Decisions, decisions

I know it was cold where you are, but it was cold here last week, too.  In the low 20s.  There was a lot of staying inside.  Saturday was also cold, but by yesterday, we walked the dogs in our shirtsleeves, and could likely have worn shorts.  Texas weather be crazy.  I'm still waiting to see the effect on the trees, but my garden fared well.  Things that should have died back did and some things I thought would die back didn't.  It looks rough out there right now, but this should be our last hard freeze, so nature can get started bringing back the beautiful.  (I've got to get those 3 bricks picked up.  I don't know where they came from and I don't know what's planted under them)

I spent a lot of time quilting.  Not to the sacrifice of everything else, like I used to, but still, a lot more than I have been.  As I was cutting more fabric, I noticed that the green print I am using in my joining squares has a direction.  So does the yellow, but it's much more subtle.  I hadn't really paid attention to that before.  And, I thought maybe the green should be on the horizontal and the yellow on the vertical.  

Those of you who have followed me for a while can probably tell the group what happened next.  

I took it all apart and started over.  

Not all of it.  I didn't take any arcs apart, but I did disassemble the block I had assembled and take arcs off wedges to re-orient them.  That took most of Saturday, but by Sunday, I was making progress again and now I have 9 blocks assembled.  

This is as far as I'm assembling blocks for now.  There will be several kinds of blocks needed.  Some will have another wedge added on the top or right before being assembled.  What I'm seeing online tells me  that the curve to join two rows should be an s rather than a scallop and that will take multiple kinds of blocks.  The one below that has a wedge on the bottom will be joined to one that doesn't have a wedge on the bottom so that I'll go down the left side and up the right and join to another curve that will go up on the left and then down.  

As I continue to piece, I'll get more organized, but even now, there's a ton of marking.  I thought I'd share one tip on matching the points at the ends of the wedges.  I did it wrong two weeks ago and had to take them apart and re-assemble.  Then, I did it again this weekend, so it's something I really need to remember and writing it down should help with that.  

Normally, I mark match points on the right side of the fabric and I just make a small tic mark where I want the points to match.  But, on this curve, I have to mark one piece of fabric on the front and one on the back in order to get the points to match.  And on the back, it's not just a tic mark, I'm marking the seam line where I'm going to be sewing.  If I don't do that, then every match point is off by 1/8th inch.  If I do it, then they all match in the first go.  (that feels like a miracle technique)

Now, surely I'll be able to remember that for the rest of this quilt.  

Other than that, it was a quiet week.  Dottie got a little anxious from not getting walks.  There was lots of playing with her and trying to give her the zoomies in the evening to burn off some energy before bed.  I was hyper focused at work on a project, so by the time Rob got home, I could barely hold conversation because I was so tired and out of words.  I like work when it's busy but maybe not quite so focused.  Unfortunately, by Friday, I was only up to knocking out the weekly to-do list.  I could not even look at the project.  I'm running out of ideas to solve the problem.  My only consolation is that I'm about the 5th person that's tried and no one else has been able to do it either.  

I'm watching the destruction of government compassion.  That means we will need to be the compassionate ones.  And, honestly, I am not sure I can offer compassion to those that voted for trump.  I believe there should be vote confirmation before we help others.  Maybe that makes me as bad as the orange moron and his co-president, the south african racist.  I don't really care.  I don't think I should have to help anyone that voted for this or that didn't vote.  My compassion is for people that at least tried.  People that at least care.  

I'm also having thoughts and feelings about this.  

Remember that this Friday is 02/28, the spend no money day.  I'm reading that it's mostly to affect large businesses, but that doesn't feel focused enough for me.  I'm choosing not to spend any money that day.  I'll support my local small businesses a little extra on the days before and after to make up for it.  

Be well.  Be strong.  Support one another.  And, maybe be a bigger person than me and offer compassion to everyone.  

