Dan's Ramblings

Dan here, Tuesday evening. Can you believe it ~ Christmas is over, New Year’s is over and 2022 is off and running.

Not much is going on here at the pond. The area on the pond that I cleared of snow now looks much like the rest of the pond. The rain and warm weather melted all the snow except for the snow piles I created when I shoveled. It would be a fun ride on the pond with an iceboat right now. I doubt the conditions on the pond will remain the same very long. Warm weather and rain tomorrow and snow on Friday.

Sunrise

Whatever, as I’ve said before, if it rains it will run off or soak in. If it snows I will relocate as necessary. It is winter in Maine. 

I am still plugging away on my border of the Flying Geese quilt. With 30 flying geese in each 8”x12” block there is a lot of trimming happening. 

Lots of scraps gone through and cut up to get the required sizes needed to make my flying geese.

As many of you know I use my Studio 180 Design Wing Clipper when I am making my geese. I start with one large square and four smaller squares and follow the process described in my Wing Clipper tool directions to create four slightly large flying geese. Then that’s where the trusty Clipper gets put to use and I use it to trim my geese to the exact size they were supposed to be. The Wing Clipper tool and method makes geese in ten sizes. I find it works well in most of the applications I need it to. 

There is another tool called the Wing Clipper II that does the rest. 

The Wing Clipper allows me to make geese from 1/2”x1” finished to 10”x5” finished ~ whole and half inch measurements, ten sizes.

The Wing Clipper II makes geese from 3/4”x1-1/2” to 4-3/4”x9-3/4”, you know those pesky times that you have to deal with the 1/4” and 3/4” lines on our tools. Luckily most of the time we deal with half and whole numbers in our quilt math. It keeps things much easier. But alas, sometimes there is no choice, if that is the shape that is needed, the math must be dealt with. Sometimes I have even added lines to my tools to get the size that I needed to work with my design. But that’s another story. I will wait until quilt is done now before you hear about it again. Have patience it may take a while.

Hopefully, all are safe to the south of us. I guess they were reminded what winter is capable of.

So, stay safe, enjoy whatever weather you may get wherever you are. And remember, where ever you go, there you are, if I’m supposed to meet you there and you get there first, draw a blue line where we planned to meet. If I get there first, I’ll rub it out. And if the dog got out when you left the house, make sure you catch him and put him back in before you leave. I knew you let the dog back in, I saw he was muddy so I knew he’d been out. It was still appreciated. However the “kitty” with the white stripe down it’s back was not ours and probably should have stayed outside. Luckily the winter has been mild so we just left the windows open for a while. If you have to get back in the house after you locked up, you know where the key is. But remember if it has snowed you either have to make a bunch of tracks or else shovel out the walks etc. so it won’t be obvious you just went and got the key to get in.