Good & Bad

I figured I'd better check in this morning while I'm still in good enough shape to do so. We are having a new dishwasher installed this afternoon and there's no telling what that's going to do to me. Hopefully it won't be a big deal. Unfortunately, experience has taught me to expect otherwise.

About 10 days ago our old dishwasher, the one that came with the house when we moved in, leaked and flooded the kitchen floor. I've never been happy with that machine - it's hard to load and never did a very good job getting the dishes clean in my opinion - so my Dear Husband said we could just replace it rather than repair it. Woohoo! He went out and found a floor model last Saturday. Although it may have off-gassed some sitting on the showroom floor it has never, to my knowledge, been run. Once all that hot water hits the new plastics or vinyl or whatever in the interior of the machine I'm sure there will be fumes released into my otherwise safe environment. But today it will be the fragrances that the installation technicians carry in on their persons that is my main concern. I didn't know they were coming early enough to be able to ask them to forego any colognes, aftershaves, strongly scented deodorants, etc. so it will be a crap shoot. Let's just say I'm not likely to come out the winner.

So until next time, whenever that may be, let me show you the bit of progress I have made in the last day or two. Yes, I think I'm finally satiated on novels for the time being! I picked up needle and thread and started beading the background of this Priority Quilt:

Hopefully you can click on the picture to get a little bigger version to look at. Here's a detail shot just in case:

There are tiny purple seed beads in the purple areas around the heart. I haven't figured out what I'm going to do in the lower section of the quilt yet.

Ami has put out a call for Priority Quilts so she can take 1,000 of them to the big quilt show in Houston in October. I really want to get this done, registered, and sent off to her so it can be part of that group. If I thought I had it in me I would try to do another one to go with it but I think that might be unrealistic.

I'm also just about ready to move around some books. I may even bite the bullet and get rid of a few. {gasp!} I need to make room on my shelves for the binders of the books I've had taken apart and for my collection of studio journals. Currently my shelves are full of books I can't look at without making myself ill. Where's the sense in that?! I figure I'll be better off with ready access to the binders and journals (instead of tripping over them stacked around the perimeter of the room on the floor) than the tomes that I can't even open.

Because the journals I use are spiral bound once I get them on a shelf they're all going to look the same. No spines with titles, no real color differentiation. So yesterday I spent some time cutting up old business cards and wrapping them with colorful folder labels to make these tags to hang from the tops of the spirals on my journals. I think this will work.

I like the way they look like tassels hanging from the journals. I could really get carried away and decorate the hanging loops with beads too! :- )