Weekending Times 2

I had ever intention of blogging about last weekend, well last weekend-then this week was upon me and now it is Sunday evening.  I am very pleased that much has been accomplished here at Maison Sheffield in the last 9 days and that it wasn't all work and no play.  I took 2.5 days off from work which would explain my ability to get so much done.  I made 4 trips to our storage unit between Sunday and Thursday as I've been determined to get it cleared out.  I am happy to report that all that is left in the unit is a table saw, a dining room table/chairs/china cabinet, 3 curios/cabinets a piano bench, a grandfather clock, and my great-grandmother's rocking chair.  Unfortunately, I think we are going to have to part with the curios/cabinets as the space we have in the house needs to be reserved for functional furniture-well really just one piece-this one from West Elm I'm hoping we'll add so we have more storage and serving area.  We have decided where the clock and piano bench will go, but nothing so far for the rocking chair.  I also managed to unpack ALL THE BOOKS that I've had in storage and while I got rid of quite a few in our moves the ones remaining have sentimental value-maybe I should mention ALL THE PHOTO ALBUMS that I have as well.  Needless to say those aren't going anywhere.  My next approach is to sort through things that were PJ's-that's going to be a tough chore, but will need to be done [in due time], and Andrew's childhood stuff needs to be organized too.  I want to have things arranged so that it will be easy for him when he decides what he wants to keep.  We have to space to store it so I'm not worried about it leaving the house anytime soon.  We got our swords and Italian pottery plates out as well, and so we're hoping those get put up soon.  That's worth another blog post as these items are hundreds of years old and I know once they are on the wall that'll mean we are settled/settled in our new digs.  Also, the swords require some thought and engineering so it's not a job you rush through. 

How about this fire?! Since we have an old school fireplace I don't ask for one of these unless the weather really calls for it which it did on Saturday!  We plan to hang the swords over the mantle-and photo of their installation will definitely make it on the blog.

As I said the last several days have not been all work, oh no, on Wednesday I went to the High Museum with Polly, Mary and Karen and saw a new to me artist and it was quite the experience.  Since Mary did a great job I'll take the easy route and link to her blog post ;-).  I honestly will never look at polka dots the same way again! 

On Thursday I had to make a quick trip to help my Mom and decided to go to the Frederick Remington Exhibit at the Booth Museum in [little bitty] Cartersville, Ga.  I'm so glad I did, I wish they'd have allowed no-flash photography, but alas I only have my memories.  I learned so much about this artist and I'd love to go visit his museum/home in NY-road trip anyone?!  This museum is truly a hidden gem.  Also on display [temporarily] were photographs by Bob Kolbrener and landscape paintings by Scott Christensen and Quang Ho.  I need to keep this museum on my radar so I don't have to rush to see the next exhibit.

Today I had plans to FINALLY sit down at my sewing machine and work on the quilting portion of the the only quilt that has a finished top and backing.  I've decided that the other quilt tops that I've done will be quilted by someone with better skills than I have as they are large and I don't do well with them.  They are neatly folded waiting for me to get backing, batting and schedule a time to drop them off with a quilter I learned about nearby. 

But alas----when I went to do a little practicing to make sure the machine was in working order I discovered that the feed dogs aren't doing their job?! Ugh!  I reached out to my friend Brenda who guided me by text and phone on what might be the problem, but to no avail Helga is going to have to go to the shop.  The last time my machine was serviced was in 2014-what?!  To be fair I've used it very little since then, but I need to make sure she gets in more frequently to be serviced.  I spent the rest of the afternoon organizing my sewing/quilting books and patterns.  Many of these books have been in storage and I'm so glad I have them out now for reference.  I did go through many of the kits and such that I've collected and I have a quilting game plan for this year.  I'll feature those plans in a separate blog post.  I'm feeling very inspired and since I have so many friends who are happy to guide me along I think my sewing/quilting for 2019 is going to be very satisfying.

On an unrelated topic-here's the yarn that Andrew gave me for Christmas-lovely sock yarn from Dragonfly Fibers he got at the LYS Looped Yarns in DC which we visited when I went up there last year-[Pajamas (L) and Big Apple (R)]-what a good lad!  Now to decide what to knit with these. . .

As the weekend comes to a close I'm looking forward to another glass of wine, some on-line shopping and hopefully another episode of Outlander-nearly done with the current season.  Jamie has certainly grown on me- Claire is starting to, but I'm not sure about Brianna-we shall see.  Here's to another good week of good things.