Weekly update: SAHRR, the answer is 42, scrappy souvenirs + reading

 Brrrrrrr!   I hope you are keeping warm during this storm.  I've been mostly indoors since Friday.  I went to two memorial visitations on Saturday (the son of a Rotary friend in the morning and a quilting friend in the afternoon) though I didn't stay for the funeral services.  I overrode the thermostat so the heat stays at daytime temperature overnight. Otherwise it would take all morning to warm up.   Snowfall was about 2", no wind.  

wrapped up in the Magpies' quilt with another quilt at my back

I appreciate all the people who braved the cold, wherever they were, to peacefully protest the outrageous, inhumane actions of ICE agents in cities across the country.  

# # # # #   The sewing studio is in the basement which is cooler than usual, yet cozier than the living room (where I am wrapped in a quilt as I type this).   I sewed a lot! 

I made hourglass units for the first round of SAHRR.   

42!   That's the answer to the ultimate question.  (Did you get the reference to Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe, and Everything?)    

All the TATW blocks are finished.  They will be mug rugs, so each will be quilted individually.

Since they're not due until the end of May I have set them aside for the time being.

There was a heap of 1.5" strips left over from the TATWs.  

Rather than pile them in the batik scrap bin I sewed 'em up.  

Here's what happened.   I thought I'd make blocks until I used all of the red batik that's the center square.  That's 76 blocks. Then I found another big chunk of the red so maybe I'll stop at 90?  The blocks are 7" finished so a 9 x 10 setting is 63" x 70".  3" borders would bring it to 69" x 76".

I will have to cut more strips to get to that many blocks, but that's fine!  

# # # # #

"First book" is another category for The Page Turner FB group.  

Susie Dent's erudite debut will appeal to mystery fans and word-lovers, of which I am both.   It's set at Oxford.  Martha and her team of editors at the Clarendon English Dictionary (that's fictional for the OED) receive a cryptic letter signed "Chorus."  They decode the message to realize that it refers to Charlie (Charlotte), Martha's older sister, who disappeared ten years before.  Charlie had made a major discovery in her PhD. research but left no other clues.   Chorus sends more coded messages that uncover secrets, old liasons, and a literary treasure.  

Each chapter heading is an obscure but very apt word.  Among them:  witship: witness, testimony, knowledge;  mathom: a precious thing, a valuable gift; obmutescence: a willful speechlessness; fernweh, the longing to be far away.  zemblanity: the inexorability of unwanted discoveries.   Would that I could recall them when the situation warrants!  

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