Where the heck did August go?

It's hard to believe that today is the last day of August!

I started the month out on a roll -- I quilted up a table runner and was on schedule to get it done in time to ship it off to my sister for her birthday, had a hand sewing project to work on during the Olympics...and then all hell broke loose.

Couch potato no more! There's always EPP!  Go USA!

Not possessing Wanda's foresight, I didn't heed the message that my workhorse computer was failing. Granted, I only had one day's notice, and the warning itself shouldn't have precipitated such a meltdown, but when it crashed, it crashed completely, and I lost several weeks worth of work. Stupid, I know. I'm usually conscientious about backing up my data, but I'd gotten busy and had put it off, and I'm still kicking myself two weeks later for being such an idiot.  I lost a lot of sleep mentally tallying what I could pull off email and what was irreplaceable, and eventually just accepted the fact that there were some things I would have to recreate. To add to the stress, this happened two days before a major project came my way. Between trips to the computer store to salvage my hard drives (nope) and meeting deadlines using an infinitely slower laptop, I was spending 14+ hours a day doing work and my sewing machine was gathering dust.

Early Saturday morning I delivered the first round of documents to my client, marched into the kitchen while the emails were still sending, opened the WIP bin and pulled out the first thing I laid hands on.  I needed to sew.

Looking back through my blog posts to find out when I started this, I'm ashamed (but not surprised) that these 48 5.5" batik blocks were from the spring of 2011. 2011! In 2011, my nephew was nine and came up to my shoulder. He started high school last week and is over six feet tall.

I was, at the time, trying a new technique, and apparently got tired of it because there were another ~50 blocks in the Ziploc that had been paired with inset strips but not sewn. Because of my impulsive sewing outburst Saturday morning, however, I created an conundrum for myself:  I'm pretty sure I don't want to do more of this wavy inset technique, so this has to be a medallion of sorts among the remaining solid blocks, maybe? I've laid out a couple different options, but nothing is floating my boat as of yet.

I'm afraid to go too long without making a decision with this one or it'll end up in the Duffle Bag of Doom and the leftovers to the WIP bin, so any suggestions are welcome.

And let me serve as a cautionary tale to BACK UP YOUR DATA!!!