Roundabout

Again I've found the scrap pile on my cutting table more compelling than what I should be doing.

What I should be doing is finishing the second chevron baby quilt.  I am working on it, or rather I was working on it, but I took a break.

For like a week.  In the sewing room, nothing but crickets.

Know how after you've been away from a task, you sort of have to ease yourself back into it?  No?  Okay, maybe you are a jumper-inner. That's cool. 

I had a boss at one time, a senior lawyer with a big case load who needed multiple legal assistants to do his work jump when he said frog support him.  In the days leading up to a big important trial, when you would think he would be nose to the grindstone in final preparations, what would he do?

He'd empty garbage cans.  Just go around collecting the office garbage from beneath everyone's desks.  

I used to think it was weird.  Okay, I still do.  But I kind of get it.

When I worked at another place and started to feel overwhelmed by deadlines and stuff to be done, sometimes I'd just stop everything, move all the file piles onto the floor, and clean my desk.  I'm talking Windex and paper towels, chasing dust bunnies  from behind the monitor, wiping schmutz off the telephone receiver, and swabbing the screen.  Somehow it helped.  A feeling of accomplishment, however small, can bolster you for the larger task at hand.

So I intended to tidy up my cutting table to ease back into the flow of things in the sewing room, but that (the tidying part) didn't happen.  I started fondling fabric bits piled next to the overflowing trimmings receptacle and pretty soon I was flat out playing in the trash.

And then I had a mini made.

And another in the works.

And soon enough, the machine was humming with pieces of the chevron baby quilt moving through it once again.

Does this sound familiar?  Do you ever do a loopy roundabout to get going where you need to go?