Midweek: WITB rediscovery

The moon this morning.  The phone camera shutter doesn't like the cold!   

Our kitchen counter this week.  The 5-year-old dishwasher is on the fritz (error code "H20" meaning that the water pump isn't pumping).  The repairman can't get here until next Monday.  I had a dish rack but no drainboard; fortunately I had a large plastic container in the cupboard.

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WITB = what's in the box?  Though technically this project was in a drawer.  

A long time ago I began to deal with a ziploc bag of 1.5" HSTs by making cat's cradle units. (I looked that up and I think that's a widely-used term for them.)  I put units together, added a large triangle, and made a dozen blocks before I put them away.   

It turned out I had enough of the pink print to make a total of 44 blocks (12 already made + 12 made this week = 20 to go).    I had enough of the pink print to make 10 more blocks for a total of 34.  I learned this AFTER I made 132 cat's cradle units. I only need 60. 

Blocks are 6.5" unfinished.    I anticipate a 6 x 7 5 x 6 setting with two four blocks to piece into the back.

Linking up with Wednesday Wait Loss

Weekly update: RSC pink + SAHRR

 

The weather hasn't been conducive to walks . . . hope I can get out this week.  Meanwhile, in the studio: 

My 52 Placemats project is underway with these two in pink.   

I came across a design for my 2025 RSC project.  Eight 6-1/2" 9Ps each month.

I started a batch of Ohio Stars just because. 

(I am avoiding dealing with Old Town.) 

I'm determined to stick with the Stay at Home Round Robin this year.   Here's my starter block.  It was the starter block for the guild 2018 round robin that I switched up (see how it began and ended in this post).  

Linking up with Sew and Tell  Design Wall Monday  Oh Scrap! as well as SAHRR 2025

Friday check in: top-a-long + reading

 

Thanks to everyone who's asked for our address for Stevens' birthday card shower. It's not too late--PM me to send the address. 

Quick post this morning.   The Running Doe top-a-long (what is that? read details here) is a flimsy.  

I cut into a few Kaffe prints, including the spashy center flowers.  I used up the large part of several others.  (I'm trying to get over the "can't cut this!" hurdle.) 

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In a small outport town in Nova Scotia in the last months of World War I a dead whale is stranded on the shoreline.  In a hotel in town Elizabeth Frame shoots her husband on their wedding night. She then goes to the whale carcass and shoots the revolver into its blowhole.   Halifax newspaper reporter Toby Havenshaw is dispatched to cover the trial.   Though there is no doubt of Elizabeth's guilt, Toby is determined to uncover her motive.  Things get more complicated when Elizabeth runs off with the court stenographer, a shell-shocked veteran of the war.   Toby's wife Amelia (a surgeon in Halifax returned from the European front) is his sounding-board, anchor, and soulmate through all of this.  

The narration is excerpts from Toby's reporter's journal, told with bemusement and irony. His turns of phrase and observations are wonderful.  "There are missed opportunities to be a better person. To dignify an undignified situation. You miss one of these, it doesn't come back." (p. 34)

"A person sizes up each situation as it comes, and you're either charitable toward it or you aren't charitable." (p. 118)  "Wherever you sit, so sit all the insistences of fate. Still, the moments [hold] promise of a full life." (p. 190) 

One of the Christian Science Monitor's best books of 2024, and rightly so.   And, bonus! This fulfills The Page Turner 2025 prompt for "a book with chapter titles."

Linking up with Finished or Not Friday and Off the Wall Friday

Midweek: 25 blocks, OMG 2025, top-a-long

 

All 25 Old Town blocks are assembled.  I think the design looks good this way but the sashing, which I have yet to make, kicks it up several notches.  I will persevere.

I've begun something new. 

I signed up for the Top-a-long with Running Doe Quilts .  She is a designer for Villa Rosa. One pattern a month with the goal of making a flimsy.  Getting it quilted is not required.  The January pattern is Amelia . 

These are big blocks -- 17" finished -- and that 8-1/2" center square called for the jumbo Kaffe flowers.  

My One Monthly Goal for January is, as usual, two goals:

(a)  finish the Amelia top

(b)  get started on my 2025 placemat project 

Sunny and cold today.  AAUW book group meets in person this afternoon.  Quilt guild meets by Zoom tonight. 

