Back On Track

At least it feels like I'm back on track with the rails baby quilt. With my additional selections of pinks, I decided to ditch the idea of adding in some blue, particularly because those blues would clash with the more aqua blue of the backing. A small thing but I tend to be swayed by them. Here are all my strips cut and ready to sew into blocks. You'll note that there are more than 4 different pinks which means a few of the blocks will have different combinations of pinks.

Here's a sample block showing the basic arrangement of the smaller 4 strip quadrants. I dithered slightly about whether to press seams to one side or open, ending up pressing to one side and wondering if open would have been better. I don't intend on doing much stitching in the ditch so open might have been better. I have to say, this is going to be a very pretty girly pink quilt!

More tree blossoms along my walks are opening up. I thought they were late but in looking back at a May 10th blog post from last year, this is pretty much when spring sprung then. 

I'd periodically check what I think are flowering plum trees in the little park I sometimes pass through and they too bloomed this week.

The annual Lilac Festival Torchlight Parade in nearby Spokane WA is Saturday, and I thought to check the lilac bush by the abandoned house on one of my walking routes yesterday to see if the blooms had opened yet. Indeed, like nearly every year, they had, right on time. I cut a few for a bouquet and their scent fills the downstairs. My knitting is coming along too, ready for decreases to form the armholes, and echoing the color of the lilacs.

Speaking of walks, I ran across a great article expounding on the virtues of walking. A bit of preaching to the choir but it had many quotations I'd not run across before, including this one which to my long time readers will sound a lot like me:

". . .I’ll first note the Latin phrase solvitur ambulando meaning “it is solved by walking.” The phrase is attributed to both St. Augustine and the Greek philosopher, Diogenes. The sense of it, as I take it, is that when you are stuck on something, you should get up and take a walk. By the act of walking you somehow allow your mind to think more freely and creatively."

I like where the author takes all this, a response to our ever-hurrying world:

"As Watters observed in her essay, “Walking lets you read the world — and much like the slow, contemplative mental processes involved in reading a book, the pace with which one moves through the world while walking allows for a different, deliberative kind of seeing. You notice more. You think more.”

To walk, then, is to inhabit a fitting scale and speed. It is the scale and speed at which our bodies are able to find their fit in the world, and the world rewards us by spurring our thinking and disclosing itself to us. Perhaps this is the deeper fitness we should actually be after.

This principle of proportionality or fittingness is one that we do well to remember and insist upon to whatever degree we are able because almost everything about the human-built world, in its economic and technological dimensions, is bent on pushing us past a human scale and speed, which then denies us the opportunity to cultivate our competence and enjoy its rewards. We are, in turn, sold a series of tools and techniques that promise to help us operate faster and more efficiently so that we may keep up with the inhuman demands. Some will even say that the point is to eventually slough off the encumbering body so that we may keep up with the machines and find our fit within the artificial systems we have built. Only exhaustion and alienation lie down this path."

It's an interesting read - give it a go. And then take a walk and ponder what it says.

 

Decisions Were Made

 

On my next grocery run, I was pleased to see my store had expanded its selections of bedding plants. No hesitation now; I picked out three geraniums, more snapdragons, a couple of begonias (I've not had these before), a marigold and whatever that lovely lavender bloom is. Also picked up potting soil while at Walmart on a different day, so with the weatherman predicting weekend highs around 80, I'm prepared to set up my deck garden.

I thought by now I'd have strips cut and maybe even a few blocks sewn for the rails baby quilt to show but alas, the day set aside for that was spent dealing with a dying tv screen. It had been giving me warnings so I was not surprised when the screen suddenly went black that morning. Couldn't help but research what might be causing it and if I could fix it myself, but without buying parts and wielding a soldering iron, it wasn't going to happen. These screens are so inexpensive that replacing them is the better option. Mine was not "smart" and just like the phones, I don't really need a smart one, but of course, that's all that's available these days. I wryly scoffed at the instruction manual promising I'd be up and running in minutes. Took more than that to screw on the feet! Won't bore you with all the hoops I had to jump through to finally be able to watch my Directv and synchronize remotes, but the upside is I can now access my Paramount+ subscription through it and be able to watch those shows on a big screen relaxing on the couch rather than on my PC screen sitting in an office chair. I've always been a pretty independent woman, but I tell you, it's times like these I really miss my late husband! I would have handed it all off to him and had my studio time.

So what have I decided about the rail quilt fabric? I gave up on the lavender, everything being just too dark or not working with the pink on the table. And then I gave up on that pink as well and shifted back to a slightly different stack of pink. I definitely was feeling that I had the above problem and wondering why nothing I was seeing felt right.

