I finally got started on clue 8 this afternoon, and it is going very very slow. I decided to go ahead and trim all of the units in each set so I don't have to do it later. So instead of making 4 flying geese and moving along, I am making four FG,then trimming them, the FG from clue 6, the pinwheel from 7, and the HSTs from 4 and 7. It is slow going, but I'm chugging along!
I did discover exactly how scant my seams have to be to make the FG work using Bonnie's method and size properly afterwards. That did a lot for my confidence level.
I am still a little behind, but I should be all caught up by Friday as long as there are no more surprise clues!