Weekly update: red envelopes, yellow blocks, pinwheels!, and reading

My lucky envelope had $2

Kathy, Regina, and me

 The Zion Woman's Club had a Lunar New Year dinner fundraiser on Friday.  We sold tickets in advance for pickup at a local Thai/American restaurant.  We had a Wall of  Fortune with red envelopes numbered from 1 to 85 -- pay a dollar amount equivalent to the number to win cash prizes -- at least a $2 bill but there were some $10s and $20s and one with $100.  Regina and I thought we'd be out in the parking lot selling red envelopes but, hooray!, restaurants have reopened (25% capacity) so we were inside in the restaurant's party room.  Good thing, since it's been very, very cold.   

The meal (marinated chicken on a skewer, freshly-made fried rice, spring rolls, and a fortune cookie) was good -- my neighbor said they made two meals out of theirs and another friend said she was adding meat and veggies to the leftover rice.  The club treasurer's preliminary estimate is a profit over $2500.    The proceeds benefit A Safe Place (domestic violence shelter) and other agencies that ZWC regularly supports.  

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I  made 17 framed four patch blocks in yellow for this month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  (I was aiming for 16 and I miscounted.)    I made two potholders for Joy's Table Scraps challenge.  

I've had fun playing with the pinwheels I made for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in 2019. I followed up Trippy Pinwheels (last week) with this random strippy setting.    Doing the math:  360 pinwheels made.  50 used for Trippy Pinwheels and 37 here.   That leaves 263 pinwheels in the box. 

But not for long!  25 of the black/gray pinwheels have joined 216 3.5" nine patches for this as-yet-unnamed project.  The nine patches are from the Block Swappers' decade-long quarterly exchange. (There are several hundred still in the box.)  Since I took this photo on Saturday I've framed all the pinwheels and begun assembling the blocks.  I haven't figured out the border yet.      

                                    248 pinwheels to go!

Linking up with  So Scrappy   Oh Scrap   Monday Making      Design Wall Monday

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I so enjoyed Monica Wood's memoir When We Were the Kennedys (review here) that I looked up the other books she's written.  How did I miss The One-in-a-Million Boy when it was published in 2015?  Well, I'm glad I discovered it.                                                                                                 The boy is 11 and socially awkward--more comfortable with numbers, precision, and the Guinness Book of World Records than with people. His Boy Scout troop service project is to help the elderly with household chores. He is assigned to 104-year-old Ona Vitkus. Each week he records an oral history conversation with Ona. Together they plot to earn her a place in the Guinness record book. When the boy suddenly dies of an undiagnosed condition his father Quinn steps in to complete the chores. Quinn, a guitarist whose gigs provide sporadic work, is attempting to compensate for the years that he wasn't present in the boy's life. Quinn, like the boy, is pulled into Ona's orbit.

Redemption. Hope. Indomitability. Enchantment.
All these positive terms describe this utterly wonderful novel.