Finding Joy in the Snow

The husband went out to do a preemptive round of plowing yesterday afternoon:

A few minutes after I took this picture, however, he came in to tell me he was going to town to get a replacement hose. One of the hydraulic lines had broken and was spewing hydraulic fluid everywhere. Thankfully, the hose broke during business hours on the day before a big storm.

He came home with a replacement and a spare, because two is one and one is none.

Our plow truck is the 1999 Dodge 3/4-ton pickup that I used to drive. It has served us well. I drove it for eight years, the girls drove it in high school (both my kids know how to drive a stick shift), and now it is living out the rest of its useful life as the neighborhood plow truck.

The winter storm watch that had been posted for this afternoon has been upgraded to a winter storm warning. Now they are predicting 7-9 inches for the valley and 1-2 feet for the mountains (that’s us). We’ll see. The warning runs from noon today until tomorrow morning.

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The Delectable Mountain blocks are coming along:

There are nine sets of rectangles that have to be sliced up and re-sewn into these blocks, and each set has a right and a left side. I did the first three sets yesterday and stopped. It is a tricky enough process that I need to stay alert and pay attention to what I am doing. After two sets, I could tell I was starting to go into auto-pilot mode and that is when stupid mistakes happen.

It occurred to me that if I were to do this block again—and I might, because it’s kind of fun—I would consider cutting the rectangles on the Accuquilt cutter. Each rectangle has to be cut into four 2-1/4” strips. (There is a quarter-inch of slop on either end of the rectangle.) I could lay the rectangles on the appropriate die and run them through the cutter. At the very least, I could cut one layer of three separate rectangles simultaneously. Even doing it that way would speed up the process. I’m not going to try that with this quilt because I have no room for experimentation or error, but it’s on the list of things to try with the new cutter.

A few weeks ago, while cleaning the fabric room, I ran across a box of 2-1/2” squares that I had cut (with the Accuquilt cutter!) a few years ago. When I was a freshman in high school, I took two semesters of art. Our art teacher’s name was Ms. Furey. She was tall and elegant and wore her dark hair in a bun on top of her head. I never saw her in slacks, only dresses and skirts. She knew how to coax creativity from even the most reluctant students. One of our projects that year was the legendary 88 Squares. It began with a penciled 11 x 8 grid of two-inch squares. Our assignment was to fill each square with a different design and then paint the squares with alternating complementary colors. We were allowed to mix those complementary colors with either white or black to get tints and shades.

I chose orange and blue, still one of my favorite color combinations. When I started quilting, that 88 Squares project popped back into my head and I wondered if I could do something similar in fabric. I cut a whole bunch of orange and turquoise scraps, put them in this box, and apparently forgot about them. I’m using them as leaders and enders for the Delectable Mountains quilt. I’ve accumulated quite a stack. Last night, I put some of them on the design wall to see what I think:

The jury is still out. I wish I had my original 88 Squares drawing to look at for comparison; some memories have faded after 40 years. I’m not sure this will become a whole quilt, but I might very well make a wall hanging out of it. We’ll see.

Ms. Furey retired from teaching, but she still lives in the town where I grew up. I actually ran into her there a few years ago. She was working at an antique store that was in the location of our old library (behind Papo’s Pizza, for you Avon natives). I thanked her for being my art teacher and let her know that a lot of what I learned about design from her is still with me all these years later.

I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes about snow:

If you choose not to find joy in the snow,
you will have less joy in your life but the same amount of snow.