Mountains to Climb

One of my personal struggles this winter is staying on track with one or two projects. This can be a challenge in both my work life and home life, but at least the heat of a deadline and the prospect of a paycheck goes a long way toward reining in my work. But home? That’s another story.

I began the month of January with a set of goals, which included:

• Completing the re-fabrication of a purse (the framework wasn’t über successful)
• Finishing a pair of winter pajamas
• Doing January blocks for my Block of the Month class
• Finishing fjalar
• Fixing the living room curtains
• Progressing on the winter quilt

All the above were to be accomplished before diving in to new projects. (I have a long queue of items waiting to be launched, so trust me, I won’t be twiddling my thumbs for some time.)

It’s January 31. Let’s see how I did:

• Progressing on the winter quilt - Check
• Fixing the living room curtains - Check
• Finishing fjalar - Check
• Doing January blocks for my Block of the Month class - Check
• Finishing new pajama pants part of the new winter pajamas - Half-Check
  

While not 100% done, the list of of things I did accomplish makes it seem as though January was largely successful. This photo, however, tells a different story:




Clearly I have failed utterly in my singular approach to the month.

The winter quilt in-progress is in the foreground. In the background are the parts and pieces of my pajama top, pinned and waiting to have the shoulder seams sewn. Strewn around and on top of it is stash fabric I started sorting through to find material for the February blocks (pattern delivered early), only to realize that many of these fabrics were left over from my herringbone quilt that will be required in whole or part to make the complementary shams, which I hadn’t planned to make before late spring/early summer but now realize need to be a February project so my whole stash will be available for the March BOM quilt blocks and beyond. And underneath all of that are the parts and pieces of my purse, which I’m waiting to begin rebuilding again once I’m done with the pajamas and (now) February quilt blocks because I’m too darn lazy to thread and re-thread the sewing machine only to go back to the first thread when I rotate projects around again. In this case, I need a beige thread for the pajamas, brown for the quilt, and a navy blue for the purse with a heavy-duty needle. Yes, re-threading the sewing machine is my breaking point.

Goals for February:

• Finish January
• Stop setting goals—especially unattainable ones.