Exploding brains and disks.

Well, I'm back from South Dakota, and stuffed full of new ideas, inspiration and of course, not nearly enough time to implement and practice all these things. I always wish when I take a class bursting with information that I could go to class, pause life, quilt for a couple hours, go back to class, pause, etc... Well, wish in one hand, as they say.

It was a very different experience to take classes with a group (there were 6-7 of us, depending on the day, 2 machines) versus my one on one lessons. I'm hoping between Myrna Ficken (teacher of my classes this weekend) and Karen Parker(the gal I took lessons from) and I can get a cycle of longarm classes going here at the shop for those of you who rent my machine or own one of your own. They have different styles and teaching flavors and they're both so much fun, I'd love to have both of them come to teach, so I'm getting that in the works.

Unfortunately, driving for 7+ hours twice in one weekend wreaked some serious havoc on my back. I have a slipped disk and sitting for that long just irritates the crap out of it. By Saturday evening I was finally feeling a little better, but then I got to get back in my car Sunday afternoon, and now I'm in agony again. Ibuprofen and I are becoming very good, frequent friends.

Meanwhile, I've been reading copious amounts of dog training literature, though I did drag my sewing machine along to SD and did quite a bit of sewing while watching HGTV, to which I'm now addicted, but fortunately do not have cable or satellite, or I would quickly atrophy into a Jabba-the-Hut-like-blob.

I did find out that I'll actually get my new pooch on October 16th. She's growing like a weed and in my latest pictures looks about twice the size of the one I posted last week. I confess that I can barely stand the wait and my every thought is consumed by puppiness. My mom keeps asking me what I'm going to do when I get pregnant since three weeks is a significantly shorter wait than the 9 months of anticipation I'll have to endure then. Maybe people who thrive on instant gratification shouldn't have babies. I don't know, I guess maybe someday I'll find out. But for right now I'm just trying to distract myself for three weeks of puppy countdown. Great Dane proofing the house is going to be an ongoing process as she will be much more capable of getting into trouble than a smaller pooch.
She's already bigger than my brother's full grown beagle.


I do have my fall quilt retreat coming up (YAY!) next weekend, so that will keep me occupied most of next week, and then only one week after that. Quilting seems like a distant thing that I might be able to do someday if things in the shop ever calm down and I stop running around all the time. It seems like I'm home so infrequently I can't even find my way around the house and my husband and I need pictures just to remember what the other one looks like.

Someday, hopefully, I will go back to happy quilting!