I’ve fallen out of the habit of blogging recently, and I really need to get back into it. I think it’s a little bit of that old anxiety coming back. It’s so easy to let things drift, even when I have all sorts of interesting things going on. So, in the interest of putting my head back on straight, here’s what happened recently:

The monthly stitch & bitch session was a big hit this time around, as it included three aunts, a mom, a friend, and my aunt’s daughter’s husband’s mother. Seven of us crammed into our basement and talked, sewed (although not as much as we should have!), and scarfed down some really incredible coffee cake. Hmm… gonna have to use that recipe in a future pattern.

Speaking of patterns, my blog was listed on a quilt pattern site and today’s traffic increased to more than 10 times the number of hits I had yesterday. Um, thanks! I don’t know where it came from, but it’s pretty cool to see that almost 1200 people looked at my blog today. I even had a couple of people ask about my patterns, prompting me to renew my Neapolitan pattern and list the Basket Case and Icicles patterns on Etsy. If you’re interested, you can check them out at my Etsy shop.

Another thing we discussed on Saturday was our next “meeting.” We’ve been getting together on the second Saturday of every month, and the April gathering happens to fall on the Saturday of the International Quilt Festival in Chicago (Rosemont, IL). Mom and I have attended every one except the first, and even though funds are tight, we’ll be going to this one, too. It helps that it’s just a short hour and a half-ish drive from our house. Six of us will be joining up and sharing gas money for an all day quilt extravaganza. (Should that have been in caps?) If you haven’t been to the show and it’s even remotely within your driving range and/or budget, I strongly recommend to go. Set a spending limit, though, because there are enough vendors there to give even the most disciplined quilter a case of credit card wrist. And please, do me a favor – don’t wear a backpack. It’s a snug fit on Saturday, and even though quilters are some of the nicest shoppers, it’s still annoying to get smacked by an over-enthusiastically wielded backpack.

We’re still working on blocks (make that whole quilts) for the Bushfire Quilt Project. I’m not as inspired by the Wonky Stars as I’d hoped to be, so I’m trying some other things, possibly in combination with the stars we have finished. I expect to have at least a couple of completed quilts to send to Tia in the next week or two.

However, I AM inspired to finished my Family Star Block of the Month quilt. Why am I inspired? Because my mom finished her quilt yesterday! Well, it’s all done except the binding, and it’s amazing. Now we’re thinking about next year’s BOM (of course we decided to do another one), and we’ve pretty much decided on a basket theme. Time to get planning!