Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

I picked Feedly

I promis this is my last post on the Google Reader replacement. A couple of weeks ago I told you I had narrowed my choice down to InoReader and Feedly. I've been using both since and have settled on Feedly. I really like InoReader but the platform just is not stable and I don't feel confident that it will be around long term. I've also gotten more comfortable with Feedly. Some readers told me how to sort my feed oldest first and I've gotten more comfortable with the Android app. So, there you have it. I picked Feedly, for what that's worth!

A little more on time management

Thank you for being so indulgent with my lengthy time management post last Friday. I wanted to follow up and share some of the feedback that you left in the comments and also share a couple more things that I've thought of since last week.

I wanted to mention another way that I uses lists. One day this week I had 4 or 5 things on my list for one day and a few things on the list for the next day. Well, you know how life goes. Some days something happens that throws the list out the window or, as was my case, I simply wasn't in the mood to do the things on the list that day. It happens to all of us and often turns into a completely wasted day. If you have a list you can look for some other productive thing to do instead and just rearrange the things on the list. You are still productive, you've crossed something off the list and, most likely, you are finally in the proper frame of mind to do the original task.

My last point is to not obsess about it. If you feel the need to plan every minute then be sure to plan some off time. Don't plan your life away. When you get the opportunity to go to the museum with a friend, go! The beauty of having the list is that you can easily and quickly reprioritize and go have a fun time.

Here are some of the ideas that were shared by readers:

It seems that many of us share the secret of the spouse who does the cooking!

Gene uses meeting time to doodle design ideas. I wish I was better at doodling and sketching. I'm not but I used to practice drawing feathers while I sat in meetings. I'm convinced that time helped improve my quilting.

Shirley uses a timer for some tasks. I really like that idea and may get myself one. Set the timer and do the chore until the timer goes off and stop. You can get a lot done if you aren't watching the clock.

Regan reinforced the purging tip. She and her husband started purging and had a big yard sale. They made enough to pay for part of a cruise vacation the next year!

Libby recommended a book called Your Money or Your Life and said it was a big help to her several years ago. Irene also found the book helpful.

Candy made the important point that organization is a process, not a project. I totally agree. It's something you have to do continually but it really makes a difference. If you don't believe me, just ready Candy's blog and see how much she gets done while working full time.

Andrea said that she is more productive with a deadline and I completely agree. It's good to set your own deadlines sometimes. I often use the blog to create a public deadline for myself to help encourage myself to get things done.

Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!

 

 

Time Management

In my newlsetter this week I talked about managing time and making time for the things that I want to do. For me, that almost always involves "making". There's so much that I want to do every day that I am much more cognizant of how I spend my time than how I spend my money. I think about it constantly and am always looking for better ways to do (or eliminate) chores so that I'll have more time for the fun things. I also think about how to allocate my time so that I can participate in all of the hobbies that I have. I know that I'd be better off with fewer hobbies but that's probably not going to happen.

I get a lot of comments about how much I get done so I thought I'd waste some space talking about it. I don't think I am any sort of wizard about time management and I don't think I have anything specific to offer but I'll talk about it anyway. But if you don't want to read all of the following blather let me just sum up what it says. 

It's all about setting and keeping priorities.

I figure I can spend time sewing or cleaning, quilting or shopping, dyeing or organizing stuff. I choose sewing, quilting and dyeing almost every single time. But if you are interested in more detail then read on.

First, there are life decisions and situations that impact time. None of these were made with any consideration for time management. I'm just mentioning them because there are situations about my life that naturally put me a little ahead of the curve when it comes to time for my passions. These aren't meant to be judgements of other people's life choices. But I think that these 4 coincidental things have been very infuential in directing the way I spend my time. I only mention them to help you think about your own life decisions and how they shape for decades to come.

1. I didn't have children. I knew at a young age that I didn't have any maternal instincts and that I would be a less-than-stellar parent. There's no need to comment on it, It's just my situation and it was the right decision for me. If you have children/grandchildren, of course, there goes a lot of your time but there's no better use of time than for family.
2. I married someone who cooks. I used to love to bake but as I developed allergies to dairy and eggs and eventually wheat, baking became no fun. I've never liked cooking dinner.  Fortunately, Chris' Mom was a great cook and she taught him a lot. He likes cooking and that saves me a TON of time. He also does the grocery shopping. You should see how pathetic I look in a grocery store. I always have to ask for help finding things.
3. Because of my allergies, I cannot use household cleaning products so we have had a cleaning service since we got married. It will be the last thing I give up. But if I ever have to do it myself I have learned a valuable lesson: that just about anything can wait 2 weeks to be cleaned. If I were cleaning my own house I'd do it on a schedule and wouldn't think about it in between scheduled cleaning.
4. Also because of my allergies, we don't travel a lot so I am home almost every week of the year and that gives me more time for what I want to do. I traveled plenty for work and saw lots of places. Now I can only travel where I can bring and prepare all of my own food and that's a lot of trouble.

Next, there are philosophical decisions that you make about your life that may not seem to be related to time at all but they really are.

