A Day for Learning

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to Wednesday. For you working people, it's hump day! Yay! What could be better than that? Well...Friday...and pay day, I suppose. Those are both better than hump day, but I digress.

The day kind of went off the rails yesterday. I'll tell you why in just a minute. There was time to get in my morning dose of slow-stitching. I've stitched August, September, and October now.

But take a look at November there on the right. Fireworks? In November? Well. This is the first new thing I learned yesterday. So, I inquired of my friend, The Google, "fireworks in November." And I'm guessing this Phenology wheel was created by someone from the UK because, as it turns out, our friends across the pond celebrate a holiday that has various names including Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes Night, and Fireworks Night (among others). Wikipedia tells us it is 

[A]n annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain, involving bonfires and fireworks displays. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605 O.S., when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. The Catholic plotters had intended to assassinate Protestant king James I and his parliament. Celebrating that the king had survived, people lit bonfires around London. Months later, the Observance of 5th November Act mandated an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot's failure.

And you can read more about the holiday right here. Apparently other European countries also celebrate, and for different reasons. We Americans think of fireworks as being something for our Independence Day celebrations in July, but some folks also like to shoot them off to ring in the New Year. 

Okay...so I gave myself an Attagirl for being an old dog learning a new trick. And then I got ready to leave to get my hair cut and colored. I've been having her put blonde streaks in my hair (it helps with hiding any gray). This time, it's pretty much all blonde. I'm not sure what happened to the natural brown, but whatever. She does a good job cutting my thin straight hair, and so I'm not complaining about the color.

After that, I stopped off at one of our local high-end grocery stores. They sell these "vegetable rolls" with a yummy peanut sauce for dipping. I bought a package to take home for my lunch. When I got home (and it was about a 20-minute drive), I bit into the first one, and it was frozen in the middle. Hmph. I tried warming it in the microwave a little, but couldn't really get rid of the icy bite in the center. Oh well. It didn't stop me from eating both of them, so how bad could it be?

It was nearly 2:00 by then, but I still took a short nap before getting to my quilting. Once there, I quilted the last two blocks. First Salsa...

And then, Enchilada.

Okay, and then I was ready to try out the design I had in mind for the sashings. My friend, Abelian, gave me a good idea for the horizontal sashings. If you've read yesterday's post, I was mulling over how to symmetrically quilt the odd-in-number horizontal sashings. Abelian suggested changing direction in the middle, which caused me to smack my hand to my forehead. Of course!!! Why didn't I think of that?

Now that I had a plan, I decided to try it out on just one sashing strip. (I'm still thinking about not messing up my wrist.) The strips are 12 inches long, and so I drew some marks one inch apart. 

Also, I switched to a black thread on top here. I tested the tension on a practice piece. Looking only at the black thread, the top looked okay.

It needed tightening just a bit when I looked at the bottom.

I decided to point the arrows away from the cornerstones so they would form a diamond at the intersection. And then I stitched a line of them. Looks pretty good, right?

Looking at the back.....

Okay, and I learned a new vocabulary word yesterday morning: "Lalochezia." You know they say that you should use a new word three times to make it your own. It's a good word. Here's the definition I learned:

Yes, I'll admit to having a similar conversation with Eliza in this moment. And let me just tell you, it just about caused me to throw the machine out the nearby window. 

First, of course, I had to take out all that stitching. I'd say it was easy, but it still took about half an hour. As I've already said, more time has been spent removing stitches from this quilt than actually quilting it. 

So I rethreaded the machine and reloaded the bobbin. Then I flipped the back of the quilt over the front and gave it another try. Same thing. I checked the bobbin tension with my TOWA gauge. It was fine. I tried different things and four different tests in this spot. Same thing. WTF?

In frustration, I gave the top tension knob a full 360° turn. (Ordinarily, I would make adjustments by a quarter turn of the knob.) Finally, finally, finally...it looked okay.

I have an idea that the 50-weight thread wasn't seated well between the tension disks after switching from the monofilament, even though I "flossed" it down firmly. Whatever the case, it nearly caused me to take my seam ripper to my own throat. Finally, after at least an hour, I had one sashing strip quilted. And I like how this looks. 

My goal for the day is to finish all the sashings. I'll save the borders for tomorrow. 

As I've mentioned, I'm planning to sew a line of chili peppers in the two outer borders. What I'm undecided about is thread color. Should I stick with black? As a reminder, here's how the whole quilt looks.

I'm thinking of using this variegated thread.

Doing this design

Will it be too much color to use the variegated thread? Should I stick with black? What do you guys think?

Okay, but the day hadn't finished going off the rails yet. When I finished with quilting for the day, I checked my email to read this headline:

Holy sh*t! Fred Meyer is our grocery store! They were planning to walk off their jobs at 6:00 a.m. this morning! And we were planning to do our grocery shopping this morning! So, I ran downstairs and told Mike who said, "We have to go now!" And so we did. (There was lot of exclaiming in that minute of time, and thus, many exclamation points.) 

It as surprisingly uncrowded given it was the end of the work day with a strike looming. We found all the items on our list, and I casually mentioned the strike to the woman checking our groceries. Another woman walking by, who had the look of management written all over her said, "We're not a part of that union. We're not striking." Well, good to know. But we still had our groceries. 

And here's where the good news comes in: There's nothing on my to-do list today! It's already to-done!

So that will give me plenty of time to spend on my quilting. I'll take lots of breaks during the day and give my wrist plenty of TLC. Periodic icing is probably a good idea. I'll take a walk on the treadmill, but otherwise, I'm going to enjoy this as a last day to relax before we need to start preparing for our trip in earnest.

My friend, Muis, will be disappointed to learn this isn't our Alaska trip. No, this is sort of a "shake down" or "tow behind" cruise to test out how our Jeep will do as a "toad." Mike did all the work this summer. He's already had it out for a test run, but we want to take a longer trip just to (a) get the hang of hitching up and unhitching it, and (b) make sure it all functions properly before heading north. Our Alaska trip doesn't begin until the end of May next year. This is the route we'll be taking starting next week.

It's a short trip (for us). Just two weeks. And then we'll stay put for a while. We have no plans to head south this winter, and so our next trip after this won't be until next year. Honestly, I'm looking forward to staying home for the winter. It's a good time to get lots of sewing done.

So we've had our breakfast already this morning. Slow-stitching is next. And let me just say the New Mexico Kitchen quilt had better behave itself today. I still have a window nearby, and it could find outself outside in the rain...mouse food, or worse. (Glances menacingly at it across the room.) Just sayin'.