Meetings

It's nice to have a job where I'm not always chained to a desk all day, every day. I do get to get out occasionally. Today was one of those occasions: not one but two library-related meetings to attend, on opposite ends of the county. But, despite being able to get out and driving around a little, the day was mostly a roadmap to a fully fried brain.

We're transitioning to a new system for handling Interlibrary Loan. The first meeting was, as the speaker said, "five hours of material crammed into two and a half hours". I hope I can remember half of what was presented. Technical and intense, my brain was stuffed to the brim.

The second meeting was, god help us, about money issues in cross-county borrowing. That involves enough number crunching and bean counting to make your head explode as various county libraries, each with its own financial agenda, tries to figure how to get funding from the adjoining counties whose residents use our county libraries. This topic is a perennial political minefield around here. And I don't think we broke any new ground today. Arggh.

On days like this I always stick a small knitting project into my tote. I was actually able to get in a few rows on the heel flap of my waffly sock. And hey--this is sock number two. Can I say I'm in the home stretch on this pair? One would think so until I realize that this pair has been underway since APRIL.

I'm chugging along more slowly than I'd like on the small couch quilt I'm quilting. I decided to use it as a bit of a lab for playing with some new (to me) quilting motifs. I'm just about the world's laziest quilter--I detest marking for quilting but free motion stippling and free motion goofy echoing, like I usually do, can get old. I'm experimenting with some squarish shapes.

I plan to intersperse some other motifs with some of the wobbly echoing dividing up the various areas of the quilt. So there will be sharp angles as well as curves in this piece.

And of course, there's nothing new under the sun. I opened up my new issue of Quilting Arts to see this:

This is part of an article called The Frayed Edges, by Cate Coulacos Prato. This quilt is called Encrusted Cairn, by Deborah Boschert. Looks pretty good to me!