Lane

Funereal

You may remember that Rob and I visited my oldest friend a couple months ago.  She'd moved away and moved back.  She was in poor health but was trying to get on track to a healthier life.  

She passed away.  We don't know from what.  Her son went on vacation and when he came back, he found her.  I spent Wednesday with he and his wife, making arrangements.  I spent Thursday with them going through paperwork.  Please, please, please make sure someone knows where to find your passcodes into your phone and computer.  That's where your important information is stored and it's hell getting access to anything without them.  And, write a will, even if it's just on the back of a napkin.  

Death is so weird.  I'm not a very emotional person, I guess.  I'll cry at the end of the movie when the hero dies, but less likely to shed tears in other situations where most people cry.  That's when I go full on action mode.  'I sometimes find the emotional responses of others perplexing', I say in my Sheldon Cooper voice.  It's okay tho, because I've never seen an emotional situation that wasn't bettered by someone offering a glass of water or a bite to eat or an 'I'm on it' or a 'that's already taken care of.'  

Danna was born 4 days after me.  We used to celebrate our birthdays together and that's what I told Rob I wanted to do this year.  But, I'll try to open a bottle of wine and drink a toast to her this week.  

My birthday was Saturday.  As an introvert, I needed to spend it resting, so Rob and I went out and ran some errands, had a nice lunch and a nicer dinner and I spent the rest of the day cutting and sewing.  When we stopped for lunch, it was next door to a Nothing Bundt Cake store (only sells bundt cakes) and I said we should get me a cake.  After a very unhealthy lunch, we forgot, so yesterday, I baked myself an orange bundt cake.  And, it was soooooo good.  Definitely a recipe that I'll be writing down.  

Yesterday, we covered the greenhouses because we're going to have another hard freeze.  The bad news is that the trees have already started to bud.  This is what happened a few years ago when the trees were damaged so badly.  My consolation is that they were starting to bud a couple weeks ago when we had our last hard freeze and it didn't seem to affect them.  Temps this week should only be as low as they were a couple weeks ago.  Fingers are crossed.  

Okay, so quilt progress.  I got the first block pieced.  This was a test block.  Better make sure everything was going to go together before I cut 42 of them.  Other than the fact that the horizontal wedge should have been on the bottom of the block, not the top, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  This was supposed to be a bottom corner, but it's a top.  I guess there's no reason I can't start at the top.  

I'm hoping that as I continue to piece sections together, I can start to do it with less pins.  As it is now, I pin for an hour, using every pin I own, then I sew for 5 minutes.  And, repeat.  Boring.  But, highly effective.  This is my progress for the weekend.  I ran out of green and yellow joining squares and need to cut more, but there are enough background pieces cut for 12 blocks.  That's the first two rows.  

I suspect I will be pinning during some meetings this week.  

When I started drawing and considering borders, I realized I needed more fabric, so we took a trip to our local JoAnn's.  And, found out that it's closing.  They no longer accept coupons and all sales are final.  The cashier that we always talk to didn't tell us when, but he told us goodbye and thanks for always being pleasant, in case we don't see him again.  That's sad.  JoAnn's has been part of my life as much as my usual grocery store has been.  It was a very big part of my quilting adventure.  There will still be a store in town, but it won't be conveniently located.  If I really needed something, I could go there, but it would be easier to go to a local quilt shop for most of my quilting needs.  

We continue to watch our government being dismantled.  Surprisingly, I haven't seen any commentary on what laying off 2M people would do to the economy, but since unemployment is generally paid by the states, that feels like it's only going to shift the burden to the states, which are not prepared.  But, it does free up money for musk to steal before it moves to mother russia.  

And, unfortunately, that is as plausible a scenario as any other right now. 

It's the not knowing that's making me nuts.  And, now, the justice dept has been so totally corrupted that they're making deals on prosecution for crime if people support trump's agenda.  Which means all of us that don't support the agenda will soon be criminals.  

Screw dat!  

