Beauty and the Bissel

Hi All,

Its just after 8 AM here and I've been up for a few hours.  Do you ever have some of those chores that you put off but then the time comes when you can't deal with it and even if it is 6:30 AM, you simply have to steam clean the living room carpet?  Today was the day for me.  I'd been noticing that I needed to do it, and then last night my baby nephew came for a visit.  We usually move the coffee table out of the way and remove some other items that aren't child-safe, thus exposing much of the floor to view.  This morning, I had not yet put the items back and decided to tackle that job.  The good thing is that it is now over and I can get on with more fun things, AND most of the day is left.

I opened the drapes and found this lovely sunrise.

I love the effect of pretty light when there is snow on the ground.

It has been a busy week.  Yesterday I taught a class on back-basting applique at the local shop.  I had 4 students and they all did a marvelous job.  It had been a while since I've taught it and I think I did okay, but there are a few things I'm noting to change:  like to have more than one sample of each step, in case I need to repeat demonstrating it, and to use a much shorter length of thread in the examples so that I don't have to spend time untangling.

Project wise, I put together the courthouse steps and the flying geese from my big project into 26 blocks.

I need 25 for the quilt, but I made an extra in case I want a different choice when assembling.  Those blocks must be nearly half the quilt in size, but there is still plenty more work to be done to piece all of the sashing strips and border pieces.

I was at this point when another project interuppted me.  I'll share about it in my next post.  Our guild members are all asked to contribute one kid quilt each year.  There is a camp held nearby in the summer for kids who have been diagnosed with cancer or brain tumors and our guild donates enough quilts that each camper gets one to use and take home.  While I like to make charity items, it seems that I have to get in the right mood.  The right mood hit me on Tuesday morning, but as I said, I'll share that next time.

Have a wonderful day!
JoAnne

Progress

Hi Everyone,

It has been a fairly quiet week here.  The weather took a turn towards "cold," giving us below zero temps and lots of snow.  School delays and closing abounded, so it ended up that my niece spent the day with me yesterday when her school was called off.  It seems that the record amount of snow days that last year's terrible winter produced inspired the school to adapt e-learning, so instead of building a snow fort, baking cookies, etc., she spent most of the day on my laptop, doing school work.

I have made progress on my latest, Big, Complicated (BC) project.  So far, so good.  I needed 65 cream courthouse steps blocks.

I got them done easily enough.  I felt for a while like I was a modern quilter, making a "low volume" quilt.  

Also, while I was sorting out all of the pieces for this quilt, I had come across a pile of 3.5" navy squares.  My list of pieces didn't show any needed, so I thought I might have mixed up something and I set them aside.  It turned out that I did need them, so I got them back out.

I also made 104 of the flying geese from these pieces.

However, I realized I didn't get a picture of the completed geese.


As I work on a project, I like to make extra pieces along the way--just in case I miscounted, or I would like another option when laying out the final quilt.  What isn't used gets tucked away for later use.  It seems to me that I would much rather make a few more as I'm assembly sewing vs. wanting one later in the process and having to start all over.  Do you ever make extra?

On a completely different topic:   I'm afraid I have a bit of a rant to share.  Now that we have our own house, my husband decided that he would like to have a rain shower head for the shower in our bathroom.  I thought our current one was fine, but since I'm sure he thinks I have plenty of fabric but never says anything when I get more, I decided not to say anything and so we went shower head shopping.

We found one which proudly stated on the packaging that it would not only provide a rain shower experience with multiple settings, but also "boost" the water flow.  We took it home and my husband installed it.  Do any of you have one of these things?  The first issue is that having showered with a normal shower head that shoots the water at a slant for around 40 years, it is quite different to shower with water coming straight down from above.  The second issue is that there was NO WAY that it was "boosting" the water flow.  It seemed like just the opposite!

The result was that I became convinced that there is some sort of "regulatory" office somewhere in the depths of our beaurocracy and that this office gets heaps of money to determine the amount of water that should flow out of a shower head.  I'm sure that they are granted the money on the basis that it is noble to conserve water.  I'm equally sure that every member of that group is bald, or nearly so, and bitter about it, and so have conspired to find the exact rate of water flow that will rinse shampoo out of the normal head of hair, and then they lowered the shower head flow to just below that rate.  (Incidently, they are in the neighboring office of the regalatory goup who governs the temperature of all irons produced, and have determined that pressing fine fabrics is more important than pressing cotton, and have lowered the allowed temperture of irons so that they don't get "too hot.")

After my first shower with the new head (in which I froze because the hot water didn't seem to hit any part of me and I couldn't get the shampoo and conditioner out of my hair), I told my husband that it was going to take some getting used to.  After the second, (when I turned on the shower and had to let it run while I made the bed and sorted laundry--it took that long for the hot water to make it to the shower, thus conserving no water at all,)  I said I was having a difficult time determining which setting was the best.  After the third, I dropped all pretense of being a good sport, and begged him for the old one back.  Luckily, he wasn't enjoying it either, and was so willing to accomodate me, that he changed it right then.  My shower yesterday was bliss!  (Just in case you have had a similiar experience, he did check for the gizmo inside the shower head that could be removed to increase the rate of flow--and it didn't help at all.)

Have a great day!
JoAnne