting and still enjoying the process. I don’t ever feel like I’ve learned all there is to learn.

I’ve had a number of people assume that because I lecture and teach, I don’t take classes and I’m not learning new stuff and oh my but that’s far from the truth. I always get a nugget of wisdom out of taking a class, no matter how long I’ve been doing this. There is always something new to learn or at the very least, something old to relearn.

Henry Ford is quoted as saying “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty” and I really do believe that. I also believe that learning is the best mental exercise for keeping the brain in shape too. A brain that doesn’t have to learn, doesn’t have to keep growing.

So, dear reader, please forgive me and indulge me a little if the topics on this blog reappear from time to time; I promise I will write a whole new post, perhaps with a slightly different perspective on the same topic. Sometimes when things happen they are just too good not to share, even if I have talked about it before. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a couple of new readers too who won’t have seen the previous post.

The Power of Habits

Martha
Life, productivity

Habits are an interesting beast. They sneak up on us over time. With many habits, we don’t consciously set out to make them, they just happen. As the days pass and as we go about our lives, we set patterns. Like anything in life, habits can become either a force for good or a force for bad, it’s up to us to decide. I think we are all familiar with how difficult it is to change a bad habit.

I read an interesting book last year called Habit Stacking by S. J. Scott. It puts forward the premise that you can build on existing good habits by adding little things to existing routines. You evaluate how you do things, then you start adding to those existing patterns. I’ve tried this method and have had some moderate success in making changes.

The last five months, I’ve been putting down some serious habits. Habits about being at home all the time. Habits about having my weekends not eaten up by outside commitments. I didn’t realize how powerful those habits were becoming. This past week, I drove to Albuquerque to clean out my parents house, and I lost two whole weekends to the process. I feel like the flow in my sewing room has been completely severed. It hasn’t. I know that but it was a pretty big change after being home for 5 months.

I kept saying that I want to keep some of my weekends for sewing when life gets back to some semblance of normal, and August has driven that fact home for me. I’m already looking forward to this weekend, and the list of things I want to work on around here. Time management seems to be even more important now, and I need to incorporate some new habits that support the kind of time management I want to have in my life. The last five months, I’ve been making new habits without having any kind of plan to them. The time has come to be more mindful about those habits and have a plan.

When things get stale, it’s time to make a change

Martha
Life, productivity, Quilting

We’ve all been there. Stuff is rolling along just fine then one day you wake up and find that you are rolling in a rut. Rolling in a rut goes on for a little while but it gets more and more difficult to role and then you wake up one day and things are stalled, just stale, not going anywhere. When that happens its time for a change.

I have at least learned, for me anyway, that bangs are never the answer. Many bad hair cuts and many hack jobs on my bangs, no that is not the kind of change that is going to help. I’ve also learned that spending a lot of money in and of itself, is not going to bring the change needed. Spending a little money to help support change is something else but that’s for a later discussion.

I’ve admitted that I’ve been writing solid every week and I’m running out of fresh ideas. I’m feeling stale. I can’t even get a post scheduled for Monday morning anymore. I wake up Mondays now, completely shocked that it is Monday, and how did it get to be Monday anyway, without any warning. There really should be a pattern or something you know, to make sure that you know when Monday is going to come around. Yea. Nifty idea. So I need to make some changes.

I like writing weekly. I’ll skip all the gory details about reader engagement and reach etc about social media, but TV figured out long ago that people like a weekly pattern and will tune in weekly to watch a TV show. Blogs honestly aren’t much different. If you get the hang of reading my blog along with your morning coffee on a particular day, then you (hopefully) look forward to that happening on a weekly basis. I promise I’ll come up with some new stuff. Really I will. With that in mind, I am now officially moving from Monday to Wednesday Post Day up on the blog.

I know that’s not going to be enough in and of itself to get over the writers block, but I am hoping I won’t be quite as surprised about Wednesday as I have been about Mondays of late. Time will tell on that one. I’m also making some changes in what and how I’m sewing. I’ve got two quilts to bind, and I’m actually hand finishing the binding instead of machine finishing. I think I can count on one hand the number of quilts that I have hand bound in the last 5 years. Both of these quilts were also pieced in the last 9 months too. Me? Finishing something in under a year? That’s a big change too.

