Dan's Ramblings

 Dan here ~

Thursday evening, in the studio trying to keep warm. There have been many days this season I sure missed my wood stove. This was one of them. It has been cold even up in the studio. Warmer weather is bound to get here sometime. Then I can complain about the heat. Today was cold and very windy. I went out to the shed a couple times on trash runs but that is about it. Otherwise I’ve been in the studio.

Carol spoke the other day about us walking around the pond on the ice. Which I found to be much like a kayak tide. Calm when we leave then freshening to a stiff breeze blowing in your face the rest of the way home. This equals a much more enjoyable first half to the journey than the last half. It was a refreshing walk anyway. 

I don’t know if these folks are early for spring or never quite got to removing theirs last fall. 

Sometimes I think about the hours I used to walk everyday as I averaged over 5 miles a day to get my 2000+ miles for the year. I did that for two years, then quit. Some days it seems like a good idea but my current self asks, “why”, and I don’t go.

Too cold to cut wood, I certainly don’t need any more. So I stay in the studio and play. I am currently playing on #4 for 2025, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Since I finished #2 on the 14th I have been “cleaning” up my scraps. I think I mentioned before that I now try to cut the scraps into the sizes needed to make the units I design around. I made a lot of units, mostly 1”, 1-1/2”, 2”, 2-1/2”, 3”, 4” finished units. 1/2 squares, 1/4 squares, combination units, V-blocks, Corner beams, Flying geese and anything else I could think of.

For #3 for 2025 I started with a 20” finished block made up from my 4” units. 

I made 6 of these and made some 10” blocks from 2-1/2” units 

and some from 2” units. 

 

I had no ideas about how to combine them because I did not like how the square squared blocks looked against each other. Then I came up with this idea, instead of placing the 20” blocks beside each other, I lowered the center section down 10” and used pairs of the other two blocks to fill in the gaps. I also needed to add a row to the top and bottom to lengthen the top to rectangle and not square. Top is my normal 66” x 76”. It’s bright and cheery for these dreary cold January days. #3 for 2025 

2025-3

Yes, #4 for 2025 is well on the way. The blocks are almost complete, just an assortment of 9 patch 9” finished blocks. Using parts and pieces from the cleaning process. I will be starting on the pieced sashing strips this evening. We’ll see if this idea works. Time will tell.

Enjoy your weekend and stay safe and warm. There may be snow on the way. You got it, time will tell.