A Contemplative Life

Since we moved to Humboldt, the running joke this time of year when the sun shines and it's above sixty-three degrees Fahrenheit is that this is the LAST NICE DAY. Today could certainly qualify for how freaking warm it is outside! Currently sixty-nine at our not that near the ocean location. It was seventy-one earlier, DUDE! Pockets of coolish air in the shade, like near the chicken coop, but otherwise it's this glorious autumnal weather that makes up for all the gray summer days we receive. Currently I'm dressed in capri leggings and a short sleeved t-shirt. Like it's July, though even here in July long leggings are my norm. I'm grateful it's not cold because Owl Chicken is so bedraggled in her molting appearance, what a sight she is! She still looks like a big pullet, but handles her situation with aplomb when Ruthie tries to assert herself. Owl doesn't take crap from any other hen. We have guests this weekend, a couple of my husband's high school budd...

Ah, another Mandolin quilt is completed. The EPP portion that is, lol. Not that the rest of it is going to be complicated, other than adding to the fleece backing so it's large enough. No batting, as an English paper pieced quilt top is heavier than a machine pieced top, or mine are because I use wide seam allowances, adding to the heft. I'll stitch the top's perimeter onto the fleece, then do some hand-quilting, and BOOM, there's a completed cozy. However... I want to make some notes, just on the very obscure chance I ever start another EPP project. Seven await my attention, ahem, so even pondering another is ridiculous. But I learned A LOT in making this quilt, much of it upon studying the photo above. How chaotic it appears to me, sigh, because I used two different fabrics in constructing the joining blocks, not including the center hexagons. Yet the last Mandolin quilt I made looked, well, dull, what with white joining blocks edging hexagons from a sunflower print. ...

One finished side block, another underway. Despite beginning to stitch edge pieces to Mandolin blocks, other edge pieces remain left to hew together. Sometimes it feels like hewing, lol, but I am grateful to have underway the joining process for said quilt! Which, as these things occasionally go, might not take as long as I thought because when sewing blocks, be they half or quarter-sized, all those little and large pieces need to be attached in a whole, of sorts, half or quarter element notwithstanding. But drawing all those blocks into a WHOLE is merely stitching edges to one another. And yeah, that's some hefty handsewing, but not quite as much as I thought previously. So that means this Mandolin quilt top *could* be completed before the end of the year. Which if you'd asked me a few days ago, I'd have shaken my head, smirking. Next year fer shure, I'd have smiled. Future Me is smiling, I see her almost breaking into giggles. Not sure over what, but something has her...