The Weekend Has Arrived!

It's Friday night, and the weekend is here! Not only that, but I've finished the nine cherry blocks I've been working on:

Well, sort of. A package was waiting for me when I came home from work, and it contained the additional perle cotton I had ordered as well as some Valdani thread, so now I'm ready to start over again on the cherry blocks, making the stems a double line of stitching.

Well, sort of. Actually, I'm getting a little weary of all the hand work and I'm itching to do a little piecing. Besides that, over a year ago, I was diagnosed with SASD. So maybe the cherries will have to take a little rest over the weekend while I play with something else. Here's my Basket of Joy:

Can you spot the Mary Engelbreit fabric? That's a possibility. So is the Blackbird Jubilee fabric. (Which is hiding in Basket of Joy 2, and which you can't see. Neither can I. I need to recover from the Tequila Hangover before I look at it again!) Another possibility is an idea for a patriotic quilt project that's been in my little brain for the last few months.

It was such a beautiful day here in Northern California and I was feeling SO GOOD about it being Friday, that I thought maybe I should make a trip to the quilt shop at lunch. Except, I told myself, I really didn't NEED anything from the quilt shop! So I talked myself into staying in for lunch. (Gotta wonder sometimes how I ever get any work done with all this talking to myself!) And that was all well and good, but then one of the other quilters in my office--who was feeling grumpy and in need of a little retail fabric therapy--emailed me to see if I wanted to go to the quilt shop at lunch. And, you know what? My willpower only goes so far before it snaps, shreds, and sputters out, so I said, "yeah, sure!" And off we went.

I found a couple black and white fabrics--I NEED some black and white fabrics for the cherry quilt. In fact, here's a photo of today's black and white fabrics together with a couple other fabrics that may find their way into the cherry quilt.

I also "found" this Australian quilting magazine at the quilt shop. I remembered I wanted to check the Australian quilting magazines for something, but I couldn't remember what, so I just bought it--I figured I'd remember later.

When I was flipping through the pages, I came across this quilt, which looked awfully familiar. "Gee," I thought, "That looks like Tazzie's quilt." So I looked at the name of the designer--nope, someone named "Tara." I flipped on, but I had to come back to it because it was really bugging me. Well, sure enough, there at the end of the pattern was Tazzie's blog or email address or something--SOMETHING that told me "yes, your mind isn't a totally shriveled raisin." And isn't it funny? It seems like I've "known" Tazzie forever--at one time, she belonged to my online Thimbleberries Yahoo group long before blogging came along, I've been reading her blog for a long time, and over the last year or so, we've occasionally emailed back and forth. Tara? Who knew? Probably everyone but me, I'm sure! I love this quilt of hers--simple but really effective in its controlled scrappiness. Lovely!

So, the weekend's here and I have plenty of fun stuff I'd like to do. I hope you do too!