I know I’ll have to build some new patterns around these ideas, and I know they really aren’t anything revolutionary. Inventing my own calendar that has 13 days per week and 28 weeks per year would be revolutionary. I would have a 4 day weekend every week. I’d also get to make up 6 more names for days. Blursday has been a particular favorite lately, I’m fairly sure that’s always the first work day after a 4 day weekend, but I digress. I’m doing little things that will shake up the routine and get me out of my stale rut and back on the road again.

If you are reading this with your morning coffee, it’s Wednesday and you are welcome. Unless you took Monday and Tuesday off in which case it is Blursday and you are still welcome.

Momentum, or lack there of

Martha
Life, productivity

A lot has been going on in our world lately. I don’t write about it too much here because that’s not what this blog is about. This is supposed to be an outlet for my creativity, and a way to help me find my path with needlework and grow by managing some of my goals. That has been particularly difficult to do lately.

I have found myself very challenged to keep creating. This week especially, I work through the day and when I get to the end of the day there’s nothing left in the tank. I sew a little, I’ve been knitting a bit more as that seems to suit me sitting in my big chair more. I don’t like myself this way but I need to remind myself that it won’t go on for ever. I need to allow myself this time to evaluate, and regroup and even rest.

This won’t be a long post. There’s too much to say that’s a jumble of emotions and things that I don’t want on this page. I know the human race is remarkable and resilient and we will find a way through this, and make the world a better place. I will keep sewing and trying to make myself a better person every day.

Gaining Focus

Martha
Life, productivity

I’m one of those people who wants to try and do just about every single form of fiber arts available on the planet. I’m sure when we finally meet aliens, I will want to try their fiber arts too. I’ve been that way as long as I can remember. I will seen what friends are doing, or see an article on line, or something in a book and my hands literally twitch wanting to feel how that process works.

I know I am in good company in this, I have a lot of friends who are multi-craftual. A lot of quilters also knit or crochet. I have a couple of friends who are weavers. Believe me, that is a rabbit hole, down which I am DESPERATE to fall, but it takes up space in my house and time out of my schedule. It’s not just crafts, it’s music and games too.

There is so much out there in the world and I want to do it all. The problem is I am bound by the fact that we live on earth, a planet which has 24 hours in a single rotation, and I am a human being so I require 8 hours sleep a night (long long gone are the days when I could get by on only 2 or 3 hours sleep) and in order to pay for all of this stuff I have to keep a job which takes a minimum of 45 hours every week. All of this leaves me very little precious time in which to do the things I want to do. So this means I have to make choices, and limit myself.

I am binary when it comes to time management. I can always get myself ready and plan for traffic and be on time for things and I ALWAYS plan too many things. I get over committed and even though I get it all done, I end up tired and worn out. I need to figure out how to manage a sweet spot where I do enough to keep my hands and my brain engaged, but not so much that I can’t keep up and things start falling by the wayside.

I am taking a long hard look at this year, and I am realizing that there are a handful of things, that I really enjoy, but that are too difficult to keep up and I need to cut back. I don’t want to do that but I know it’s the right thing to do. So decisions have to be made, then it’s off to the sewing room to work on a myriad of projects. It’s nearly faire season again, which means all kinds of garment sewing for a bit. More on that in another post.

Overwhelmed by Life, making a plan.

Martha
Life, productivity

You may have noticed I missed last week. I have to say, over the holidays, I did not have a clue what day it was. There were so many Saturdays and Mondays it was shocking. I’m very hopeful that things will settle down now that we are back in Ordinary time.

With that being said, holy cow, I am overwhelmed by everything. I have a list of things I would like to do that is longer than my arm. The list of things that I have to do is shorter, but most of them are repetitive tasks, so that tends to stretch on at length. So there are never enough hours in the the day, nor days in the week. I’m sure this is a familiar sentiment for everyone out there.

