Thursday, the day after Christmas. I hope you all enjoyed the day as you wanted.
We spent the day here at the house. I finished quilt #36 in the morning and added to the skating area I have cleared on the pond in the afternoon. The ice is so smooth just anywhere I want to shovel. I probably won’t clear any more though as I don’t use it after clearing it off. Maybe someone else will, the path goes over to another house on the pond where they often skate. Time will tell.
It’s supposed to rain on Sunday and Monday and again later in the week so was probably just an exercise in getting exercise. Being someone who judges his day with what accomplishments I made, for now at least, I can look out the studio window and see what I did on Christmas Day.
I started writing this in the morning and after Carol and I went for a walk I decided to go out on the pond and make the skating area larger.
Now I can see what I did today as well.
We noticed prints out on the pond this morning. While I was out playing on the pond this afternoon I noticed that the prints were not deer. They were these..
they look too large to be fox, maybe coyote?
Carol awoke me to interesting news the other morning. I wake up to her standing beside the bed stating that we have no water. An interesting thought as you may or may not know, we get our water from the pond. You may have noticed a white 4” PVC pipe going out into the pond in some of my views up the pond. That pipe sheaths the water line that goes out about a hundred feet out into the pond. This is the first time that I am aware of that it has frozen.
We cleared off the skuttle hole into the crawl space to get under the house. This required relocating about ten quilts that are stored there. Then I went down and shut off the pump. I then proceeded to plug in the heat cable I placed in the line when I installed it about twenty years ago. The cable is inside the pipe. Much like the heater element is inside your water heater.
Repeated harried trips into the crawl space attempting to start the pump were to no avail. Until finally I was patient enough and allowed the cable to do it’s job and we were successful and were back in business. I set the time clock the cable is normally plugged into and had the cable run at several times throughout the day and many more at night. Much to my surprise Carol was standing beside the bed again the next morning and again stated, we have no water.
I began the process of the day before again and after several 15 minute waiting periods, I was again pleased to see water running as normal. I proceeded to set the timer on the cable to run much more during the wee hours of the morning and as of yet, have not had another issue. After the blanket of snow we received I could probably disconnect the cable and we would be fine. We have not used it since moving here. We originally installed it for Carol’s mother. I thought living alone, as she was, there could be long enough periods of time when the pump did not run. This could allow the line to freeze. It never did until the other day. Time will tell if we stay out of the woods and not have to just haul drinking water.
In the studio, I have completed quilt #35 for 2024.
I began the process of the day before again and after several 15 minute waiting periods, I was again pleased to see water running as normal. I proceeded to set the timer on the cable to run much more during the wee hours of the morning and as of yet, have not had another issue. After the blanket of snow we received I could probably disconnect the cable and we would be fine. We have not used it since moving here. We originally installed it for Carol’s mother. I thought living alone, as she was, there could be long enough periods of time when the pump did not run. This could allow the line to freeze. It never did until the other day. Time will tell if we stay out of the woods and not have to just haul drinking water.
In the studio, I have completed quilt #35 for 2024.
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| 2024-35 |
On this one I decided to place the blocks on point. Maintaining the same size tops as I have been making, on point blocks mean almost half as many blocks are needed. I always end up using “jack” more than I like doing when I make on point quilts. I get confused easily, I somehow manage to pick up two blocks from the “design floor” and manage to twist them before pinning them together at my sewing station. I only did this a couple times. The blocks are two types of pinwheel like blocks set in an interesting layout. The sashing pops were done with my Corner Pop III. I thought the half square triangles in the pieced border gave me an opportunity to use up some lonely units and break up the purple.
On quilt #36 for 2024 I followed the general idea of #35 and again went on point. I found a tan fabric in the drawer and used it for the sashing to go with the randomly made nine patch blocks. I used three different fabrics as replacements when I popped my sashing. Two of the sashing stars were created using my Corner pop II and one with my Corner Pop III. I again used a pieced border to brighten up the look and use up some more of the units I created earlier.
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| 2024-35 |
Saturday will be our family Christmas get together and it will be at Vanessa’s in Readfield. She has a large enough house and Readfield is a reasonable drive for Erin’s family and for Carol and I.
Enjoy any remaining festivities and stay safe, this time of year seems to bring out more of the crazies that are out there.
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