Juggling cherries

Yesterday afternoon I had four continuous hours to spend by myself in my sewing loft with the choice of various projects I could work on.  I love those kinds of choices because I usually elect to work on all of them; why settle for one task when you can rotate between three and keep things more lively?

I had the last of the t-shirts going on the cutting board and ironing board.  When I ironed on the interfacing I was supposed to use a damp pressing cloth but I figured I could kill two birds with one stone and use steam and one of the dozen cloth napkins that needed to be pressed.  At the end, 12 t-shirt squares nicely interfaced and twelve ironed napkins.  In between each t-shirt I had a cherry table runner going on the longarm.  I had previously stitched in the ditch to stabilize it and now I was trying my new clam shell template for the very first time.  I would focus on it so fiercely that it felt like I was holding my breath, I needed breaks from all that intensity.   Next to my sewing machine I had a whole bunch of cherry fabric kleenex covers waiting to be sewn together.  When I wanted to get off my feet, I would sit down and sew a string of those.  This was my kind of day, flitting about and not getting a lot finished right away but at some point I would complete a various tasks together.

You are probably thinking, why all the cherry fabric?  It was an attempt at doing two things at once that went a bit awry.  We were on vacation in Door County last July which is known for, wait for it...CHERRIES!  I visited two different quilt stores and had to come up with a reason that I needed yards of all this delicious cherry fabric.  I knew I was hosting book club in October for the discussion of Huckleberry Finn, surely there must be a cherry reference in that book?  (Note to self: read book before picking book club theme next time.)  As I am picking out fabrics I googled cherries/Huck Finn on my phone and thought I saw that this divine fruit played a part in the ending of the book.  SCORE!  I bought dried cherries, cherry dish cloths, cherry tea and yards after yard of cherry fabric.  A month later, I finished the book and discovered that there was not a single freaking cherry mentioned anywhere in the book.  Hmmmm.  Until NOW that is when I discovered the secret ending of Huck and Jim enjoying a bowl of bright red cherries.  Done.

This less than stellar example of doing two things at once will not dissuade me from continuing on this way, whether I am trying to complete three different projects, knit while I watch TV or eat my cereal while writing a blog entry life has too much fun in it to limit yourself to enjoying each aspect singularly.  I like seeing how many things I can juggle at once and doing it successfully, now that's the cherry on the sundae of life.

Just ask Huck, he loves cherries.