I know what I need to do is to sit down and make myself a list of priorities for the coming year. Identify things that I really want to get done and then focus on those. I am thinking about making it for the year because some of them, like putting sod down in the back yard, are very time dependent, so even though that is very high on my list, I probably cannot start that until March or April if I’m honest.

I got a new planner called Commit 30 (no affiliation, no paid advertisement, I’m not a brand ambassador, just saw it and liked it). The idea is that each month there is something you want to accomplish and the planner is setup to define that goal, make some notes about how you are going to get there, and then put dates on that month to do things to accomplish that goal. I like this idea. There are 12 months in a year, which means I could possibly get 12 things done this year. Honestly some of my things will take much longer than 1 month, like cutting up my stash, but I can make one heck of a start in one month, and better still, I should be able to establish a new habit in that 30 days.

I really don’t like the idea of New Years resolutions, but this time of year is a very natural time to look ahead to the next 12 months, as we have turned the corner on the shortest day of the year and have started the new cycle. I want to have goals instead of resolutions. I want to make a reasonable plan, that include steps to achieve those goals. Ok honestly, I want more coffee first, but after that, there will be goals.

What am I doing here??

Martha
productivity, Quilting, Technology

I think I’m having a bit of an existential crisis with my quilting business. I started this seriously back in 2004. I like to design patterns. I like to teach. I like to write. In this day and age, that means having a business, and having a website, and having a blog. Along with those items come a lot of nit picky details. Things like taxes, keeping up the website (I had a whole other post on that) and all of these things come at a cost. Literally. I find myself at a cross roads.

A year ago, I set a goal for myself to write on my blog daily, and here I am now, having hit 53 out of the last 55 weeks (I think, that’s a mental calculation, didn’t keep it on paper). As we get to 2020, I’m thinking about what I should tackle next and I think it’s time for a new website. I converted to WordPress about three years ago and boy have I learned a lot – which is code for boy have I done a lot of things wrong and I think it’s time for an overhaul. Because I didn’t fully understand WordPress when I moved over to this platform, I ended up with a website with a TON more features than what I really need. I will never use those features yet they are built in and I have to maintain them or the whole thing goes south. Doing a redesign will take time and money and I know will be worth it but there are days I’m really regretting moving away from Blogger as a platform. I remind myself that we can’t grow if we stay always in the same spot without trying anything new.

I really want to develop a site that lets me share my love of quilting and the things that I work on and design for myself. It doesn’t have to be complicated to accomplish that, and I’d like to be able to spend more time quilting and less time trying to keep my site going. If you look now, I think most of my secondary pages are broken, not sure why, and if you noticed there’s not a featured image on this post, it’s because Word Press has decided that I can’t upload new photos, so until I get that figured out, there won’t be any new images on the blog. Yet another thing that was working great and is now broken.

I’m curious to see where 2020 takes, but I know I will get there in style with a new website. Keep your eyes on this space, I should have something to announce in the February time frame.

More Effective Use of Space

Martha
Life, productivity

As many of you know, this past year I built out at the farm and moved in August. I downsized the house somewhat from what I had in McKinney. From a 4 bedroom w/formal dining and game room to a 3 bedroom. I’ve been working hard on trying to fit everything into the smaller house, and to quote Dolly Parton, it’s rather like trying to put ten pounds of mud in a five pound sack.

I had planned to use the larger bedroom as the sewing room / office area and keep the spare room for a guest room. I was really going to do it up nice, and have a private suite. Ah the best laid plans you know. When I really sat down to think about it, the number of times that company comes and stays for a significant visit will be very slim. Close to none. I might have a handful of people who will spend the night over a weekend but that has different requirements than long term company.

Dave Ramsey talks a lot about how our home is the largest investment we will make, then people will set aside a percentage of that investment and rarely use it. When I look at the amount of real estate taken up by the spare room, that means I’m setting aside 21% of my house and not planning to use it. Holy Smoke. That’s a lot of my big investment that I’m not planning to use on a regular basis.

