A Thing of Beauty & Great Skate

I spent the majority of last weekend - including a stint that began at 4:15 am - cleaning and organizing my sewing room (aka, my previous office). What a complete, utter, total feeling of elation to now have a wonderful place in which to make quilts.

After acquiring some furniture at amazing prices from an estate sale, I now have two wonderful cabinets, one absolutely ideal for my fabric (which is organized by color) with three glass shelves on top and two wood shelves below, with lovely glass and wood doors. A great piece. The other is the home for my skating and friends/family pictures. This one is right next to my sewing machine, which now looks out on to our patio. This placement allows me to also hear the fountain in the front of the house. It is just delightful. I even bought a lovely wall clock that actually makes a "tick-tock" sound. Very soothing. I could not be happier with my efforts.

The pictures are of my closet, of which I am the most proud, I think. It was a mess before. I couldn't find anything in it, which frustrated me tremendously. Now all is organized, neat and tidy, just the way I like it.

I went through every scrap of fabric I had, sorting by colors, type (novelty, batik, etc) and putting the scraps into boxes with index labels. Dear Husband suggested this was a bit obsessive. Hey, you can take the girl out of the obession, but you can't . . . well, Dear Reader, you can figure out the rest.

As for skating, I had a wonderful day Wednesday. My friend, Maddie (who roomed with me at Worlds and was my Skating Mom for the week) and I are doing the Paso Doble (in mirror image format) at our local rink's annual Holiday Show. We started working on it yesterday. Coach J thought we would have to slow the music down for us "mature skaters" but I said, "No way!" As it turns out, after four attempts we were able to keep up with the music and handle the pattern. A good start. Much work but we have time to practice since the show isn't until just before Christmas. Coach said it was so nice to see me smile when I was doing the Paso.

I had totally private ice from 9:45 until 10:30 when Maddie showed up. I just put on dance music and did all the dances I could do by myself (please recall I am not a solo ice dancer). When the music came to the Swing Dance, I thought, I am going to try this alone. Since my accident, I try to avoid backward skating as much as I can. Half of the SD is going backwards. Earlier I had watched my best skating buddy (who is testing the Ten Fox and European Waltz solo this weekend) drilling her dances. She absolutely inspired me to give the Swing Dance a try. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was a little scared, but once I got the hang of it (two full patterns were pretty pathetic) I felt more at ease. When Coach J arrived on the ice, I was so excited I insisted that after my lesson (focused on the footwork in the Paso), I show her I could solo the Swing Dance. She was just as happy as I was. In fact, my attempt resulted in an "Awesome!" from Coach; first ever in all the years I've been skating.

Tomorrow I skate in the morning, then home to quilt. Will focus entirely on dance and Silver Moves. Can't wait!