WIP accountability and a new quilt on the wall Part 2

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Bright pretty quilt-to-be!

Okay, so yes I have a new shiny waiting to be sewn together via my machine, which, ahem, has been under cover since the beginning of March! There has never been a time, when I've been home, that my sewing machine has sat so silently, but at least it's not gathering dust. Not sure when I'll remove the cover, might not be today, although if the Warriors play poorly this afternoon, I'll hide out upstairs while my husband witnesses the carnage.

It's the last day of basketball season, not that we have high hopes for Golden State going far into the playoffs. More is this a time of transition, one sport leading to another as spring drips from the sky in precipitation that is good in the overall sense of rainfall, but WOW we are ready for warm, sunny days. This morning I made a fairly comprehensive list of all my novel WIPs, even a couple that might never be completed. Or started, lol. But they're accounted for, for better or worse. And yeah, it truly helps clear the book-fog to glance at the wall to the right of my desk, finding those titles and their current progress (or lack thereof) in black and white. We printed out this page from the Toolkit without using colored ink because our printer is griping the primary hues are low, whatever.

All kinds of novel ideas, now detailed for instant perusal.

After my conversation with Future Me (and the telling realization that every twenty-nine years I get a little squiffy as a birthday approaches), I gave much consideration to exactly how I'd like the next couple of decades to progress. I slapped a bunch of 4.5 inch squares on the wall, but not in usual neat lines. Instead I staggered the rows, finding in that slight disarray a lovely sense of misaligned peace. HAH! Unsettled calm is kind of my mantra right now, accepting I have little to no control over most things in my life. Like the Warriors, ahem. If they had won two days ago, they'd be in the top bracket of the play-in, but now they're in the nine or ten spot, needing to win two games after today to reach the playoffs proper. But sports aside, I also pondered how in slowing down the writing and sewing, I'm freeing up time for allowing surprises. No thought to that whatsoever other than I never planned to make quilts, and writing also took off far more wildly than I ever anticipated. The unknown isn't something to fear, I believe was Future Me's basic message.

Nothing to fear.... Huh. Like no worries about novels half-finished or not even more than many ideas still floating around in my head. Like not stressing about the center of an EPP quilt that would require SO MUCH WORK to complete, but I have fabric for it, as well as 2" hexagons on order just in case one day I want to tackle the Alexandria project. Like absolute peace about The Enran Chronicles, even if only four books of the, um, projected ten are written, but I published the first one anyway and might not get around to writing any more of them this year! Wow, that's a lotta calm, hmmm, especially for someone in the throes of turning twenty-nine times two.

I'm not saying jack to Past Me about this whole EPP gig; she'd run away screaming.

I look back at Past Me, still tying that quilt. She's a little worried that others won't think it's an actual quilt because it wasn't, well, quilted. But without a machine in house, Past Me did the best she could with cross stitching floss, and later was assuaged by a gal at the quilt shop where a sewing machine was eventually purchased that tying a comforter certainly does count as making a quilt. It's the only tied quilt I've made, although I've been thinking about doing that again, perhaps with what's currently decorating the design wall. Ten years ago I was such a sewing novice, and eighteen years ago I hadn't even written fiction! If I do live another twenty-nine years.... The output won't be what I've managed over the last three decades, but it will be well seasoned, in that at least for writing and sewing, I do know what I'm doing, hehehe. And if something new crops up, that will keep life interesting. I'll just keep printing out pretty To Do pages, ticking things off as they are completed, and updating those projects still stashed in totes or hibernating in my brain. Works in progress include me, myself, and I, past and future and where I currently sit on this damp Sunday, hoping the Warriors conclude their season in whatever manner best befits them. And we'll see where we all land as the days zoom by.

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