It's supposed to be a beautiful day today, the first of many, but I'm enjoying it from the coziness of the living room through the lovely vertical blinds since the temperature has reached only 56 at 8:30 a.m. When I checked the temp on the Weather Channel on the computer, I saw that Montgomery is 91 at 10:30 a.m. Wow.
I got up as Mike was going back to bed. We sleep in shifts sometimes. He wakes up in the middle of the night and can't sleep so reads for hours. Then he goes back to bed and catches up as I'm getting up for the day.
I made a cup of coffee and headed back to the cutting table to do more flying geese. for my Evening Sky. I'm taking pictures of the whole process so one day when Gaysen and Katherine and their children wonder who made this quilt and how, this will explain it.
If their lives are that boring!
It also makes me more likely to keep at a project if I commit publicly to it.
These are the messy ones straight out of the machine.with the flap attached.
Another of my favorite tools is the Add-A-Quarter ruler. I think I bought it when Sherry and I went to Cullman and took the (so much fun!) Judy Neimeyer paper-piecing class. I haven't done much paper-piecing since then, but I love it for trimming seams like this.
It has a raised lip that's exactly 1/4 inch, and it snuggles up to my seam.
One whack of the rotary cutter, and there is a perfect 14-inch seam.
And lots of little triangles too small for me to do anything with so into the trash can for me. If I were younger, I might save them - for one day - but not now.
The geese are still shaggy and need trimming, so here's where I use that Wing Clipper ruler.
Two steps. On the first pass, you find the "valley" and trim the top and right side.
Then turn it upside down and make sure the measurement is the correct one - 4-1/2 x 2-1/2 and the "peak" is in that triangle with the x at the top. I really ought to be a teacher - I'm so good at this!
Once the right side and top are trimmed again, you get this perfect little flying goose block. So cute. I hope it's perfect. I'll soon find out.
Here are all 16 blocks needed for two 12" blocks. with those other blocks made earlier.
This is what the Blueberry Pie block is supposed to look like.
I arranged the unsewn blocks just to see how it might look and immediately noticed something wasn't right.
Amazing what one little correction can do. I can't wait to get them sewn together.
Mike is just leaving to take Graysen somewhere mysterious. I was not invited, but it's okay.
Thomas the Train is in Snoqualmie (along with 5000 other kids), so I don't know if he'll take her by there. We saw it as we came home from the grocery store Friday, and the town was teeming with people. She is familiar with Thomas, I think, but thankfully will not care to ride him or get too close.
I have my coffee and hopefully a warmer balcony now to read awhile.
This will be a good time to "order" books from the library. I have more than I can read right now and am juggling 3 of them. I'm trying to read the trilogy by Justin Cronin - The Passage and the Twelve - and waiting for the third one. I forget the name of that one. I started the first one just because these books seem so popular and realized I had already read it - or plowed through it and probably abandoned it. I'm trying the 2nd one now but not enjoying it too much. It doesn't compare to Stephen King's The Stand (probably nothing will), although it deals with a similar scenario, but I can't get into the characters and care about what happens to them.
Graysen and I went to the library Friday, and she wanted to check out "all the books." It's fun to see her so excited. Any book I show her, she just loves and puts it in her stack to take home. I asked the librarian if there was a limit on children's books, and she said, "Only 100 at a time." So that covers us. Graysen's problem is that she just loves all books (not really a problem though), and pulls them out at random. These last ones were a disaster. Some were boring. Some of them had boring illustrations. Some tried to be TOO cute - humor adults appreciate but go right over the head of a 3-year-old. It won't be as much fun for her, but I need to request a lot of books that I feel like will be ones she will enjoy. We can go and pick all those up and let her pull some off the shelf to bring home. She has learned to check them out herself now, standing on the stool and putting the bar code under the scanner light. I think she enjoys that more than the books!
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So I spent all morning talking with Emily on the phone and did no quilting or reading. We solved so many problems - if talking about them and laughing about them solves them. I'll have to hear about Mike and Graysen's adventure. It's good for them to have this time together without a little sister and without me.
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