Sidetracked

Good morning, my friends. My morning was slow yesterday. Procrastination ruled, and it was after lunchtime that I really got into gear. I ended up crossing off my one housekeeping chore until this morning, but I did manage to get in a Bowflex workout. 

Earlier, Mike and I talked about our Starlink options for our upcoming trip. I could go into a wordy explanation about the equipment and service plans, but I'll try to keep it short. There are mobile plans and residential plans. You can choose one or the other for any Starlink "antenna." We need a mobile plan when we're traveling, but the residential plan is preferred at home. It costs less, and it gives higher priority when there are many people using the resource. Think about how your cell phone internet is terribly slow when you're in a crowded venue. It's because lots of people are taking up bandwidth. 

Okay, so we had to turn off our residential plan during our last trip and switch to a mobile plan. When we came back, we could only continue our mobile plan. Living out here on the prairie, lots of people are using the residential plan, and so we had to wait for someone else to drop off before we could pick it up again. But then, Mike had the bright idea to get a second antenna that we could use only when we're traveling. They were half price at Best Buy, and the mobile plans are paid for month-to-month. So with a second antenna, we could pay for the service only when we use it, and not risk losing our residential plan when we travel. (I hope that makes sense.) And all of that to say that we now have a second Starlink antenna that will be used only when we're traveling. 

When he came home with the new unit, he mentioned he'd like some kind of case for it. Here's what it looks like...and it isn't much. It looks like a white sheet of plastic. It's about 18 x 24 inches and about one inch thick. There's also a fold-down stand on the back, like on a picture frame.

And I suggested using one of the many table runners I've made that never gets used...this one. 

I made this quite some time ago. I like it, but it just hangs on my quilt rack, never used. 

So we tried it out for size. Width looks good.

And I could fold over the other end...

 and still leave a little flap for closing it. Nifty, huh?

So I just sewed a seam right beside the binding on both sides, and then added a velcro closure.

And then I could slide the antenna into its new case...

And then fold over the flap. Cool! 

So Mike has been working for weeks on this. My contribution took about 15 minutes.

Okay, and then I went back to work on the "Spices" project. I've been uninspired by what I'm doing, but when I downloaded the picture just now, I could clearly see the subject emerging. This one will require a lot of thread work. It's hard to tell whether I'm capturing it until I have the collage finished and can begin doing some thread painting. Here's your peek.

So I worked on that for about an hour, and then quilted two more blocks on the New Mexico Kitchen quilt. This is the block that had all its original quilt stitches removed. It looks a lot better now with the monofilament.

And then I did this one too.

There's no hurry on this. It's my fallback project when I get tired of working on the Spices quilt. Still, I'm going to try to finish three more blocks today. Also, I'll continue working on the Spices quilt.

Our weather has cooled off significantly. The past two days have been overcast, and so the annuals haven't needed watering. It's been several days, and so I'll do that today, and I'll do that housekeeping chore put off from yesterday. I'll get in a walk on the treadmill, and then I'll get back to my sewing. It's going to be a pretty easy-going day.

I'm trusting my California friends are all safe after the earthquake near Los Angeles. Scary stuff. Looking at our news, it didn't seem like it did much except to give everybody a good shaking up. I have my fingers crossed nobody suffered any significant damage.