My Love Affair with Quilt Magazines

I love quilt magazines.  Half the time, I don't even want to make the quilts in them... I just want to look at the pictures and admire the work, the colours used, the new fabric lines (again and again).  About the time I decided to go no-buy on fabric, I made myself stop buying magazines.  I think that was even harder than staying away from fabric.  There's this super fantastic store within walking distance of my apartment and it carries a huge selection of quilting magazines from all over the world.  I can pick up all my favourite Australian quilting magazines there, along with all the fantastic issues published in the United States.  (If there is a Canadian magazine devoted to quilting, I've never seen it, otherwise I would have bought that too.)

I think sometimes you just have to take a huge giant step backwards (like in the kid's game Mother-may-I).  Big giant step back and pause, take the time to re-evaluate the stash and what you buy (maybe even why you buy it) and make some choices because you can't keep acquiring.  For me, that pause and self-analysis took almost a whole year.  Part of reorganizing the stash back in August involved purging print-outs and photo-copies, and even magazines.  I hauled about three bankers' boxes out to the dumpster (my heart aching with every staggering step beneath the load) and assigned myself the task of slowly reviewing what remained of my magazines one at a time to see if I wanted to save something from it.  But I haven't actually kept up with that little assignment.  No big surprise.  I'm great at starting things, but not so disciplined about follow-through.  Yet.  I should have added yet to the end of that sentence.

My goal is to reduce my saved magazines to one half of one book shelf.  I need to make room because I recently subscribed to two quilt magazines.  I know. I know.  But my sweet-faced little nephew (and godson) was selling subscriptions as a school fundraiser... and I caved.  (Thank goodness he wasn't selling chocolate too.)  Besides, I really really wanted quilt magazines back in my life again and I saved about 40% off the retail price by subscribing.  At that price, it's almost as if they were paying me to read them.

So tonight I grabbed a stack of about 15 magazines and will be flipping through them, ripping out any patterns I'm convinced I will actually make... some day.  (I can always go through the ripped out patterns again at a later date, right?)  So far, I'm averaging less than one pattern per magazine.

Talk to the... Tail!

Minor glitch in posting peeks into boxes as I reorganize the stash... my camera battery seems to be letting me down.  So, I thought I'd share a couple of pics I managed to upload before my plans were side-lined.  I picked up a couple of quilting magazines today when I was out running errands.  I know... I know.... buying more magazines when I have three book shelves full of books, patterns, magazines and print-outs to sort through sounds particularly counter-intuitive.  But I couldn't help myself.

Talk to the tail!  Fat cat, Lucas, has been out of sorts since I began reorganizing and moving boxes around.  He managed to get himself locked into my closet yesterday for a couple of hours before I noticed he was missing (he's not accustomed to me being able to shut the door).  When he's upset with me, he sits or lays in front of me with his back to me and pretends he can't hear me.  Right now, he's annoyed because I'm not responding to his begging for treats.  This is when he pulls out all the stops and lays down on whatever I'm reading or working on, like my fabric pieces.

He came to visit temporarily three years ago and stayed.  I assure you he was already fat when I got him!  Honest!  Twenty-five pounds of furry love!  I've tried to put him on a diet a couple of times, but then his normally gentle and affectionate nature disappears.  He bites!  Poor old thing!  He's 14 (or maybe 16, I'm not actually sure) and has arthritis in addition to a serious carb addiction.  He's a good room-mate though and usually stays away from my quilting stuff, unless it's in a garbage bag... he must have been a stray at some point in his life because he can't resist shredding garbage bags to see what's inside.