That holiday feeling

What can I say, it has been crazy here (& not here; I've been on the road).  The last Saturday of last month was the deadline for the Christmas Star quilt block swap & by mid-day Sunday one third of the blocks were still MIA.  Of those missing, one person had said she had run out of time, one person had told me her set was finished over a month earlier but I have not heard from her since & as for the rest I had no idea.

So I made an executive decision.  I had already polled the on-time swappers & found that only one person besides me; I don't care either way as I will not be...wait a minute, I am getting ahead of myself!   
I started the FaceBook Quilt Block Swap group after participating in yet another downer on-line swap: I was one of only two people who actually forwarded our blocks to the others.  That was 2008.  Since then I have in fact received one more of the 'owed' blocks, in December 2009 if you are curious.  That means seven other people got my blocks & never did their part & never sent mine back & yes, some of them still regularly sign up for on-line swaps in the same network (I have no idea if they participate or not, I just see their names on the lists).  So, the new idea was everyone send their blocks to a central location (me!), what is here on the date swaps, what is not, does not. 

Most of our swaps are open -you don't have to say you plan to swap, you just have to get your set of five here on time- & this works just fine.  This swap, however was bigger than the others & we had a sign-up that closed February 28th. That means not-less-than 6.5 months to make fifteen blocks to get here by September 25th.  & five of the fifteen did not make the deadline.  Unfortunately, my calendar is full-to-overflowing right now & pushing off the the next free week-end would not work (no one wants to get a Christmas project in mid-November).

You can probably guess my executive decision.  The swap happened on the scheduled Sunday, as planned.  On that Monday, when I brought Lilly to the vet, I loaded the envelopes into the truck as well & they went to the PO later that same day.  On Tuesday, two more sets arrived at the house.  On Wednesday, I left town.  Now I am back & looking at the two sets that arrived late & three that came back to me (two for insufficient postage -one of them reflecting pre-rate changes because that is how long ago she mailed in her stars- & one because C******** was so scrambled when she made up her original package she addressed her return envelope to herself at my address & I was so scrambled when I mailed it I did not catch it).

Yes, this whole business has left me with what I call That Holiday Feeling.  Thankfully, Steve & Edyie can always shake me out of it.  Another thing that is helping make it better is the truly beautiful blocks that WERE exchanged.  For a week no, I have been dreaming of the many many ways I could use these blocks, including supplementing them a bit as now that I have no illusions more will be coming, I can get down to business myself.