Weekly update: on the trail, a concert, a flimsy!, and reading

 The ornaments I hung along the trail last week pretty much survived the severe winds (gusts of 65 mph on Wednesday).   Two had blown off their hangers onto the ground and I rehung them. Some lost the red paint (lower right).  And two were joined by someone else's contributions. 

We enjoyed the Lake County Symphony Orchestra Christmas concert on Saturday evening.   They played woodwind, strings, and brass medleys  of Christmas songs arranged by Leroy Anderson and the entire orchestra played Anderson's well-known Sleigh Ride.

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In the studio:   I finished step 3 of the Rhododendron Trail mystery.  I ran out of neutral triangles and cut a bunch more. Then I found that a stack of them had been pushed under the finished units.   The triangles will come in handy for another project. 

 I kept sewing scraps together until I had 20 slab blocks.  I fussy-cut cornerstones from a floral print which then limited choices for sashing.  I tried several prints before I found one that suited.  Then I searched for a border print.  Ah-ha!   I had enough of the fabric I used for this quilt -- fortunately a piece 20"w x 80" long.  

The flimsy is 66 x 82 and used 6-1/4 yards by weight.

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The week's reading:

"The summer of 2020, that year of imperfect vision, would hold them together forever." (316)

Boccaccio and Chekhov meet COVID-19 in a very contemporary novel about enduring friendships and rivalries. Novelist Sasha Senderovsky, his psychotherapist wife Masha, and their daughter Nat (Natasha) have moved from New York to their upstate country compound to escape the pandemic. Sasha invites his high school friends to shelter-in-place in the compound's cottage--Karen (a Korean-American app-inventor millionaire) and Vinod (an Indian-American one-time professor, once-aspiring writer) -- and three others: Ed (a Korean jet-setter), Dee Cameron (get the Boccaccio reference?) (a former student of Sasha's), and the never-named but obviously famous Actor. Alliances form, break apart, and re-form. COVID reaches their rural retreat. (In twenty years what will they remember about this year?)  

In the early 1990's the Quilters' Guild conducted a nationwide search for historic quilts in England and Ireland. Hundreds of people brought their quilts to the appraisal days. This book summarizes the documentation. The textile experts also describe in technical detail the design elements, the types of fabric used, how the fabric was produced (weaving and dyeing). It is a thorough--and thoroughly interesting -- discussion.

Linking up with  Oh Scrap!   Monday Making     Design Wall Monday

P.S.  75 years ago -- 12/14/1946 -- David George Blaine and Marion Hamilton Carothers got married.  I'm glad they did!