1. I married a frugal person and he changed my own opinion and habits about money. This one is BIG. Chris completely changed my financial habits and we haven't had any debt beyond mortgage debt since we got married. He can't sleep if there's any debt. The mortgage drove him mad until we finally paid it off....early. We have always lived below our means and because of that I was able to retire at 50. There's no better way to buy time than by saving enough to retire as early as possible. Having your personal finances in order goes a long way to giving you more of the time you want to do what you want to be doing. Again, that's not always possible but most of us can live on less than we currently live on and every penny we save buys us time later.
2. Aside from creative supplies, we avoid buying a lot of stuff. We keep our cars until they die and generally wear things out before replacing them. Aside from the cost think about how much time you spend shopping for things? When I bought my current car I probably spent 40 - 60 hours just researching and shopping for the car. I can quilt a very involved quilt in 40 hours. Then there's the time spent dealing with the old car and all of the stuff you have to do to register and insure the new car. I bought that car 10 years ago and haven't had to deal with any of that since. Stuff requires time to manage it.
3. I have dedicated creative spaces. That's a big one. I'm lucky, I have a lot of space but it's not necessary. Some space is necessary. It could even be nothing more than a sewing basket. The important thing is to have projects set up so you can work on them for as little as 10 minutes at a time. I often sit down and sew just a few blocks together. I almost always have something on the longarm, something at the sewing machine, a travel project and a hand-work project all ready to work on whenever I have a few minutes.

Now let's get to the little day-to-day decisions that add up to a lot of time. Your situation is unique to you and everything I mentioned so far may have no application to you. Here are 10 tips might give you some food for thought:

1. In the same vein as big purchases, we don't buy a lot of stuff. Even little stuff has to be managed and that takes time. I used to have a big shoe collection. Every time a new pair of shoes came in the house I had to find a place to store them and, often, go through the existing shoes to find shoes to get rid of. Not only does that take time, but the original shopping trip and the trip to Goodwill takes time too. Now I have less than 15 pairs of shoes and they are almost all black. That makes life easy. I'm the same way about clothes. I just don't have a lot of them, none of them require dry cleaning and that makes managing them is easy.
2. When I get overwhelmed with stuff, whether personal items, household items or creative items, I take the time to go through it and reorganize. I can't be creative in the midst of too much clutter. I also don't like seeing overstuffed closets and shelves. If I don't use it I get rid of it and I do these types of clean-outs a couple of times a year. It's a great exercise and it really reinforces objective #1 about buying. Constantly moving stuff around to find other stuff takes a lot of time. Clear the stuff out so it's out of your way and you have the space and time to do what you prefer. Over time I have reduced our stuff and don't have to do the big cleanouts very often anymore.
3. I work in increments. I have found that when I try to spend a whole day doing my computer work I get bored with it and start doing distracting things like roaming the web. I work on the computer for about an hour and then I might sew for an hour and then spend 20 minutes doing some house chore. Maybe it's because that's how I worked in the corporate world and it's ingrained in me but segregating my day into bits works great. That's how I came up with the idea to quilt on the longarm for an hour a day. If I don't like what I'm quilting I can tolerate it for an hour and make progress but I don't pressure myself to focus on it full time because that just breeds distractions.
4. I listen to music or audiobooks while I sew to help keep my focus. How does that help? It keeps me focused. If I'm listening to a good book I can sew for hours and hours without distracting myself with something else.
5. Keep lists. I have a to do list but I also keep paper nearby so when I think of something that needs to be done I write it down.  I don't stop sewing to go do the thing and get sidetracked on something else and the next thing I know it's an hour later and I've sewn 1 block. I just write down my though and add it to my to do list or do it on a break. Keeping thoughts on paper frees your brain to focus on what you want to focus on and that means less mistakes!
6. Manage internet time. I can talk about this better than I actually do it. The computer is really distracting for me. After I got a tablet I started saving my blog reading time for the morning and I do it while I am on the exercise bike. Recently I decided to stop posting on Sunday to keep myself off the internet. It's working so far but we'll just have to see how that goes long term.
7. When the TV is on I am doing something. It might be hand work or scanning my blog reader or answering email. It's my nature. I can't help it but I can't just sit and watch TV. I have to be doing something. It's the reason that I don't go to movies. I simply can't sit still that long. 
8. Buy in bulk and shop on line. For things that we use on a regular basis I try to buy in bulk. I'm not the master of this that Judy is, but, when it makes sense for us we do it. Chris buys our meats and groceries once a month. Anything else he picks up at the grocery store next to his workout place. I also got an Amazon Prime membership and I order a LOT of things over the web. Just yesterday we used the last 2 halogen bulbs for our kitchen. Instead of going shopping I got on Amazon and found a great deal on 10 more bulbs and ordered them. Time spent: 5 minutes compared to an hour to go to Lowes.
9. Do chores on a schedule. I do laundry once a week. Period. I make sure we have enough clothes to last at least a week so there's no need for emergency washing. It's a lot more efficient and I don't think about it in between. I try to do this with all of my chores. I allocate an hour for yard work and do as much as I can and the rest can wait until the next day.  Get the extraneous stuff out of your head and you will have more energy to devote to the fun stuff.
10. Figure out the best time of day for different activites. I sew best at night. Computer work is best in the morning. I exercise as soon as I get up. It took a long time to figure all of these things out but it was worth it because it makes me more productive overall.
11. Bonus! This last one is to use the word "no". It's OK to tell people that you can't do something. Your time is valuable. Don't give it away lightly.