Linking up with Wednesday Wait Loss.  (I missed the sign up deadline for January OMG.)

Weekly update: card shower request, Old Town, estate sale + bargains

 I'm starting this week's post with a personal request.

 Stevens will be 85 on January 18.  Can you mail him a birthday card?  If you don't have our address, indicate that in your comment and I will PM it to you.  Five years ago he was quite surprised to get so many cards.   This year he's alert but he's declining, so now is the time.  THANK YOU! 

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I've made 12 out of the 25 blocks for Old Town.  I haven't begun to cut, let alone sew, the turquoise and neutral units for the sashing.  

Yesterday was the 15th and final sale of Barb M's estate.  Each sale has benefited a different charity. That $27,171 is after expenses (1400 wash loads, storage unit, and hotel meeting room rental).    Not only have I enhanced my stash but I’ve also enhanced my friendships.

There wasn't much left but I managed to buy a few pieces. (Note: more of that Hoffman 1985 orchid print, used for the zig zag quilt.) $25 for fabric and $5 for the set of patterns (Moda U 2007-2008 mystery).

It's been too cold to hike in forest preserves but it's important to get Stevens out so on Friday afternoon we got groceries and went to two thrift shops. Bargain day! How could I resist? The butterflies and the cars are 108" wide--$3.99 each. I count a yard of 108" as 3 yards (3 x 36") -- so all of this works out to .19 (nineteen cents) per yard. Yes, I'm going to share the bounty!

Linking up with Oh Scrap! Design Wall Monday Sew and Tell

Friday check in: a finish + book club selections for January

 

I've bundled up for two forest preserve walks this week.  Fortunately the Kicks (S's car that I drive) stays warm so he is comfortable.  

We are at the southern edge of the paper birch range.  Hickory nuts.  The icy snow sparkles. 

All the Christmas decor is put away except for the wreath.  Each year I think about going through the storage boxes and culling decorations that I didn't use this year (or last year or the year before....) Then I think what if I want to change things up next season? So I just close up the boxes and put them back in the basement closet. 

The amaryllis is in full bloom.  It's called Apple Blossom.

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Here's my first finish of 2025!  

This is last year's guild round robin.  (This post shows the other RR projects and my starter block.)   

It will be donated to a good cause, of which there are many. 

The back is an estate sale bargain.  The inset strip meant I didn't have to match the print.  

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I have finished both book club selections for January.

AAUW Reflections on Reading will discuss Heather Sellers' memoir next week.   Sellers grew up shuttling between her alcoholic father and mentally ill (maybe schizoid?) mother. She also deals with the rare neurological condition prosopagnosia.  She can see faces but she cannot remember them. She compensates by using other cues (hair, body language), though there are frequent mixups (other girls in school accused her of being snobby; greeting a complete stranger with a big hug).  She doesn't get an accurate diagnosis until she is nearly 40.   By that time she is a college professor and married (then unmarried) to a man who sort of understands her condition.  

Sellers' story reminds me of The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls or Educated by Tara Westover:   how can anyone have grown up and survived with such parents?   What are the people we encounter every day dealing with?

Reading Sisters, the P.E.O. online book club, will discuss Becoming Madame Secretary on January 14. It is hard for us to imagine the precariousness of people's finances in the early 20th century and before.  Social Security has ensured a measure of stability for elderly Americans (a great deal of stability to many).   It was Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins who pushed the enabling legislation through to congressional approval.  

Who was Madame Secretary?  Born in Maine, raised in Worcester, and educated at Mount Holyoke, Frances Perkins began her career as a social reformer working to abolish child labor and to improve conditions for workers in the food industry.  She was befriended by Eleanor Roosevelt and appointed to a state labor position by New York Governor Al Smith that continued under Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Roosevelt was elected to the presidency he appointed her the U. S. Secretary of Labor.   

Perkins' family home in Newcastle, Maine, is now a National Historic Site.  

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Linking up with Finished or Not Friday

Happy New Year! Old Town, the Annual Reckoning and goals for 2025

I faithfully remembered the first-day rabbit, rabbit charm.

