Weekly update: #hikelakecounty, stash report, CWRSRP Ohio Stars, OMG, and reading

 This week we checked three forest preserves off the Hike Lake County List.  (One more wild card -- a forest preserve of our choice -- and we will complete this season.)   Cuba Marsh and Buffalo Creek are in the southwestern part of the county, diagonally opposite where we live.   Van Patten Woods is close to home. (We've been to VPW often.) 

 

We are very fortunate to have a robust and extensive forest preserve district in our county.  (And the six-mile Lake Michigan shoreline  a mile east of us is nearly all a state park.) 

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And now it's time for the October stash report.           Fabric IN: ZERO!                                                       Fabric OUT:  71-1/4 yards

2020 year to date:                                                         Fabric IN: 792-1/4yards, $949 ($1.20/yd.)                  Fabric OUT:  866-3/8 yards                                             Net reduction:  74-1/8 yards

I accomplished a lot: I started and finished three quilts and I made a set of four placemats.  I gave 34 yards away. 

Most significantly I inventoried the Civil War reproduction stash -- 239 yards by weight -- and embarked on a reduction program.  Here is the second Ohio Star flimsy. (You can see the first one in the previous post.)    

I am aiming for stash reduction, not period authenticity, with this long-term program.  I purchased the red/tan (sashing)  earlier this year. The red/white (setting triangles) has been in my stash for a while. I think that the border fabric (Thimbleberries) came from a friend's destashing this spring. 

Now I'm working on a CWRSRP with some of the blues.  No photos yet.

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It's time to declare the November One Monthly Goal:   more placemats.  I'm going to use some orphan blocks. You'll need to come back to see what I have in mind!

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This week's reading:  Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is based on a true story from WWI.  Cher Ami was a British homing pigeon.  Charles Whittlesey was an American army officer. Their battalion was sent to the Argonne in 1917 and suffered tremendous losses.  (Here's an account of the Lost Battalion.)  The story is told from from the points of view of Whittlesey (a Harvard-educated lawyer who enlisted out of patriotism) and of Cher Ami (who was taxidermied and "lives" in the Smithsonian).  Rooney, in Cher Ami's voice, imparts interesting information about pigeons and their important role as messengers for the Allies and the Germans in pre-radio wartime.  In Whittlesey's voice we see how the U.S. mobilized for its first overseas war and the aftereffects -- Whittlesey was gassed, had PTSD, and eventually committed suicide.   (When I read the Newbery medal-winning  Gay-Neck: the Story of a Pigeon I wasn't as impressed with the pigeons as I am now.) 

Linking up with Oh Scrap!      OMG November     Monday Making      Design Wall Monday