The end of 2013

Good-by 2013. 

2013 has sped by as fast as the years before it. Like all of the others it has included good and bad. This is the year my mother faced cancer. Luckily, even though it required surgery and a major stay in the hospital with plenty of unexpected complications she is doing well now and beginning chemo. All of the scans are clean so it is a milder form of chemo, not the aggressive chemo that brings all sorts of complications of its own. It was hard to write during the worst of this so there were a few less blog posts. 

Later in the year I added dining room furniture to our small apartment, which forced me to move the sewing area. It is still quite a disorganized mess because when I decided to make the change I had to move all of the sewing tables, machines and tools quickly. I am working through it now to reduce some of the stash, re-organize the tools and make sewing a planned and purposeful event. I have to include set up, clean up, and breakdown time. It also has to work around dining schedules now so it has become a much more disciplined activity than before. I think maybe I have even been sewing more in spite of the extra steps.

I miss having everything set up and ready, but I do like that each project is pretty special because of the extra setup and breakdown involved. I am also learning which tools are most important. The down side is the table height. Working on a counter height table for laying out and cutting patterns is nice and I miss that but the dining table is longer than the cut table, so there is extra space for fabric on either side of the cutting mat. A long time ago this was how I worked on all projects. Once I have everything organized, I may be able to use a smaller version of my cut table again. 

This year I looked up word origins to go with projects during the year. I have not yet decided what I might include next year. I would like to say that I would blog on a more frequent basis, but then I would probably be spending more time writing than sewing.  Anyone have any special New Year's Resolutions?

From Online Etymology Dictionary:

review (v.) 

1570s, "examine again," from re- + view (v.). Meaning "look back on" is from 1751; that of "consider or discuss critically" is from 1781. Related: Reviewed; reviewing.