Still not enough? Here's one of the best articles that I found on the web with tips for time management.

Now it's your turn. Please share what you do to make time for your art or any other time management tips that you have. As I said, I'm obsessive about it and am always looking for better ways to manage my time and I look forward to reading your tips!

 

The Google Reader dilemma

I told you that I would keep you posted on my progress in finding a replacement for Google Reader. To be honest I am still waiting for a miracle; either Google changes it's mind and keeps Reader or a pure Google Reader clone pops up out of nowhere. 

So far neither of those things has happened so I've been testing. Thank goodness all of these replacment readers can import your Google Reader feeds. Otherwise, I'd never be able to properly test my 400+ feeds. 

I read my feeds on my laptop, my Android tablet and smartphone so I need my new reader to work on all of those platforms. I also need to be able to categorize and save posts. Here's how my testing is going so far

Bloglovin - You saw me post about this last week as I "claimed" my blog. Whether or nut you use Bloglovin you should at least claim your blog. 

PROS: nice interface, commenting is easy, can "save" posts by using "like", has a good Android App

COMS: didn't import my saved (starred) posts from Google Reader

Feedly - This is probably the most popular of the current options.

PROS: imported all of my feeds and the starred posts, has an Android app, has several interface views that you can choose from but none are really like Google Reader

CONS: displays posts with newest first (word on the street is that they will release a last-first option soon), the Android app is ANNOYING! When you want to go the to blog to leave a comment the blog is opened in Feedly and it's often impossible to leave a comment. The comment box will be behind the keypad. If you try to move the screen up Feedly closes the blog and goes back to the menu. 

Commafeed - This one is a new one to me that I've only heard about recently. I tried it out and found it to be totally unsuitable. There seem to be lots of bugs and it's klunky to use.

InoReader - This is the newest one that I've heard of and I started testing it yesterday. It works as an app extension to Chrome.

PROS: This one is the most like Google Reader in look and feel. It imported all of my feeds, categories and starred items.  The screen looks a lot like Google Reader so it's really easy to start using.

CONS: No Android app but I can use it in my browser on the tablet and it works just fine. I expect that it will have an app soon enough.

As it stand now I am leaning toward Bloglovin or InoReader. Feedly makes me want to poke my eyes out. It's too fancy for it's own good. Commafeed isn't even a contender. I'll use both Bloglivin and InoReader for the next month or so and see what kind of improvements either one puts in place.

Have you picked a new Reader yet?

 

Finishing touches

You may remember the decorating jag that I went on in March. I posted about the last 2 rooms here. Well, it's always the last few things that take the longest to accomplish. But now, aside from the quilt for the guest bed, I am officially done with the finishing touches.

In the office I hung this quilt behind the loveseat. This quilt is really special to me because my Great-Grandmother, Mom and I all worked on it. Great-Grandma Rakes made the blocks, Mom pieced the top and did the binding and I quilted it. I hung the framed doily next to it because I think that the medallion motifs of the blocks and the doily are complementary. The doily was made by a Great Aunt in the 1960's. Besides read makes me really happy.

When we built the queen bed frame for the guest room we had to put the bed on this wall. Unfortunately that didn't leave a lot of room for side tables. We could fit one but not two. I solved the lighting dilemma by using wall-mounted lamps. I like these a lot and we also replaced the ceiling fixture so something that goes with these. I'm still holding out hope that I will find a little (10"ish) table to put on this side that someone could put a glass of water or a book on. I have also got to get that quilt done!

In the bedroom I hung my On a Whim log cabin quilt. I had a VERY large framed print here for years that Chris never liked and I prefer looking at a quilt anyway. The plates over the fireplace are my memento from working in London (2000 - 2002). They are the planet series from Poole Pottery. Of course these were created before Pluto was kicked out of the planet club. That bench belonged to my Grandmother and is mostly used for Chris to pile his clothes on.

I used the Hang in Dang it system to hang both new quilts. It works pretty well but it takes some fiddling (safety pins) with the sleeve to keep the quilt from drooping on the ends.

In the guest bathroom you can now see where the color palette came from. When you look out the window you feel like you are in a tree house. That little green bench is my favorite find. My friend, Laura, and I spent the better part of a day checking out antique shops and junk shops for some sort of bench to put here. I wanted something people could put their clothes on or sit on. We found this at a antique/junk shop in Ashland and it was already that color! Everyone thinks I painted it with leftover wall paint but that's exactly how it came and it was only $25. Perfect.

Throw in the 2 new recliners for the den and I am done with decorating unless it involves making quilts. Some day, in a year or so, we will need to repaint the guest house and some day we need new kitchen countertops but all of that is in the future.

However, if the decorating bug has bitten you check out this post at Patchwork Times. She's giving away a Sherwin-Williams gift card.

For me it's now garden season and there are a lot of weeds calling my name.