It’s been such a busy weekend, I almost forgot to post.  And since I’m a real slacker and only post once a week, I’d better get to it.

My sewing friend Lisa and I participated in the Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop this weekend.  All of the quilt shops in the area get together and offer a fun four days of hopping around from quilt shop to quilt shop, collecting block kits and generally getting acquainted with a lot of different shops.  I can’t quite remember how many there are, but you must hit at least 16 of them to be eligible for the grand prize drawing.  We did four shops on our own earlier in the week, but yesterday banded together to do 12 in one day!  It was fun and exhausting.  At each shop we were given a coordinating quilt block kit.  Some shops were very kind and gave us all the fabrics needed for the block while others made us buy a "finishing" kit – with prices ranging from 50 cents to $5.99. Needless to say, we passed on the more expensive ones.  I’ve started working on my blocks and finished two of them today:

Forgive the slightly blurry photo of the second one.  I could try and get a better one, but the blur hides my less than stellar machine applique.  I feel pretty confident with hand applique and machine piecing, but really need to work on the machine applique.  Also, be assured that they are both square – it’s just the angle.

Not much knitting has been accomplished this week because I’ve been concentrating on quilting Ivy’s quilt.  I hope to get the center done by the end of this week so I can take it to my quilt group for advice on the border.  I did work on the front of my vest at the car show last Saturday, but ended up having to frog everything I put in because I started my waist decreases too late.  Can’t blame Ms. Lavold for that one – purely my fault! 

And, it was a pretty lousy week at work.  Staffing woes continue with one assistant moving away this week and a new, inexperienced one starting.  I think she’ll work out very well, but is so inexperienced that we’re going to be spending a lot of time training her.  Then another assistant asked to have her hours cut and another informed us that she is leaving at the end of the summer!!  It’s getting really hard to find good assistants.  It used to be when I put an ad in the paper I would get at least 10 or 15 responses.  The last two times I’ve only gotten two.  Living on an island certainly restricts your pool of candidates.  Surprisingly I was able to let things go and not obsess about it over the weekend.  Hope I can continue doing that.