The Busy Month of November!

This has been an exciting month. But it just goes to show what I can get accomplished if I am interested, driven, excited, and motivated!

November is Nanowrimo or National Novel Writing Month. We try to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. Yes, and there are many people who make the mark. There is one week left in this month and already I have written in excess of 67,000 words. The Novel I’m writing is called “Through Her Eyes” and it’s about a young man by the name of Nick who is an ex-con. As he leaves the prison complex at Jackson Michigan he gets on a bus and meets a high school girl who is at a cross-roads in her own life. They only chat together for a matter of a couple of hours while they travel toward a town that one is going back to and the other has never been before but will have to live in for a year. They are both trapped by their pasts and have less than certain futures. Sarah has suffered the loss of her father and her innocence, and is fleeing her comfortable home for an uncertain future with her aunt. Nick is going back home to a place where he had no direction and friends who tried to get him in trouble.

They make a connection on this journey. This connection lasts them through a turbulent couple of weeks while they sort out their personal woes and make new strides toward finding ways to cope with their own situations. When they finally come together again they are set on their paths and they find that having one another is fulfilling a need that neither really admitted to themselves.

I am about one third of the way through the novel at the moment with one week of Nanowrimo left. Above is the collage that I did for the cover of the plotting book.

Other things that have happened this month: I had arm surgery. Hopefully the last one. I now have a complete Ulna in my arm. I am not in hand therapy at the moment but I may have to do that soon. Can’t tell! I don’t have to go back to Ann Arbor until the middle of January! Glory be, I hope the weather will be OK for traveling!

I also took the class by Ann Loveless on how to do her landscape quilts. It was a really fun class and I love the resulting wallhanging that I made. Here is a picture of the unfinished version. I have some thread painting left to do on it, and then the binding. I would have loved to put a border on it too, but that would have required a little extra planning at the beginning. Next time! And there WILL be a next time!

It kind of reminds me of the Robert Frost Poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Here is a link to the whole text: http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/Stopping_ByWood.htm

I also finished a Needlepoint piece that I intend to use as a pocket for a new purse. The needlepoint was a UFO but now so is the purse, so I’m not getting the pins for it until I am totally finished with it.

So far so good, I’m getting things accomplished! Thanksgiving is coming and this year I am thankful for my smaller stomach, my increased energy and my loving family! Hope all of you have just as good a holiday season as I am planning!
Cindy K-K

UFO Club Update

October 25, 2008 my guild started a new UFO club. This was my own brain child and I am running it as well as participating in it. Here is how it works:

Everyone who joins the club gives me four Fat Quarters and a list of projects that they wish to finish. I will then sign them up as a club member and give them a pin (safety pin with beads on it) for signing up. Then every time one of them finishes a project they get another pin. I have been giving out extra pins for things like being the first to do something or for signing up early or whatever else I can think of. I have already finished one of the projects on my list, the blue scarf, and it's marked on my UFO list as finished, as you can see. I made great strides on Saturday by layering four different quilts that I intend to finish soon. I also pulled out the friendship stars that our Border's group traded last year and they are up on my design wall waiting to be pieced into into a top. I have three projects on my sewing table that I am piecing, the nibblet borders for the tomato quilt, the second border for the rainbow color wash and the schlepp bag. This is all just sit down and sew type stuff and I will get to it all today no matter what else happens on God's green Earth! Because then I will be piecing the friendship stars before I go to bed tonight!

You see my dilemma? I have these grandiose plans and, even worse, a warped view of what I can get done in any given time period. What I need to do is multiply the amount of time I think it's going to take by two and then repeat that every time I think about it! Then I will have a right guess!

The killer thing is this: I also intend to to do NaNoWriMo next month. Next Month!!!??? That's tomorrow!! I'm supposed to start that tonight at Midnight! Where has October gone? Ok, no matter! I'm not pulling any all nighters anyway. I have to save my energy because I'm having surgery again on November 6th. So I will do what I can this month. No pressure!

One of my goals for 2009 will be to update this Blog more often. I am thinking about just going ahead and deleting what I have now and starting again fresh but then I read an article on Blogging that described it as a journey, a process of developing a voice. Well, I will leave this alone then and see how it develops!

One more thing. The main reason for finishing all of these UFO's is to free up my space, both in my house and in my head, for more creative projects like writing and like my more artistic endeavors. With this in mind I have to tell you, my loyal non-existent and totally imaginary readers, that I have a project in my head that is truly creative. I got the idea from a Cloth/Paper/Scissors magazine, one of my two new favorite magazines, and I have been running with it in my head. I am now almost ready to start it. I just have to buy some sandpaper and some wood glue! More on this endeavor later.

Goal for November: Blog at least once a week! No more big gaps!

Cindy K-K

Leafy Round Robin Done!!!

Dispite how it looks in this photo, the leaf quilt is now finished and ready to put in our show next month. This was a round robin made by seven members of the Border's Quilting group better known as the Border Babes, which is a segment of the Rumpled Quilts Kin guild. Out coming show will be on October 11th at St. Francis High School in Traverse City. Admission is $5.

This quilt started out as four fall leaf orphan blocks. It first went to Laura Munck, the chipster! who attached the first border of batik leaves. Then it went to Judy Dunmire who put on more maple leaves in the light brown background. She broke the rules a little. I specified that I only wanted batiks in my quilt and she put in a regular print. Good thing it doesn't detract from the overall beauty! Next it went to Ellie Panek who is sadly now deceased. She put on the wonderful blue border with the three dimentional leaves. Next the quilt tripped over to Nancy Crow's residence where she attached the saw tooth edge border. Then it waltzed over to my dear friend Sues Simpson, who found a lot of great fabrics to add all of her piano keys border with one appliqued stylized rose. Then it was up to Elaine Penney to finish it off with a final border and she chose to add the yellow flange backed up by the lovely green and gold batik border. When I got it back I thought, my goodness this is sure huge! It was too big for a wall hanging but not quite big enough for my bed. So I decided to add one more border, well actually two, to make queen sized. So I made more of those wonderful fall leaves that I began with and made a top and bottom border with those and then bordered it one last time with a wonderful gold batik. TaDAAAA! It has a dark green variagated binding now and is totally finished! I am so proud of it. It is going on my bed as soon as I take it down from the show.

Above is another quilt I just finished. It's a miniature Amish 4-patch. It too will hang in the show.

More later as I get quilts finished and pictures taken.

Cindy K-K