What is that man working on?

Welllll, best laid plans aside, I have not started quilting the blue and purple quilt.  But, I have been working my leaders and enders, just not as leaders and enders. 

Remember this project of blocks I'm remaking.  I introduced it here.  I'm up to 70 blocks made.  Just 38 to go.  And, I still don't know what layout I'm going to use.  I need to find multiples of 108+108 plain squares and haven't sat down to do it yet.  I keep assuming I'm going to mess one up (or more) and that the number will change, so I shouldn't put too much effort into a plan yet. 

My newer project, the half square triangle project is proceeding at a lightening pace, like all new projects do around here (explaining why that blue and purple quilt isn't done).  I talked about this one first, here.  My plan is starting to take shape.  The center takes 576 1" finished half triangle squares.  And, you can see a couple of blocks of larger squares at the bottom.  The squares get bigger as you move out from the center; 1", 1.5", 2", 3", and 4" if I need it.  The original plan was a 72" square quilt.  But, I'm not so sure.  The biggest problem so far is I haven't made much of a dent in my scraps. 

Except for the two tins.  I've emptied the neutral one and used most of the dark/medium ones.  I may toss those now that there are no joined neutrals to sew them to.  They're pretty scrappy and I have tons of small pressed, orderly, trimmed dark/medium hst's in the other bins so I can afford to lose some little bits of scraps and am on the verge of giving myself permission.  This is all that's left. 

I intended the hst project to be a new leader/ender.  But, I've worked on it pretty steady, so it's not really fair to call it a l/e project.  But, I've kept making progress on my original l/e project. 

A friend sent me three bags of swatches from a fabric manufacturer that she ordered.  She didn't want to throw them away, and she didn't want to sew them, so she sent them to me, knowing that 1.5" is right up my alley.  I've been making 9-patches.  More than 40 so far, made as true l/e blocks, run through the machine at the end of a line of chain piecing.  It accomplishes so many good things, like keeping constant tension on the thread and you don't have long thread tails at the beginning and ending of all your chains.  And, it makes it much easier to get the point of a hst square to feed under the foot without going in the needle hole or folding up against the seam guide. 

And, as I write this, I looked up and saw a basket.  And, peeking around the lip of that basket is my last l/e project.  The four patches are made and they've been sewn to solid red squares.  And then it wasn't good for l/e anymore, so it's sitting, waiting it's turn at bat.  One day.  I fully intend to finish every one of these quilts before I die.

So, I better live a really long time.

A really, really, really long time.

Everybody have a great Friday.  Work is still weird, and I am very glad that today is the last workday of the week.  One of the good things that's happened has been something that most people think of as a pain in the rear.  We can ask five peers to provide feedback on our end of year evaluations. It's hard to think which 5 people you interacted with that you want to provide feedback that could affect a raise.  I'm pretty confident, so I add the challenge of asking four people that I think will say good things...and one person that I had a difficult interaction with that I hope will say good things about what happened after that interaction.  It's really worked out well because those folks sometimes have the best things to say about me and how I worked to keep a relationship, even after something difficult occurred between us.  And, one time, one of them said some pretty unpleasant stuff I needed to hear.  And, my boss at the time really respected my willingness to solicit and accept that feedback, so even that worked to the good.  Anyway, the good thing has been that I've been asked to provide feedback on quite a large number of people.  It's quite a compliment that these people respect me enough to let me have impact on their end of year evaluations and potential for salary increase. 

Today was the deadline and I wrote the last two at the end of the day yesterday.  So, I'm going into Friday ahead of the game.  And, everybody else will probably leave me alone because they'll have waited to write theirs until the last minute.

And, the early bird gets the easy day worm again.

Lane