Saturday, July 23, 2016

It was a sewing day for me and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I finished two more blocks in my Farmer’s Wife sampler; I did a count thinking I was almost there but, sadly, I’ve still got about 30 more blocks to go. These last blocks are a bit harder; even the one I paper-pieced today didn’t seem to go together right so I ended up doing a combination of rotary cutting and paper piecing.

My stack of finished blocks is growing but it is getting harder and harder to find bits of Mum’s fabrics that haven’t already been used. I suspect several of the fabrics in the bin actually came from Deloise.

In past years this has been the weekend for our Seafair celebration. Last year most of my family were here to enjoy the parade and the midway. This year the parade was the only event and we didn’t bother going down to watch it.

A couple of days ago as I was working at my computer upstairs I thought this plane was going to come right through my window. It is a Mars Bomber and I managed to get downstairs fast enough to see it drop some of its water. I think it must have been a training run because, as far as I know, there are no fires in our area.

I’ll be leaving early tomorrow to catch the ferries to the Lower Mainland. Our Comox ferry is out for repairs so the ferries from the Peninsula run have been pulled into service for the Comox route and the other route is being serviced by a much smaller vessel. When I say early, I mean early. The first sailing is at 5:15 but I’m afraid if I wait for the next one at 7:55 it will be full and then I’d be waiting until 10:35 to get on my way. I figure by taking the early ferry there will be less traffic on the road as well; I haven’t driven that road since my last day of work almost six years ago.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.

July 22, 2016

Since I’ve cut down on my quilting days I’ve decided that on those days I will quilt and not do any of the other “stuff” I cram into my days. I wanted to make Friday one of my quilt days but we had an appointment at the bank this morning and I still needed to scrub down the kitchen. So we spent an hour at the bank, I spent an hour or so cleaning and then I came upstairs after a late lunch.

I’ve been piling things up that I want to take to Christy’s – piles with notes on top for a few extras. I think I have everything together now with one exception. Christy sent me a knitting pattern awhile ago and I thought while I was there it would be a good time to start it. Of course I didn’t have the right yarn but I had a scrap of yarn I had used before so I knit a gauge (something I seldom do) and it worked. I purchased the yarn at Walmart but when I looked online to see what colours were available in our store there weren’t a lot of choices. When I asked Christy about the colours Taylor might like she asked if I could make the pattern for her as well. The pattern has sizing from very small to very large so I think it would probably work. Now I’m thinking maybe Taylor, Christy and I should go shopping when I’m down there.

Once the packing and sorting was done I decided to tackle one of my Farmer’s Wife blocks. I’ve done all the easy ones so I knew this would be a challenge. I thought I might have to use templates because the paper-piecing pattern looked too hard to figure out the colours; I put my drafting skills to work and rotary cut all the pieces. I’ve got one section stitched together and, although I’m close, I’m missing some points and it is going to finish too small. I think now that I’m able to see the various pieces I’ll go back to the paper-piecing pattern and see if I can make it work.

The nice thing is that I’m not even stressed about it – I didn’t really plan to sew today so I haven’t really wasted any time!