 I hope that you're hearing about a boycott on 02/28.  The plan is for everyone to not spend money that day.  Not a dime.  I don't know what it will accomplish, other than to say we are here and we don't approve.  But, it's something.  Something I can do to say this ain't right.  So, set a reminder to buy whatever you need on the 27th.  Or save it til the 1st.  

Any act of resistance is worthwhile.  

In the meantime, have a great week!  I'll be learning about probate.  Fun times.  

Lane

In the background

We got fences stained and sealed this weekend.  That was a huge chore.  We'd planned on Saturday, but it was too windy.  Yesterday seemed perfect.  Just a little breeze and temps that needed a sweatshirt to be comfy.  It only took about 3.5 hours plus another couple for Rob to get set up and cleaned up.  Compared to what it would have cost to have someone do it (my originally preferred idea), it wasn't bad at all.  

We worked as a team.  I had a "drop wall" which was a drop cloth suspended on some 8' long 1x2 boards.  I would spread them out and lean them across the back of the section he was spraying and when he was done with that section, I'd accordion them up and spread them out over the next section.  They came out looking very dark and red.  

Rob is getting everything set up here.  The fences didn't look bad.  Rob washed them last week and that brightened them up some.  But, there were spots where sun and my water hoses had faded the stain and Rob said if we'd waited another year, he would have had to power spray a layer of gray wood off the boards before he could seal them.  

He even had enough left over to seal the outhouse (tool shed).  The outhouse was built from fence wood from the original fence that was here when I bought the house.  We've had it replaced twice since then.  

Since we didn't do fences on Saturday, we had time to go pick up background fabric for the double wedding ring 25th anniversary quilt.  Remember that we wanted a medium gray background.  But, we both fell in love with a dark gray.  It has a directional print, so it's going to be quite the challenge to keep that moving in the same direction throughout the whole thing.  

Next it was time to choose the joining squares.  There's a substitute background fabric here.  I just needed the right color because the actual background was in the washer being prepped.  This is what we chose because the joining squares disappear into the piecing instead of being a focal point of their own.  I'll use green on all the arcs going in one direction and yellow on all the arcs going in the other.  

I also played with this idea.  In the quilt, the joining squares form rows and columns.  I was going to alternate the rows and columns, so in this pic, there's a yellow row and a brown row and a green column and a blue column.  I think there's something there if I ever make this pattern again, but not for this quilt.  It doesn't make enough of a statement in all the randomly pieced arcs and ends up looking messy instead of artistic.

So now it's just finding time to cut out the background shapes.  Last time I cut them with thin plastic templates and a rotary cutter.  This time, I plan to use the templates to trace them on the back of the fabric and then cut them out with scissors or a rotary cutter.  Once I get them traced, I can use either method to cut them out without risk of cutting the plastic template and changing the shape of it.  Then, the quilt goes together in rows.  I remember there being a tutorial on YouTube about how to assemble the rows.  I'll have to look for it again as it was very helpful.  

A couple of funny things I want to share.  

And a couple that are less funny.  

I didn't mean to imply last week that I wouldn't still be bitching about politics.  I did that under Biden and Obama and I'm sure not going to stop now.  But, my thoughts need to be more factual and less name calling.  So, here's one that really hit home this morning.  If elon was looking for fraud in our government, he'd be hiring forensic accountants, not 22 year old programmers.  It appears that he plans to drain the American treasury and I have no doubt that he'd do it.  He and trump are both high from smoking their own cash and they've already done more damage than can be repaired in my lifetime.  The courts won't stop them.  Only rebellion will.  And, I'm not sure we have the stomach for it.  Yet.

And, now the white nationalists are calling last night's superb owl half time show "black nationalist".  That's got civil unrest written all over it.  

Dear maga, how many gays and people of color must die before you start to feel more special than the rest of us again?  Because that's what this is all about.  magats thought that gays and people of color getting attention meant they weren't more special than everyone else anymore and they cannot stand that.  I see it in my own family.  You will not be forgiven, on earth or in heaven.  

