Sunday, January 17, 2021

My car battery has been dead for almost a week. I don’t even remember the last time I drove it anywhere but when I went out last Wednesday to be sure it would run for an appointment on Friday I couldn’t even unlock the doors. I plugged in my trickle charger but after several days I decided that there wasn’t even enough battery power to start the charger.

So this morning Pat and I went out and boosted my car. I let it run for about half an hour and then drove it out to do a few errands. I dropped some books off the Kiwanis Book Sale; I didn’t fill their bin completely but I got rid of a couple of bags from my closet. I dropped a couple of books off at the Library and made a night deposit at the bank.

My last stop was to get some gas; I was getting low and I thought that if I had to run the car in the driveway I didn’t want to be running out of gas. When I got home I plugged in the trickle charger again and will keep that on until the battery is fully charged.

I wondered when I last put gas in the car so I checked my records and it hadn’t been filled since August, and the time before that was May. I guess one silver lining of the pandemic is that the gas prices have come down (129.9/litre) and I’m not having to fill very often.

Saturday, January 16, 2021

I was working on an Alias Grace block today. I knew it was going to be hard because I didn’t have an actual pattern and it wasn’t one I could easily sketch out. But I found a couple of patterns online that were similar and copied them as best I could.

The block was full of curves and I don’t do curves; I have an appliqué work-around that has served me well with my calendar blocks. But that wasn’t going to be an easy work-around with this one so I decided to learn how to do it properly and sew the darned curves.

My first mistake was getting two curves sewn and then realizing that there was going to be a raw edge. I was able to draw a second curved template and use it to press under a hem. It was easier to do on the pieces that hadn’t been sewn together yet and a bit of glue worked wonders.

I had everything put together when we stopped for lunch. It was far from perfect but I decided I could live with it. I even had one set of edges hand-stitched down.

When I showed Pat he immediately noticed where the curves should have met and where they clearly didn’t. He had suggestions on how to fix it. The only way it was going to work was if I took it all apart. From there I could better match the curves but it meant the blocks had to be trimmed down. I kept matching and stitching and trimming until I got a better fit but a smaller block. There is still some trimming to be done.

It’s good to have a critic in the house (some days) as he challenges me do things better.

Friday, January 15, 2021

I finished up one of my scrappy projects today and I got a few extra blocks done for another.

This is the second pinwheel project I’ve done in a row and I’m pretty tired of pinwheels. When I picked this leader and ender project from all the others I could have picked from I thought it was half-square triangles, not pinwheels. I’ll know better next time and I’ll pick something from my book devoted to half-square triangles.

A pattern is emerging for my latest start. This will be my leader and ender project for a long time; 70 more blocks to go!