Taking care of business

First, thanks to all of you for the kind thoughts for my cousin. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers! He is doing well, all things considered, and is stable right now, but he is still in intensive care and there are so many complications to deal with.

Second, thanks for the encouragement about my red and white house blocks. I actually think my mood these days about any sewing and art is due to just fatigue and worry and distraction. So, my feeling that what I'm working on isn't holding my interest is most likely due to the fact that NOTHING is holding my interest these days. My heart and brain and emotions have drifted off to hover over Sean's hospital bed.

And to Helen, I give a heartfelt thank you and hug-from-a-distance. Your offer to actually sew up block s for me was so lovely and sweet and brought a smile to my face. Of course, it made me realize that I DO enjoy doing these and I want to keep going! So I'll stop complaining but I will think of you with fondness at your very, very sweet offer.

Third, I do think that these creative lulls --however or why ever they're induced -- end up being productive. And I have been sketching some ideas and feeling a glimmer of an idea for the next art project I'll tackle. In me (maybe not in all of you), working on someone else's pattern or something simple suits my mood sometimes when the "original creation" side is resting. There are times when I'm not in the mood to make creative decisions with every step. So, it's not about needing to abandon patterns in favor of working on original stuff...I enjoy both, and both activities suit me at different times.

Fourth, my apologies to everyone who has had ringsurf applications pending for the blog ring. Tending the ring pretty much goes straight to the bottom of my priority list when life gets busy (as you've probably noticed). To add to the pile, the spammers advertising drugs, ringtones, fake Rolex watches, and enlargements of various body organs have figured out how to auto-apply to Ringsurf, so that every day I get over 50 junk applications to the ring. I'm tempted to hit the "delete all" button but don't want to jettison the innocent, real quilter whose application is hiding amid the junk. Ringsurf's people say they're working on how to prevent this and if it gets worse I may close off applications for a while. For now, please be patient, and I will continue to sort through the pile when I get the chance.

As a reminder, I don't admit applicant blogs if they're not about quilting at all, or if they're primarily about traditional quilting, or if they're so new they have fewer than 5 posts, or if it looks like they're not updated at least once a week.

So I guess I'd better go do something artful.