Is There Life After Quilting?

I want to blog again but I haven't been quilting. Then I realized maybe I don't have to be actively quilting to use this blog.

The last almost two years has been interesting to say the least. I can think straighter now,  even though my daughter would disagree cause at 64 I'm doing the going into a room and forgetting why I'm in there thing. On the other hand I heard that as we get older we've just learned so much in our lifetimes that our brains are too full of information and it takes longer to retrieve some things. Okay... I'll go with that one.

I found that after my husband passed away in 2013 I just didn't want to sew anymore. For anyone who hasn't been a widow it takes a very long time for powers of concentration to return. Dealing with numbers is the worst. And concentration is really important when making quilts. I've done some but when I look at the accumulation of quilts I have why would I need more? Half the ones I made I don't even like or use anymore. I've given 50% of them away, at least. And with the cost of quilting, where I live anyway,  that's a heck of a lot of money to throw away! I'm still doing volunteer things but that's becoming less and less. My group doesn't understand that to really sell things they need to look good. They use any old fabric they have whether it is appropriate for the project or not. I can't get excited about that. So I'm getting choosier. For last year's bazaar we did have a few projects donated by the family of a woman who had passed away. Some of them were embroidery and I figured I could handle that.

This is the only one I can find. I also did two snow people ones. They were a lot of work but I like embroidery. When I offered to embroider this year I was told the towels I wanted to use were too expensive, even though I offered to pay for them myself for a tax receipt for donation. So I said I'd go to IKEA and get the 79 cent ones. No, those are too cheap. So you can see why I won't be embroidering towels. They want me to embroider bath guest towels. Sorry, can't do that. Guest towel fabric is loopy and you can't hand embroider on them. Machine embroider maybe but I can't afford, and admit in the final third of my life I don't want, to spend money on an embroidery machine. I'm still attending the group but my enthusiasm is dampened. I only go to get out of the house.

But I did make one thing for myself. I did it by hand and it took a heck of a long time but I love it.

I'm simplifying my life as far as "things". But I still like a homey touch.

I like to do hand work but I've also lost the ability to hand sew/embroider and watch TV at the same time. With no one to share my life with I watch a lot of TV in the evenings. Maybe part of it is that now I watch things that I really want to watch and some need to be paid attention to. I'm watching a series on how volcanos formed the continents. Very interesting.

My health is not great but I feel good. The only problem is I can't spend more than 3 hours out doing something or it takes me two days to recover. I hate that. I have Polycystic Kidney disease and my kidneys are now operating at 20% of normal. That also affects my thinking because the blood travelling through my brain is full of crap the kidneys didn't get rid of. But I do feel good overall, I just pace myself a lot and I hire people to do things for me.

I've been working on genealogy cause it's a nice quiet hobby and interests me. I've written a 46 page chapter on my dad's family line, which I have back to 1555. I'm going to see if I can get a free website to post it on. If not I'll have to use thumb drives I suppose to send it out to my nephews and nieces.