Saturday, June 30, 2018

Planning Party Semiannual Review




Back in December, we had a planning party, and chose some goals for the year. I chose to make my goals very generic and loose, hoping it would be easy to say that I had accomplished my goals. Here's the abbreviated version of the goals.

Let's see. What are my plans for my year?
1. Finish things.    I want to move the quilt along a little bit and make [the queue] smaller.  While I don't feel the need to eliminate the line since I like working on more than one quilt at a time, it would be nice to get some quilts progress to the completion stage.  
 2.  Have fun.  I am hoping that I can maintain the relaxed attitude I have had lately about quilting and keep reducing quilt guilt. If I can keep the rules to a minimum, I can thoroughly enjoy my quilting and genealogy hobbies.

3.  Clean and organize.  As you know,  have been cleaning and organizing my entire house using an adapted version of Marie Kondo's Konmari Method.  I have gotten through the main spaces, and decluttered and organized quite a bit.  The next space will have to be the sewing room / craft supplies.





Let's see how we did.  In the Finish Things category, this year, I showed you a finished Adinkra wall hanging, a finished fabric book, and two finished Valentine's quilts.  The goal was to make the unfinished list smaller, and I'm not sure I did that. The fabric book and Valentine's quilts were not on the list at the end of the year, so they don't really reduce the list, except maybe as a percentage of finished projects.





I did start a crazy quilt class, made some stumpwork portraits that now need something done with them. I am not going to call these quilt projects, because the goal was always to use them as practice and not to make quilts, so I am not counting them.  I did make more circle blocks and make progress on a old-time crazy quilt block. Since Adinkra is finished and I have made substantial progress for On Ringo Lake, I am going to  check off the Finish Things category and quickly move on to the next category before the auditors notice.






In the Have Fun category, I will refer you back to the mini quilts, the fabric book, the stumpwork practice, and the crazy quilt practice. I also made a snippet roll. Maybe even the On Ringo Lake quilt at times. I also have a start to the next genealogy junk journal.  I have to say that I excelled at the Have Fun category. I played around to get practice with lots of new-to-me things and thoroughly doing so without guilt.  I even managed to not make rules about having to finish by a certain time or even a requirement to finish at all.  When I was first reminded of this goals list last week, I was thinking that this is the only category that I could easily check off as a resounding success.




Do you think the auditors will notice that I forgot to talk about the clean and organize category?

I have to admit that the day after I wrote up the plans for the six months, I realized that I had just given myself six months to clean one room.  Six months for just one room! I was absolutely giddy.  Fooled everyone, didn't I.

Well no, I fooled myself.  Mind you, I did spend some time at the beginning, at least fifteen minutes a day for at least a week, cleaning.  But then I started new projects and moved things around, and well, things probably aren't much better looking now than they were in the beginning of the year.  I will spend more time this week to clean up that room.

To be fair, I was busy at work, and I'm pretty sure I have worked more days this year so far than I have in previous years.  Also, I finished the On Ringo Lake quilt top!


I am going to take a break from this quilt to work on other projects, and for the next two weeks, I am allowing myself to use my stitching time for cleaning up my sewing space.

Linked to:
2018 MidYear Review

9 comments:

Exuberantcolor/Wanda S Hanson said...

I need to change my rules this month too and forget about working on an older project for an hour a day and instead spend it cleaning and organizing the sewing areas. I would love to see the whole cutting table top in my main floor studio.

Lisa J. said...

You chose perfect goals and it looks like you made great progress. That cleaning goal is a difficult one for sure. It seems to mess up lots of us.....I think It's because we would rather be quilting, or anything else.

Carole @ From My Carolina Home said...

Sounds like you are making progress.

Yvonne from Quilting Jetgirl said...

Cleaning is one of those things that is a never ending cycle. I think that having these reminders helps keep things like that on track. I'm so glad that you are having fun!

Nancy said...

I love your goals, Shasta. Have fun is such an important one. I remember taking a drawing class many, many years ago. One of the assignments was a drawing with lots of texture using repetitive marks. The teacher cautioned that if we got bored with the mark-making, it would be somewhat obvious in the finished drawing and the viewer would feel it. I think that's probably true of many creative endeavors. And you obviously did not get bored! You have some great finishes. Did you already post photos of your genealogy junk journal and I missed them? I haven't done a very good job of keeping up with my blog reading lately.

dq said...

Congratulations on your beautiful progress! I just love the border you put on that quilt in the very top photo.

Kate said...

Your simple goals for the year are great and you've made some good progress on them. There is still 6 months in the year so definitely enough time to make some inroads on all of them.

Tanya said...

It sounds to me that you got A LOT done! And how nice that having fun is also making progress on your quilting projects!

Kaja said...

Well I think that having fun is the best goal of all, so you have excelled. I couldn't put tidying/sorting on this sort of list or I'd be doomed to failure from the start, but I wish you luck with the next fortnight.