WHAT IS TAKING UP MY TIME?

It's now been over a month that I have been in my new life as a true retiree. So what have I been doing with all this free time?  I can honestly say not what I thought I would be doing.  I thought I would be sewing and embroidering like crazy.  I haven't even touched my Dream Machine. I think about sewing a lot, but always seem to find something else I would rather be doing.  I though I would get back to joining some Village craft clubs, but other than getting back to the Machine Embroidery and Quilting group I haven't done so. I've pretty much just been hanging out at home being more or less unsociable. Maybe I used up all my extrovert skills during the five years I worked and taught and now I need an extended period of nurturing my introvert self.

I have been enjoying reading.  In the last month I've finished 5 books! 😲 I thoroughly enjoyed them all! All but one was fiction.  My favorite was Where The Crawdads Sing. Read it in three days as I couldn't put it down. I've also been hand sewing and working on my Tumbling Blocks quilt of illusion. I started it on the Seminars at Sea Quilting Cruise I went on this winter. Karen Combs taught a class on English Paper Piecing which I took. I am determined to finish the top. Here is her quilt sample for the class. She is a great teacher and a fabulous quilter.

English Paper Piecing (EPP) is not new to me. I did a fare amount of it before I went back to work.  I forgot about it when I lost myself to creating classes that quilters wanted at the shop. Most don't want to do hand work. It takes too long. Or lets face it at our age, being senior, we can't see well enough or shake too bad. Fortunately I don't shake and strong readers helped the vision. I actually find hand work relaxing. It slows me down and I can enjoy the process.

Here are my Tumbling block units and the start of stitching the blocks together.   I'm about 25% done.

 The biggest change and challenge for my new life in retirement is I need to drastically reduce my spending. The easiest thing to cut out is eating out.  A benefit of eating at home besides saving money is I am rediscovering another love I had lost while working. That would be cooking. I still need to work on cooking for one. Somewhere there must be a cookbook on doing so. A con to not eating out is I eat most meals alone now rather than with friends. I guess in life there are always pluses and minuses.

One thing I need to do more of is cleaning, tossing and organizing. I guess that is what I will work on in the next month of my retirement. My goal is to have a house I am willing to invite people to. At the moment only a very select few are allowed in.

Well so much for another day. Tomorrow is going to be errand day. I will leave the house!