 I'm trying a variation to the traditional Hoppin' John.  It's a  recipe from the Washington Post:   Jollof Rice.  In addition to the black-eyed peas it has brown rice, canned tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, onion, garlic, tumeric, and thyme.   The peas are simmering now (with salt pork) and smell delicious.

This was us last evening.   

We watched Dalgleish (based on P.D. James mysteries) and an episode of The Larkins (delightful!). 

Bonnie surprised everyone yesterday with Part 8 of the Old Town mystery.   I used the Studio 180 Wing Clipper ruler for four-at-a-time flying geese -- and when I began to trim them I discovered that I had cut ALL the goose squares 1/4" too small!   I cut an entirely new batch of goose and wing squares and by the end of TV-watching they were finished. 

Left:  the small geese. Right: the correct geese. 

This is my 27th Annual Reckoning of quilt fabric used and acquired.  Rather than reprint the ever-longer spreadsheet I'll get right to the point:

2024 Fabric  OUT, 2024:  931 yards.  Fabric IN, 2024:   1631 yards.   Expense:  $2533 which is $1.55 per yard.   

I got really, really good deals at estate sales this year--Barb M's and others.  

Total, 1998-2024:   OUT: 10,844 yards.  IN:  17,375 yards.  Expense: $35,322.   Yearly averages, 1998-2024:  OUT: 402.   IN: 532 yards.  Expense: $1431, $2.69 per yard. 

I'm pleased with my resistance to year-end sales, including the closeout of a local quilt shop.  

My overarching goal is to ENJOY.   Enjoy the process, enjoy learning new techniques, enjoy the stash.   I'd like to accomplish: 

*    52 placemats for the guild and other charity projects 

*     12 wheelchair-sized quilts, started and finished

*     Assess the box of flimsies and decide those I will quilt myself and those I will have quilted.  Move the remainder on to those who finish quilts for charity projects.

*     Declutter.  I've signed up for Karen's declutter challenge at Just Get It Done

Thanks to all of you who've read my posts this past year.  I look forward to reading your comments and to visiting your blogs in 2025.            Linking up with Jennifer's Wednesday Wait Loss and Yvonne's 2025 Planning Party

The Best of 2024

 

"Best of" and "year in review" lists are everywhere this week.  There are roundups of op-eds, celebrity deaths, the primary-to-convention-to-election, sports, movies and televison, theater, and music -- and my bailiwicks of quilts and books.  

I will post the Annual Reckoning (fabric used and acquired) and 2025 goals tomorrow.   

Here are my favorite quilts of 2024. Click on the highlighted link to get the backstory. 

#1   Kamala banner  

Modern Quilt Studio sold the pattern for $10 and raised $100,000 for the Harris/Walz campaign.  My banner hung next to the front door from August through the election. (The house faces due west so this faded considerably.) 

#2   MQG mini swap

I used neckties to make this 26" mini for Sara, my assigned partner in the annual MQG swap.  See the next entry for what she made for me! 

(I missed the sign up for the 2025 swap, alas.)  

#3  Monarch and Zinnia

This is what Sara sent me for the MQG mini swap.  It is drop-dead magnificent. 

#4 Morning at the Marsh 

I was one of the participants in the Villa Rosa Designs blog hop.  "31" was one of the featured patterns.  

#5  Butterfly Effect  

A 60th birthday gift for a friend.  Design concept is by Jan Mullen (Star Gazey Quilts). 

  

  

Two quilts using Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Mountain Majesties pattern.   

#6 A   Scrappy Mountains

A commission. 

#6 B  Christmas Peaks

The 2024 AAUW holiday raffle quilt. 

#7  Round Robin rescue

I made two tote bags out of the flimsy from the 2018 guild round robin.  

#8 Homespuns

These are still flimsies. 

#9   Floral Maze

The third maze quilt I've made. Photos of the other two are in the highlighted post. 

   

 #10  Pinwheel Nine Patch

This year's AAUW spring raffle quilt.  I made the flimsy in 2021 and had it quilted in 2024.

Linking up with other quilt bloggers for Best of 2024

Weekly update: Christmas week, visitors, and an unexpected project

 My internal calendar was thrown off with Christmas in the middle of the week.  We went to the 5 p.m. Christmas Eve service at North Prairie UMC (the "other" Methodist church in town because we didn't want to go out at 9 p.m. for the service at our church).   My sister came for lunch on Christmas Day.  (Her husband is an HVAC guy and had several service calls (gotta have an operating furnace!).)  She and I talk fairly often but we hadn't met in person since last spring.  

