Favorite Thing Friday - April 6th

It's Good Friday, which for me is a day off work.  That's a pretty favorite thing.  However, my most favorite thing today is the fact that I'm no longer computer-less.  My new quilting partner showed up last Wednesday.

After two days of figuring out where all the buttons are, where the USB ports are, installing computer programs and transferring files, I'm pretty much back in business.  I still need to upload a few print drivers and a driver for the scanner, but I'll do that when I need to use those devices. 

I do have a third favorite thing this week.

Back up drives.  My Guy gave me the gray terabyte (I also think of a dinosaur when I hear that term) drive and I had purchased a smaller Iomega external hard drive when I bought the last computer.  I've actually used both of them.  The terabyte drive holds a complete back up of the lap top computer. The Iomega drive, just those files I use frequently.  Unfortunately when the old lap top died, the last back up on either drive was from November.  Thankfully the PC place that tried to repair the old computer was able to download all my files to a second external drive and those files are all now on the new computer.  I will be backing up much more frequently, weekly on the quilting stuff, monthly on the whole drive.   

In between downloads and uploads I've been working to get caught up with email and blog reading.  I'm getting there.  For more Favorite Things, check out all the posts over at Quilting in My Pyjamas. 

Wordless Wednesday - Spring Rain

15 Minute Challenge - April 3rd

How did it get to be April?  I feel like I'm missing a couple of months.  Between the changes going on at work and Drama Teen's activities, it's been a busy 2012.  The next big deadline is taxes, I'm working on those in small bites.  I'm still trying to figure out where it says in our marriage vows that I'm responsible for taking care of that yearly chore.  I'm assured every year by My Guy, that it's there. 

Moving on.   I've not been very motivated to make the trek up the stairs to work in my sewing room the last couple of months.  I'm hoping that with the longer days, I won't feel so tired in the evenings and can get in at least 15 minutes.  I didn't do real well this week, only 2 days out of the last 7 where any sewing was accomplished. 

I am hoping to finish up the purple and yellow scrap quilt this month.  The last issue of McCall's Quilting showed up late last week with the third installment of the mystery quilt.  I love the final quilt and think my fabric choices are going to work well.  There's a lot of yellow in this quilt and I was really beginning to worry that it was going to be just yucky.  The Rainbow Scrap challenge color for April is neutrals.  Not sure how what I'm going to do with the coffee cup blocks for this month.  Maybe use neutrals as accents in with some brighter colors?  I need to go paw through my stash to see what I have.  I may end up skipping this month because I really wanted all the cups to be made from brights.  Any other suggestions? 

That's it for me this week.  How did you do last week?  Write up a post and let us know.

1. Amanda, Seabreeze Quilts 2. June @ QuiltQuest

3. libbyQ 4. Thea

5. Kate 6. Hueisei

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Design Wall Monday - April 2nd

This post is a bit later in the day than it typically is, I just couldn't get this posted before I had to be at work today.  Not much going on in the sewing room.  But I do have 6 coffee cup blocks finished, one more than last week.

Block patterns by Karen F. Sebro and Janet McCarroll
published in the books "Block Magic" and "Block Magic Too!"
by Nancy Johnson-Srebro. 

I played around with the UFO numbers for last month so that the purple and yellow quilt was the one I worked on.  I didn't get it finished, but I did get 2 of the 3 borders attached. 



Pattern by Judy Turner and Margaret Rolf
published in "Successful Scrap Quilts"

I have the border pieces for the last round cut, but not sewn together yet.  That's on tap for tonight. 

Fried Computer Update:  Dropped the external hard drive off at the computer repair place this morning.  Picked it up after work and all my files are on it!   So I'm at least whole in terms of where I was when the computer died (the EQ files are there too)! So a happy ending to a 3 week long saga.  I have ordered a new computer and hope that it shows up later this week or early next week.  Until then, I have to share My Guy's. 

If you haven't yet, check out all the cool design walls over at Judy's Patchwork Times.   

Stash Report - April 1st

I'm a bit late posting the stash report this weekend due to spending most the day nursing a sick headache.  It's down to a dull ache this evening.  Between the headache and a vain attempt to get caught up on some work stuff, not much sewing happened over the weekend.  Most of the evenings last week were spent on catching up on  work reports, so there's not a whole lot to report on the stash, but there is a bit. 

Used last week: 0.21 yards
Added last week: 0 yards

Used for 2012:  5.62 yards
Added for 2012: 116 yards

Net stashed for 2012:  110.38 yards

I've not had a lot of enthusiasm for sewing the last couple of months, consequently, not much progress is being made on eating up stash or on finishing up projects.   I'm not going to fret about the sewing, too much other stuff is going on.  Things will line out soon and hopefully my desire to spend quality time in my sewing room will come back. 

An update on the computer issues (proceed with caution, ranting and whining ahead, you may want to stop reading now).  I noted earlier that the lap top has been officially declared dead due to mother board issues which have fried the monitor function.  Hard to use the computer when you have no screen.  No problem with the hard drive, so the PC repair place downloaded all of my files to an external hard drive.  However, when I tried to download my files from that hard drive yesterday, I found the drive was completely empty, no files stored on it at all.  So you can guess who I'm calling in the morning when they open.  So at the moment I'm still computer-less and still have not been able to recover all my EQ files and spreadsheets I use for quilting.  Please learn from my mistake, back up your high use files weekly, or at least monthly.