Monday, October 23, 2023

I poked my head outside yesterday and our dahlia plant (from Elizabeth) was bursting with blooms. Every time I cut them I expect it to be the last of the blossoms but I think today may truly be the last ones. I have five big clippings sitting on my counter and it is cold enough that there don’t seem to be any earwigs inside them.

While several others are awaiting the first snowfall of the season I did a walk around the yard and took some photos.

This afternoon was cool but we went out and did a bit of fall clean up and got most of our bulbs planted for Spring. We have one more batch of poppies to plant but they need to soak overnight before planting. We expect rain tomorrow so we’ll wait for another sunny day.

Sunday, October 22, 2023

Pat’s show last night was a great success. The Hall was practically full, the sound was good and everyone seemed to enjoy the presentations. There was a real mixture of folks – friends, people from Pat’s writing groups, people from our Home Routes shows, and some folks we didn’t recognize. 

My intention for today was to clear up my computer work and start on the massive clean up that is required after a week of sewing. I got the computer work done right away but then was distracted by an idea I had this week.

In my pile of quilts waiting to be sandwiched and quilted were several that I knew would be donation quilts. We have a Community Quilt weekend coming up next month so I pulled them from the bins into a separate pile. I’ll take them for the weekend and someone will sandwich them and, if I’m lucky, someone will take them home to quilt. There were a couple that needed borders so I got them attached before setting the tops aside.

That was about all I had time for before lunch. I was kind of liking the afternoon naps but I didn’t have time for one today. We watched the curling and then I did some baking – a rhubarb crisp for supper and some carrot, zucchini and pineapple muffins. 

Baseball will be starting soon so I’d better get settled into my front row seat.

Saturday, October 21, 2023

I’ve had a busy week. Not quite as busy as “in the old days” but busier than I’ve been for quite awhile. I admit I pushed myself but I really wanted to see if I was capable of doing, if not all, most of it.

On Monday I had a medical appointment and I was still working to finish Anna. Once that was done I got projects ready to take to sewing on Tuesday. I stayed a bit longer than usual after lunch but really only accomplished anything before lunch.

Wednesday I had an x-ray on my knee and, since I was at the hospital, I wanted to stop and say hello to my friend. She had been moved from the room I saw her in previously but I was able to find her down another hallway. When I checked at the desk there was some commotion and they weren’t sure whether she was allowed visitors. I decided to wait until the supervisor was called. It turned out that my friend was under “special precautions” and they were discouraging visitors. When I got home I managed to get two projects cut for my sewing days with Stacia and Deloise.

I was up way too early on Thursday – perhaps I was excited to be starting a new project. Annette went together very well and by noon I was ready to sandwich and quilt. Since I was so far ahead I had a nap after lunch but still managed to get the project done before quitting for the day.

I was making a 3-yard quilt on Friday and I was amazed at how quickly it went together. I had trouble figuring out the instructions for the border and while I chatted with Stacia and Deloise on our noon call I realized I had put the top together wrong. They convinced to leave it as it was because who would know the difference? I had another nap and when I got up I decided I would always know it was wrong so I started reverse stitching.

Again the top was together quite quickly but when I set it out to take a photo I realized one of the blocks was turned the wrong way. I decided that could wait for another day to fix.

Today I started taking out the sewing around the block, turned it around, put everything back together and, somehow, ended up with two blocks twisted the wrong way. I took out two complete rows, reverse stitched them, and put them back together and it was all done properly this time. I added the borders but I didn’t have enough fabric for the second border so I’m calling it done. The fabric I have left will be used for the binding and the overall look won’t be much different.

We have been enjoying our sports channels in the evenings – mainly baseball and hockey. We’ve watched a bit of curling and are constantly amazed at what these curlers can do. We were watching some curling while we had lunch and I was falling asleep so I decided on another nap. I think I’m getting into the habit of naps.

Pat has his show at Cranberry Hall tonight and I’ll be off soon.

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Remember those three blocks I cut out yesterday? Remember I said I didn’t think I’d get all three done? I hate to admit that I only completed one of them.

I’m not sure if the block was complicated or if I’ve just lost “it”. The pattern called for some half square triangles so I cut fabric and made my HSTs the usual way, even though the pattern had some method of cutting a strip and them sub cutting them into triangles. Turned out that the pattern required the triangles, not the ones sewn back into squares. So those had to be reverse stitched.

In the next step I was struggling to put one part of the block together based on the small picture I had. A friend rearranged them for me and I felt certain I was on my way. I put together the second part of the block and moved on. But sadly I had run out of pieces and there were still two more sections to go.

Fortunately I took more fabric with me so I was able to cut out the pieces I needed. When I got the four corners together I realized they weren’t exactly like the picture so I did more reverse stitching to get them right. Now that I’ve had time to think about it all I needed to do was rotate the block and it would have been fine.