I decided to assess my blues and pulled batiks. Getting closer but still . . . I'm really struggling to feel like they work with the raindrops fabric, they are so "clear" while it has that nagging off-white background.

I was actually leaving the studio when it dawned on me there was one place I hadn't looked yet, and that was in the drawers holding my many fat quarters of reproduction fabrics from the "club" subscription I had for so many years. And there, in the top drawer, I think I found the answer to my problem. Not just blue fabrics but pink ones too, and some with children's themes to fit better with the Noah's Ark backing fabric I'll be using. Way more than I probably need but plenty to choose from. Maybe I can start having some real progress on this project.

I do some of my best problem solving and decision making when turning things over in my mind while going about the regular routines of my life. Over several days, I caught myself working through options on what to do with the lavender sweater I started and probably don't have enough yarn to finish. If no more yarn is to be had, I think I could easily turn it into a sweater vest, so I decided to just keep on knitting the back and see how much yarn it actually uses. In the meantime, I did go back to the store where I'd bought the yarn, and as I suspected, no more of it there. However, the owner said she'd just put in an order for more of these mill end skeins, but she had no control over what colors they sent. They won't arrive for awhile so I will knit away while I wait for her call telling me if I am lucky or not.

Looking For Spring

So there I was, standing with another woman outside the grocery store in the cold and damp, looking longingly at a small selection of bedding plants, a few showing blooms. So starved for color, we contemplated if it was too early to buy and plant flowers yet. There were snapdragons and pansies . . .

I was there for groceries and decided to think it over, going back the next day to pick up 4 pony packs: the pansies and the snapdragons, dianthus since the ones that have wintered over year after year are showing no sign of life, and one simply labeled "mixed". I set them on top of pots on the deck, not ready yet to do the transfer but wanting to enjoy that bit of color that I can see from the sofa. Wouldn't you know, that night we suddenly dipped below freezing, the next few nights as well, but on the deck, these new plants didn't seem to mind.

Trees are on the cusp of blooming, but not enough warmth for them to "burst" into bloom. The chokecherry tree outside my place is slowly unfurling its delicate flowers as are other trees close by. Besides the colder weather, there have been bursts of heavy rain and some sleet. Springlike but not how we tend to envision spring. Somehow seemed appropriate though to move ahead with the rails baby quilt and get all the various lengths of strips cut from the "rain drops" background fabric. My graph paper chart worked perfectly as reference, my figuring correct, assuring I got the border strips cut with the raindrops going the right directions. I've pinned them along with sashing strips to the design wall for safe keeping.

Here are the 96 strips to go into the rail blocks. Very handy that all the cutting for this quilt is 2 inch wide strips cut to various lengths. Easy on the brain. Even so, it has been long enough since I made my calculations and notes on printouts that refreshing my memory and being sure I was getting the numbers right took a little time.

And just when I thought I had the pink fabrics figured out, this happened. I moved them from the ironing board to the work table, placed a stack of strips over them and began to question if they really did work. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the layer of purple fabrics exposed in the wire cube storage rack and pulled them out. My camera struggles with purple so to adjust settings in Paint Shop Pro to show these fabrics as purple and not blue, it turned the pinks underneath a little orange so ignore that. Focus on the fact that I am now considering purple instead of pink (these pinks and purples do NOT go together) along with some blue, and wondering if I can sneak in a little of that print fabric, all that is left of a fabric that has shown up in the other quilts I've made for the baby's siblings. Decisions, decisions! I think I'll just have to cut a few strips of various fabrics to mock up a block, see how they really look with that background fabric. Sometimes you really can't tell how fabrics work together unless they are cut to size.

I've been finding solace in my knitting as I run into issues elsewhere, making good progress on the sweater and just about have the pattern memorized. But here I am, at the end of the first ball of yarn and only halfway to the armhole decreases. In theory, when I figured the total number of yards needed for this pattern, the 6 skeins I had was more than enough. Now it looks like I only have enough for the body of the sweater, no sleeves. I bought all that was on display and doubt they have gotten more in, although I will stop by and check. But if not. . . I do have 8 skeins of this yarn in a different color and could start over, but oh do I hate undoing what I've already done. A part of me wants to continue and be happy if it turns into a sweater vest. At least then I would know exactly how short I am on yarn. Another part of me says, who are you kidding? Find another pattern for this yarn. As the owner of the local yarn shop said, as I mulled over if I could get away with a single skein of yarn for a pair of knee high socks, how willing are you to play yarn chicken? On a project with this much investment of time, I shouldn't be willing at all. Oh please, be more yarn waiting for me when I go back to the shop where I bought it. Hope springs eternal . . .