Tuesday Raindrops

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Cleaned up the kitchen, washed the hand dishes, got the dishwasher running, refilled the vitamin container. Phoned my music friend but she wasn't answering (hockey game is on but I did call between periods. I'll be moving to within 2 blocks of her mom so I'm hoping that we'll see each other more. She can't drive right now (medical reasons) but if I pick her up and we visit, then she sees her folks, and they could take her home. It is actually just one bus for her to take (plus a bit of a walk at her end of maybe 1/2 mile) but she won't use transit. Neither will her kids, although none of them drive either (1 medical, one lazy.) So she just sits and home waiting for someone to come visit or drive her places.

I'm drinking decaf tea now and debating bed. Dh is still on his call. Normally they only last an hour at most but we are up to 80 minutes. I can't concentrate when he's on a conference call so I may as well go to bed since I can't work.

[Harriet]

Ivy, 15 minutes is a pretty traditional time for each area in a Round Robin, too. !5 minutes per room has been used on these boards a lot. We would do 3 15-minute sessions from top of the hour to 15-until the next hour, and then relax for 15, perhaps check in here. Twins' Mom is really the queen of that! She is great with challenging herself.

Dee, I think it's cool that you can make progress in 3 minutes per space nowadays! A testament to simple living! How is your knee?

More Round Robin thoughts - there are Round Robins to make quilt tops, too, Ivy. One person makes a quilt block (not necessarily square) with a look that could work as a "center". Then sends it (and maybe some extra yardage of the fabric) on to the next person who makes their own idea of a "round" or border around that center. Then it is sent to the next person to make their idea for the next border, and the next, and so on through several friends. And the first person is often so surprised at how the completed quilt top looks - probably not what they expected at all.

We still do not have a baby. Tomorrow is the due date. I wish we hadn't all started expecting this little one early. The opposite happened with my mother, who believed a lab tech who told her it would be weeks before I was born. I came that night!

We have been anxiously awaiting the return of a hen who either struck out on her own to be broody somewhere this morning OR will turn out to be our first loss to a predator since HRH started building pens here. (She was free-ranging, last we saw.) There is no evidence of any trouble anywhere in the yard or far beyond, but that doesn't mean we haven't lost her.

Meanwhile, the new pullets are getting along happily, spreading their wings for the first time here and flying short spurts in jubilation. HRH and I reinforced the pen with a finer gauge fence to contain them well.

[Ivy]

Thanks for telling me the usual time for a round robin, Harriet. I have so many rooms though, I'd be doing so many hours just working all day. I was thinking that doing 5 - 10 minutes per room would be a good idea for me. I made a chart with squares with each room listed, the walk-in closet, the walk-in pantry, the entry way & some drawers, etc... I thought I could mark off the squares as I go, to actually "see" my progress.

That's neat about a quilting round robin, too. I still can't figure out what a snail mail round robin is. Someone sent me 1 once, which was a large envelope full of different peoples' names & sheets they'd made, be it artwork, or whatever, & it didn't make any sense to me. The gal leading it was doing it for the first time, but when I saw where all the work they wanted me to put in it & then send it off by a certain # of days, I bowed out. It was so Mickey Mouse & childlike, foolish to me & a time-waster. I sent it back to her, told her I assumed it'd be a lot different & wasn't impressed. I was honest, but she never wrote me again. I know she took it personally, I criticized her "baby", but it was just so stupid to me & at that time in my life, I was VERY BUSY with much more important things, raising a grandchild, having DD at home again, DH working, being DD's daycare for our grson, & all that goes with it & taking care of a home. It was bad timing, for the round robin, without any explanation what in the heck I was supposed to be doing with these sheets of papers, in the first place. I got the envelope & an address to mail it to, but no directions what they wanted me to put in. I could see the cost of postage going up, every time the robin came around, with needing to go to the P. O. to ship it out again, so wasn't sorry to get out of that responsibility or chore.

I think there could be a Granny square robin, too, but it'd start weighing so heavy, it'd be hard to ship OR a group of several ladies could each make a square & send each person in the robin a square, so everyone had the same number of same sized squares, to join to make their own friendship robin afghan.

Harriet, I hope the baby comes soon!