Weekly Update: making history (with mittens), pink and more pink, Grassy Creek!, and reading

It was beautiful at the beach when I snapped the photo but at 19 degrees I didn't linger!  The clouds have returned and there's snow in the forecast. 

Years ago I read a time management book that likened the results of procrastination to an obstacle that gets bigger around as the procrastination continues - so big that it takes more effort to go around it than it would be to just go over it.  That's how I've been with a non-quilting project this week that involved report-writing and statistics-compiling. I have to check to see that all the numbers add up and proofread the narrative before I send it off to the appropriate committee chairs. I have spent more time agonizing over it than it's taken to do it.  Will I never learn?     

We watched the inauguration on Wednesday with joy.   Wasn't poet Amanda Gorman wonderful?      This article describes the women's stylish coats -- and note the added commentary about the men's coats. <g> 

We saw Bernie Sanders and his mittens -- and so did the rest of the world.   Bernie memes have flooded Facebook.  I've paid most attention to those about libraries and quilting.   We are hopeful with the direction of the new administration. 

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On Wednesday evening the North Suburban Quilters Guild hosted  Australian quilt maker Jen Kingwell for their monthly program.  The guild boosted their Zoom license to accommodate all the guests, of  whom I was one. (One of 141 attendees.)  Just $10 for a grand quilt show and tell!   

 In the studio:  I made six 8-inch heart blocks for the RFQFA -- the Rotarian Fellowship of Quilters and Fiber Artists. 

Joy, aka the Joyful Quilter, has a Table Scraps sub-challenge for the 2021 Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I wasn't up to making a table runner (especially in pink, this month's RSC color), so I made two 8" potholders.  

I made a few more pink framed four-patches.  They're 5.5" unfinished.

I saved the biggest accomplishment for last.  Grassy Creek is a flimsy!  

And big it is -- 96". Every year I say I'll make just a few blocks. Every year I get caught up in mystery quilt fever and make the whole quilt.  

The border has 28 uphill and 28 downhill blocks.  I miscounted and ended up with 44 going one way and just 12 going the other, so I had to make 16 more of "the other."  

  

I'll have fun fiddling around with ways to use the leftovers.

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One page in and I was hooked on Monica Wood's splendid memoir about 1963, the year that changed her life forever. No, JFK's assassination was the second event. The first, and more important, happened in April of that year: her father suffered a fatal heart attack on his way to work at the Oxford paper mill in Rumford, Maine. The unexpected, sudden death shattered the universe for Wood, for her mother, and her four siblings. Wood writes from the clearly-remembered perspective of her 9-year-old self: the neighbors who rallied around the family, her uncle (mother's brother)--the priest whose own center was rocked by the death, and details of life in a mill town when things were prosperous and ever  hopeful.

(How did I miss this when it was published in 2012? A friend recommended it after I reviewed Mill Town, Kerri Arsenault's 2020 memoir about the same town.)

Linking up with  Oh Scrap!   Scrap Happy Saturday      Design Wall Monday  Monday Making