So I’ve made a very difficult decision and moved my work office into the third bedroom and will put in a day bed to use when company comes. This means I can use the room 5-7 days a week every week of the year, though what it is used for can change. The decision was a difficult one to make; somehow felt like I was conceding defeat. Now that the decision is made, my whole perspective has changed.

I got the furniture moved over the thanksgiving week, and a couple of friends ran an extra LAN cable through the attic so I can connect to my network in here. I’m hanging pictures and putting things up and I’ve come to a couple of huge realizations:

1) I’m no longer hitting my head on the long arm when I back up from my desk. That area was rather tight and I bumped my head more often than I’d like to admit.

2) I have a place for my train stuff. I have a lot of train stuff, much of which I like to have out on display. Up til now I had no idea how I was going to be able to do that, but now I have a great way to display that stuff all in one place, AND it is a part of the house I am in regularly so I can enjoy it.

3) I can hang up a lot more of the pictures and mementos that I have , that were not originally part of the spare room design. Maybe that was a limitation of the original plan, but I’m happy to see that stuff out and on the walls.

4) the space vacated by the desk in the sewing room is large enough for one of the bin organizing solutions I had in the other house which means I have enough room to unpack the rest of the fabric boxes and put it away. That’s huge. I didn’t know how I was going to fit the rest of the stuff in that room.

So are you using your space effectively? Have you set aside 20% of your biggest investment and are not using it? Is there a way you can make rooms dual purpose to make other areas more functional?

I’m excited about how this will look when it is all done, how I have a space for work now, and especially how I will be utilizing all of my investment.

Revisiting Leaders and Enders

Martha
productivity, Quilting

My quilting ideas have been coming fast and furious lately, and I am realizing there are not enough hours in the day to do all the projects I want to do, and I’m going to have to sew smarter not harder.

A while back I made a post about using leaders and enders when chain piecing my quilting. To recap briefly, a leader/ender is a piece of material that you sew off of onto your project at the start of a seam, and off of your project and onto the scrap at the end of the seam. There are a number of benefits to using leaders and enders: 1) no thread barf because of the machine pulling the top thread down into the bobbin area and balling it all up on the back of your seam 2) no thread tails to clip at the ends of seams 3) less thread used because the leader/ender is typically shorter than the thread tails would be and 4) you can work with needle down turned on and never have to raise your needle. I’ve used this technique for years for really nice clean seams and better use of my thread.

A lot of people take it one step further by sewing a seam from another project, instead of using scraps for leaders and enders. Some are as basic as just keeping a stack of squares next to the machine and sewing two together as a leader and ender. Others actually have an entire project cut out and work their way through that sewing as the leader and ender. I’ve never been able to accomplish this as I am rarely organized enough to have a second project sitting next to the machine. I also get carried away with the leader/ender project and find myself sewing that project exclusively, reverting to scraps as my leaders and enders.

That is about to change. There was a plot in a movie one time, where a computer programmer at a company told the computer to take all of the fractions of a cent that were left over from transactions that were being processed and drop them into his bank account. In short order he was a millionaire because all of those fractions of cents added up. I am realizing that the seams on my leaders and enders that I am sewing could really add up to another project if I could ‘deposit’ them into the right ‘account’. Talk about becoming a chain piecing millionaire.

I know if this is going to be successful I have to keep my leaders and enders to a simple project. I don’t have a lot of real estate next to my machine to stage a large project, plus I need to make it small enough that I don’t get carried away with the second project. I’ve had an idea in mind for a while for a double four patch, which requires a lot of little four patches. Two hundred little four patches. If I keep a stock of them cut and ready to sew, I can use those as my leaders and enders. Two hundred seems like a lot but we don’t realize how many seams we stop and start over the course of a project.

I will hold myself accountable here, and I’ll post updates as I work through things. I hope the biggest update will be the LOOK I MADE TWO PROJECTS AT THE SAME TIME post but we will see. Start small, finish big.

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