Busy, busy, busy

Last year was really busy for me.  I finished nineteen quilts!

Plus, I currently have 5 quilts at the long arm quilter.  If you're not familiar with quilting, that means I've finished piecing 5 quilt tops and matching quilt backs; and taken them to the fabulous woman that I team up with.  Together we choose the pattern of the actual quilting and the color of the thread.  Then she sandwiches the top and bottom with the batting and uses a huge computerized long arm sewing machine, it's really huge - dining room table, huge, to stitch all the layers together.  I also have two more ready to take to her, later this week.  I hope 3 will be ready to pick up in January, 2 in February and the last two by the end of March.

The other thing that kept me busy was reading.  This year the total was down a bit, only 103 books on the "Read" list.  I always read over 100 books a year, but I've read as many as 150 in one year.  Recently I analyzed why the fluctuation in reading.  I came up with this - the years that I read the most, are the years that Bob spent the most time very ill; either a lot of time admitted to the hospital, or sitting in doctors' waiting rooms.  When he's ill, I read a lot.  There's really not much elso to do.

I also blogged a lot, too. 92 posts on this blog, 113 posts on Janice Elaine Sews, 4 new tutorials on Janice Elaine's Tutorials, 90 posts on Murrieta 365, 14 post on Loves Books and Tea and a measly 3 new recipes on Jan's Kitchen.  A total of 316 post for 2013; close to one a day, but not quite!

I also taught 90 Tai Chi classes and lead the Parkinson's Support Group in Tai Chi exercises 10 times and made 2 Tai Chi videos in 2013, these are my volunteer gigs.

I'll probably be a little less busy this year.  Bob and I are taking our longest vacation, ever, to mark our 50th anniversary in May.  I'll be gone for 6 weeks; a month on a cruise, a couple of days in Copenhagen, then 11 days in NYC.  That should decrease the number of quilts finished, and increase the number of books read!

Thanks for stopping by and sharing my life with me,