Fall Quilts

If you always read my xanga and have total recall, then you know that there is a certain up-in-the-airness about my job. I’ve been doing the same job for 13 years or so (I forget exactly how many, but it’s a long time). However, over the past year the business has had some issues and changes, and one of the results was the closing of the store that I managed. I spent a couple of months doing workshops and conferences and online stuff, and then Back to School arrived. The store that the owners’ daughter manages has remained open, and I have been up there four or five days a week for the past couple of months.

I really liked being the online and outside person, and indeed I still am doing that, but I also am doing a lot of driving, and working about 54 hours a week. I am not at all sure what my boss has in mind for when everyone is back in school next week, but I know that my current schedule is only okay with me as a temporary measure.

There have also been some increases in my cost of living lately, not least of which is #1 son’s college tuition. I have always been one to choose a job I like over one that pays well, but financial worries definitely affect the fun quotient of my life. So when a suitable job appeared in my town recently, I applied for it. Yesterday, having done four hours of online work and a store delivery on what was theoretically a day off, I decided to drop by to visit the place.

It is a 10×10 office, a single room. The classes are held at the local university, which is sensible. The person in the office, a pleasant-looking woman surrounded by clutter, was on the phone when I arrived. She covered the phone with her hand and informed me that she wasn’t the person I wanted to talk to. Someone else from some other town would call me, she said. She did not introduce herself, or give me the option of waiting till she finished her phone call. I smiled and left.

Next stop was the IRS office, where I spent another hour. This time I got two agents, both peeking into stuff they shouldn’t have peeked into, apparently. They kept reassuring one another that it would be okay for them to look as long as they didn’t tell me. I assured them that they didn’t have to tell me anything except how to fix the error.

I cordially thanked them at the end of the visit, and expressed a hope that I would never see them again.

So when I got home after this carnival of a morning, I was happy to see the catalog from Keepsake Quilting. I have no intention of buying anything from them. I have two quilts waiting to be finished, plus a half-quilted table runner, and the fabric for a couple more quilting projects. And of course I can’t buy anything but food and toilet paper till #2 songraduates.

But I have this weakness for Hallowe’en quilts. And this is the issue of Keepsake Quilting’s catalog that contains all the Hallowe’en quilts.

I have no idea why I like Hallowe’en quilts so much. What an odd thing to like, after all. Poison green, purple, and orange are not colors I normally choose, and the overall goofiness of the designs isn’t my usual style, either. I don’t do a whole lot of celebrating of Hallowe’en, and I already have three little quilts for that season. But there is something about Hallowe’en quilts…  I can’t explain it. I just really like them.

So I took some time off to admire all the Hallowe’en quilt patterns that I will not be making, and that’s why I have put a bunch of them on this post.