A Very Busy Few Days

After last week's quilting marathon and Saturday's guild stitching day, I spent Sunday trying to recover from all the activity. That involved sleeping in, doing a lot of loafing, napping, and taking it easy.

Monday morning was our usual stitching time, then at 12:30 'the gang' met at Mandarin to celebrate Jen1's birthday. We have started doing the Mandarin thing for our birthdays and it lets everyone pig out on some or many favourite food options. Being a holiday, Poppy was able to join us, too!

Geri, Marilyn, and Poppy

Barb, the birthday girl, and Jeanette

And if that wasn't fun enough, we repaired back to my place to stitch for the rest of the afternoon.

It's always so nice when we can get together.

Yesterday, David came over in the afternoon to help me install the new ceiling light in the kitchen. The ballast in the old one blew and had been non-functioning for several weeks. It took quite an effort to find a suitable replacement; the old one had a nice moulding around it. Many I saw online looked too industrial and plastic-y. I finally found one on Amazon I liked. It was the same length and style but a bit narrower. I hoped I wouldn't need to repaint the ceiling after the new one's installation.

David and I worked for well over two hours, huffing, puffing, climbing up and down step ladders and stools, dropping and retrieving screws, swapping out drill and screwdriver bits, sweating, and using a fair amount of bad language but finally it was up and working. I could do surgery in there now if I needed to.

I had been managing OK with the two pot lights and the light over the stove but I'm really glad to have the new one in place. AND I don't have to repaint the ceiling! Just touch up a couple of spots with some leftover ceiling paint.

Since it was almost suppertime and to thank him, we toddled over to Hot Rocks and I treated him to supper. We both took doggie bags home. The leftover pizza will be my lunch tomorrow.

After a couple of Facebook posts about a potential reunion at the school I used to teach at 40 years ago, a former student contacted me and wanted to meet for lunch - just to catch up on what we've been doing with ourselves these past 40 years. 

Being a music teacher, I had the good fortune to teach students over a period of their high school years. We got to know each other quite well even beyond the classroom. I enjoy finding some of them on Facebook and have kept up on the activities and lives of several former students over the years. 

So Natalie and I met up and had a lovely afternoon getting caught up. We asked each other who we'd been in contact with since the late 80s. I had to laugh about an event Natalie reminded me of with another student, Paul. He was attending the Faculty of Music at Western (my old alma mater) and had a violin minor instrument exam coming up and was panicking that after the whole semester, still didn't know how to play the violin. Evidently, I gave him a violin lesson over the phone, dredging up what little knowledge I remembered from my violin minor class from at least a decade before. He ultimately passed his playing exam. I have a vague recollection of the event. I must have told my class the next day that I had done this. I haven't seen Paul in ages (possibly almost 20 years) and only have an old email address for him and probably a defunct phone number. I will try to get in touch with him so we can laugh about this anecdote.

Paul did go on to teach music and ultimately was a school administrator before his retirement in 2022 (I got that much info from Google). 

Anyway, just before Natalie and I parted, we took a selfie.

On the way home, I stopped in at Fabricland in Pickering and purchased some sewing supplies. Then on to the grocery store to pick up some more things, then back home. Boy, am I pooped!

I have NOTHING scheduled for tomorrow so will again take some time to recover from the frenetic activity of the last week or so.

I continue to work on the Mystical Lanterns afghan. When I get bored with crocheting the 'lanterns', I sew in the ends, when I get bored with that, I sew the lanterns onto the afghan.

I'm this far now.  Still lots of lanterns to crochet and add.

I did more stitching on my 'This Bee's Got Knees'. It goes quite quickly when spending a good chunk of time on it and I'm not distracted. You can see the 'T' at the top. I have started doing this on many projects but it was even suggested by the designer to maintain proper orientation of the fabric as the 4 arms of the stitching are quite similar. 

I like the fresh colours of this piece. It will be fun to get it finished and fully finished.