It's raining at the moment, which is a good thing as we need the rain badly. It's just the sort of day to sit and handquilt something, but I have nothing prepared. So I will have to sit and sew instead.

As far as house-hunting goes, nothing has been interesting enough to make us want to take things further. While I'm waiting for the right house to present itself, I'm going through all our possessions and having a bit of a throw-out. We have lived in our present house for 21 years, and have accumulated a lot of stuff. A Lot!! So I'm patiently weeding out kid's school books from 1998, and tangled embroidery floss from 1969, and old papers and magazines and doll's heads. I try to keep something significant from each year, but the rest just has to go. It's a good feeling to just throw it all away, or take it to GoodWill.

I'm finding lots of treasured things I packed away years ago, and it's nice to visit with them again. Bits of lace I crocheted as a teenager, newspaper cuttings that I should put into a scrapbook one day, old letters and cards. Everytime I open a drawer I'm not sure what I'll find, and that makes it fun.

I found this in an envelope; it's a metal quilting template that my wonderful friend gave me.



It folds out to make a pretty 6-petal flower. I love the wear marks on it; someone used it a lot in the past. I'd love to know what quilts it was used on. I have a tiny collection of antique sewing paraphernalia, and I would love a collectors cabinet to store them in. One day...

And for a quilt photo, this is a small quilt I made about 10 years ago. The squares are folded, 3-D patches, and I thought it up all by myself; I felt pretty clever until I found a Jackie Robinson book years later, and the method was in there. The little square-in-square blocks are 2", and the folding was tricky but not impossible. I do like a challenge.