Be well.  Have a good week.  Stay strong.  We are watching the unwinding of our lifestyle, but not our lives.  At least not yet.  Hang on to who you are as long as you can.  And, remember, it's okay to pretend to be someone other than who you really are when your survival depends on it.  

Lane

Arc-out

All 194 arcs are complete and I told Rob yesterday we needed to pick a background.  If we're going with gray, it needs to be a warm gray.  I laid arcs out on a couple, but I didn't have a medium gray that was warm, so we'll need a trip to the fabric store.  Oh, no, not the fabric store.  Oh darn.  

Here's a quick review of how I make an arc.  Unfortunately, I didn't start taking pics until the last arcs were already in progress.  

I'm using freezer paper piecing instead of regular paper.  That means I don't sew through the paper and I can use templates over and over (about 6 times).  If you do regular paper piecing, you're going to notice that I trim at a weird place.  

First, I center the first wedge of the template on the wrong side of a fabric square, making sure it covers all the seams and edges, then I iron it to stick them together.  Next, I match a second square to the first, right sides together and fold the paper back along the seam line and sew along the fold.  The 2.5" squares are convenient because I can just line them up along the side when attaching the next piece.  

Then I use my add a quarter ruler to trim the seam allowance.

Then I unfold the fabric and the paper and finger press the seam fold and iron it down from the front.  You're just forming a crisp fold at the seam line.  Don't iron the whole piece of fabric and be sure not to touch the iron to the freezer paper.  

Ironing from the front won't adhere the paper to the fabric very well, so I also iron from the back, making sure I only adhere fabric to paper up to th next fold line.  I'll need to fold at that seam line in order to attach the next piece.  Notice that I haven't trimmed that.  I'll use that extra fabric to line up the edges of the next square.  

When all the pieces are attached, I trim all the way around with scissors.

And, then peel the paper off.  Be sure to peel in the direction of the seam allowances.  If you go against that, the seam allowance will ravel.  

Doing it that way, I was able to make 194 arcs in three weeks.  I estimate it took about 35 hours.  I made 20 templates to start with, but accidentally ironed a bunch of them together, damaging them.  4 didn't last long and I made another 8, but 16 of the originals made it all the way through.  You can see from the one above that they collect lint.  Eventually they'll pick up so much lint that they won't stick anymore.  

This is the most expensive fish I ever bought.  The woman at the fish store was treating me like I was a moron when she sold him to me (she's 90% of the reason we don't go back to that fish store.  the other 10% is because a third of the fish I bought there died, a day or two after their warranty expired), but I'm glad I bought him.  I never know where he's going to be hanging out...and by that, I mean literally hanging by his mouth.  He loves to hang upside down from the underside of a rock.  Here, he's hanging on the side of one.  

This weekend, we cleared out the garden.  It's a perennial garden, so dies back every year after the first good freeze and I cut it to the ground.  This year, we're sealing the fences again, so it was double important that I get it all out of Rob's way so he can move freely.  While I was digging around, this little guy decided he'd like to see how bad he could scare me.  He was wildly successful.  

We are entering week 3 of the horror show.  I keep reading on social media that someone should do something and I keep wondering who could do anything and what could they do?  I think we're all sitting here with stunned looks on our faces, watching the nightmare unfold, waiting to see if those checks and balances that we learned about in school are going to work.  

Rob thinks I should be more careful about what I say on here.  He didn't say that because he wouldn't, and that approach wouldn't have worked.  But, he conveyed it nonetheless and I know he's right.  No need to draw attention to myself.  Online is not anonymous.  

But, I can't resist this one.  This is the DEI that we don't need.  

Everybody have a great week!  I have to go to the office on Thursday.  Excuse me while I go hunt for my excitement.  But, I'm learning that this is just one day and I can easily get through it pretending.  I'm a good pretender.  But in my heart, I still yearn for retirement.  

Lane