Dan's Ramblings

Dan here ~

Monday evening, up in the quilting loft. 

I was real tempted to have a fire tonight, I know that my fire times are limited. I got chilled going out to tend the burgers for supper. It’s almost getting too cold to grill. The grill works extremely hard to get up to a nice hot temperature. I guess I miss the old sizzle you got when you put your burger on the old charcoal grill. Don’t miss the constant buying of charcoal but miss the hot fire. I am thinking that a change may be in store for next season if a grill is still needed.

Not to sound monotonous but most of my day was spent on the beach. Here is what it looked like as I started. 

Unfortunately I forgot to take an after picture. Just close your eyes and imagine a nice sandy beach, that will pretty much nail it. I guess I was too tired. It just looked like a beach anyway, a paraphrase of an expression I use a lot. “ It’s hard to notice something that’s not there” or in this case “It’s hard to remember what was there after it was removed or cleaned up.” It’s a lot like not dusting or vacuuming, if someone visits you, you can bet your butt they will notice the disarray. But if it is all cleaned up they will seldom notice that. Hence “it’s hard to notice something that’s not there.” Much like “time will tell” it’s a valuable tool in your verbal arsenal.

I have changed my design concept for quilt #35 for 2023. I started making 5” finished pinwheel blocks. My first layout said I needed 80 so I made 82 and started laying them out like I envisioned in my head. 

I was not satisfied with it as it was much like the last several tops. No, the sashing strips and cornerstones separating the 4 - 5” blocks making up the larger block and the sashing strips around the larger blocks was going to be different than the last, it was still the exact same concept. 

The voices screamed “What, have you run out of ideas?” I admit at first I was stumped. I thought a few minutes then began drawing up this idea on the computer. After several attempts I arrived at a version I thought would give a try. I no longer needed many of the 5” pinwheel blocks I had created, but I knew I would use them at some point later. Time will tell. I can show you a piece of #35 but none is sewn together yet along with still having a few missing units. So the entire top will have to wait until next ramble. 

2023-35

So, I’ll leave you with my time lapse view up the pond this evening. 

The rest of the week is supposed to be quite nice and then become fall. Enjoy it if you can. I’ll try between beach raking endeavors.