It Has Begun*

This weekend was full, and this week and weekend promise more of the same.  Good busy, but busy nonetheless. However, last night I ironed the rest of the fabric for the quilt and decided to start cutting.

Here's something that shouldn't surprise me at all, but did anyway:

I love to cut little squares of fabric. 

I have my mom's rotary cutter and mat, and I measured and cut and measured and cut quite happily for a few hours. I finished all the patterned material, and I plan on doing the white tonight if I have time.

The first few cuts were nerve-racking because I didn't have any straight edges on the fabric and couldn't figure out how to get one. Turns out, you just eyeball it and hope for the best. It worked out fine.

This weekend I did painted some dining room chairs for a friend. Painting walls and painting chairs might as well be completely unrelated activities. One involves some taping and a lot of rolling and a little bit of trimming. Chairs involve lots and lots of time in weird contortionist positions painting spindles. Both the chair painting and the fabric quilting were tasks that were careful, detailed, and required me to get Zen. Breathe. Don't hurry. Don't think about how long this might take. Focus only at the task at hand.

I love this sort of work. It forces the brain to slow down and focus. It's tiring, but a kind of tired that makes me feel like I've accomplished something and also had a mental break. It was after similar work last week that I realized my work problem wasn't really that big of a problem. I just couldn't see that until I got my mind to be quiet and focus on something else. I think it gives the subconscious time to work things out without the conscious mind mucking things up.

Here's hoping the rest of the quilt is even half as enjoyable.

*To get the full effect of the title, you need to sing it like you're at Ascot in My Fair Lady. Anybody?