On Thursday Bob posted that he was enjoying Christmas in Lake Forest with his foster family. I promptly sent a message asking if he could come to visit and he did!

In 1981 Stevens hired Bob to be the government documents librarian at Pittsburg State University.  We moved in 1982.   After Stevens' immediate successor as dean left PSU Bob was appointed dean and held the position until he retired.   Though I've seen Bob at ALA conferences (most recently 2019), it had been more than 30 years since Stevens and Bob had met.

Mild temperatures meant we got out for walks.  

Fungus at Lyons Woods and a dormant but still green prickly pear at Illinois Beach State Park.

The ornaments I hung on Tuesday were still there on Saturday but the paint was stripped off.  

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 Part Six of the Old Town mystery dropped on Monday.   Another easy step.

I haven't begun Part Seven (released Friday).  Instead I concentrated on the project I began last week.   

I was inspired by a quilt by Deb (here).  I think I found it when I was looking for half-rectangle block designs.  

My quilt gave me the opportunity to use the Studio 180 Half-Rects ruler.  (The cut-big-and-trim method results in perfectly-sized units.)    The blue background is Kaffe Aboriginal Dots.  I used virtually every bit that I had, which required piecing scraps and then recutting.   The brights are some Kaffe, some Serious Whimsy, and a few others.  

Blocks are 4 x 8 finished (the largest the ruler makes).  Quilt is 48 x 56.  

The splashy orchid print on the back is a Hoffman from 1985 (selvedge has the date) that I got at Barb M's estate sale. The other is a newish Kaffe. 

I quilted it in diagonal lines with the serpentine stitch. 

Next up will be Old Town.  

Linking up with Oh Scrap!   Sew and Tell    Design Wall Monday

P.S.  We streamed four movies this week.
  

I'd never seen Christmas in Connecticut (1945)--fun.  It had been years since we last watched Home Alone (1990).  (I didn't realize that Catherine O'Hara, the mom, was Moira Rose in Schitt's Creek. Quite a different mom!)    

No photo: we also saw Elf.  Some funny parts but not cute or charming.

A departure from Christmas fare:   The Six Triple Eight, now on Netflix.  It's based on the true story of the Black WAC unit who cleared up the backlog of 17 million pieces of undelivered mail (incoming and outgoing) during World War II.  It was decades until the women received the recognition and honor they deserved.   I recommend it.   

P.S. 2   Our New Hampshire family sent gourmet treats from Stonewall Kitchen. Almost as good as the food are the boxes and hamper they came in.  Never turn down a sturdy box!  

  

Weekly update: solstice, ornament bombing, and a little sewing

 

On Thursday Zion Woman's Club members helped with the Elf Network.  The bags contain sorted Christmas gifts, personalized by age/gender for each family.  Bags are numbered, people present their number and get their bag.  It was very efficient.   

 
We did nothing to observe the solstice but now there will be a minute more daylight in the morning and in the evening.   I love this poem. A friend said she rereads Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series this time of year.  I'd like to revisit them but there are so many other books in the queue. . .

On a forest preserve walk during the first Covid Christmas (just four years ago?!) I encountered Christmas ornaments hung on tree branches along the trail.  Since then I've looked for ornaments for cheap at rummage sales or thrift shops so I can contribute, too. (The hard part is to remember to retrieve them from wherever I've put them.) 

  

Someone got ahead of me with this cardinal. 

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In the studio: 

I'm caught up on the Old Town mystery.  Here are parts four and five.  

I thought I was caught up. Bonnie released Part Six this morning!  

The December guild BOM block is appliqued. I fussy-cut a Kaffe print for the flower.  

I made some broken dishes blocks (6.5" unfinished) with Christmas scraps.  Not sure how (or when) I'll set them.

And then I started something completely different!   

Linking up with Oh Scrap!  Design Wall Monday  Sew and Tell

P.S.  One of the gently-used quilt books I got from the sale rack recently was an anthology from 2000.  Look who I found!