Slow start or no start?

It's almost time for photos of the first four JQs for 2017 to be posted in the CQ files. Tick, tick, tick ... that's the sound of time running out.

I've been trying to get going on this, but (excuses, excuses!) can't find fabric, or tools, or wadding, or time, or energy, or (dare I say) enthusiasm.

My topic is grids and there are plenty of those about! Yesterday, wandering homewards through Camden Town in the spring Sunday-morning sunshine, the camera found lots of grids, even grids within grids -

The carpentry workroom has been enlarged to allow access to the sewing machine (it's the mysterious object in front of the microwave) -

So there should be no excuses.

In preparation, I lifted a few more of the plastic sheets and found some fabric ... cut backings to size (enough for all the eventual JQs), and found some plain fabric for backgrounds for some fronts. Good start!

Then the iron was needed. I'd used it a few days before - but where was it now? It became crucial to find and use the iron before anything else could be done. I looked in every room, several times, wandering through the flat like the Flying Dutchman, unable to rest. I looked in crazy places, and cursed the way the plastic sheeting hampered the search ... not that it would have been put in such inaccessible places ... and still it was not in the places I'd already visited several times already.

The afternoon went by, enlivened by a little desultory blog-reading and email writing, interspersed with cups of tea and there may have been a biscuit or two involved as well. And of course the restless, fruitless wandering in The Great Search For The Iron.

It grew dark. Nothing had been accomplished. I'd made some supper, and finally T&G showed up to help eat it.

My first question was: "Have you seen the iron? I need to use it and can't find it." Tom went into the workroom to have a look, then brought me in and pointed -

Clever camouflage, isn't it? Or - you could say, it's a helluva mess and enough is enough.

Fast forward to the next day. The iron has been used - and put away again. If being returned to its previous location can be considered as "put away". (It'll have to do for now.) Silver lining - I found some fabric that fits the "gridded" theme -

 And there's this little piece, printed and invisibly quilted, a grid already and waiting for another grid, perhaps of these thread circles or perhaps of something else.

At this point I have gathered some more fabrics - including some grids made with "travel lines" -

 and even a silk scarf that I probably won't cut up -

So now - or maybe tomorrow - I can get down to doing something. As with drawing - "Just start, and see where it leads."

Seeing where it leads is my reason for doing the JQs. I'm questioning everything at the moment; is that called an existential crisis? Doing JQs seems a bit futile in the teeth of what I can see from my window (beggars, gamblers, and goodness knows what the ordinary people are going through), never the horrors and dangers of the world situation.

Just start, and see where it leads.