When August rolls around in Korea it  means you have your choice of hot & humid or raining & humid…or sometimes both.

When you have a husband who’s working nights & he catches up on his sleep over the weekend – it means you won’t see his smiling face until 3 or 4pm – if you’re lucky.

Yeah…weekends here are pretty much shot.

So let’s review…

August + (Heat + Humidity) x Sleeping Husband = Lots of Idle Time.

Idle enough that I’ve been able to make great strides on the quilt kit I bought a while back.

All the blocks (in this case, diamonds) have been cut & machine-pieced together.

The center section will have an applique design that I’m about to start soon.

But the fun part is laying everything out on the design wall to see what layout looks best before I stitch the whole thing together.

Design Wall: It’s a glorified piece of white flannel that has a 2 inch grid printed on the back so you can line things up properly. There’s no pinning the fabric – it just sticks up there like magic.

The design wall happens to be our dining/kitchen wall so that I can work from the table.

Still not sure if this is the layout I’ll wind-up going with or not…need to shuffle the blocks around a bit more.

But soon the top will be completed (if I don’t run out of thread & have to order more) and then will come the actual quilting.

So why did you need to know all this?…

No particular reason other than if you’re a wife heading this way be sure to bring along something that will keep you busy in the slow months.

Like August….and the way-too-long winters…and when your husband goes out into the field for 3 weeks…or gets put on nights.

But my big stroke of genius for the day came in the form of a clear, cheapie shower curtain.

I can leave the blocks up, cover them to keep dust, fur or food (don’t ask) off of them & I can still see through it to ponder if I like the layout or not.

Yes, yes…I know. I’m leading quite the exotic, adventurous international life.

[you can envy me if you want, it's ok]