Calming Loops

Yesterday was beautifully bright and sunny. The high only reached 18 degrees, but that didn’t keep everyone from getting out and assessing the damage from the storm. Of course, the local bottom feeders wasted no time trying to turn this situation to their advantage. The fact that they do it under the guise of “helping” makes their behavior even more egregious.

The husband spent much of the day building slash piles. I’ll be out there later this week—after it warms up and the snow melts—raking up the debris in the yard and pruning my fruit trees. In an attempt to right the ship, I got out the quilt I basted together last week and started working on it. I thought I might try a new quilting pattern, like the leaf pattern we learned in the Angela Walters class I took last February. I was only a few inches into the pattern when I realized that I needed something easy and familiar. Machine quilting is supposed to be a calming activity, and practicing a new quilting motif was anything but.

I undid all the stitching and started over with loops:

I like loops (obviously). I’ve done them enough that the muscle memory is right there and I don’t have to think about what I am doing. I divided the quilt in half vertically, started at the bottom of one side, and worked my way back and forth from the side to the middle of the quilt and toward the top. I made it about two-thirds of the way to the top on that side before closing up shop for the night.

The top thread is Signature cotton 40wt and the bottom thread is Aurifil cotton 50wt. That’s my favorite thread combo, although I also like Aurifil 40wt thread for the top.

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Our church’s leadership team met after the service yesterday and decided to cancel worship services for the next two Sundays. I think that is the appropriate response given the current situation. (It helps that the head of our leadership team is a medical professional.) The schools—which were going to be on spring break next week anyway—are also shut down for two weeks.

When this is all over, no doubt there will be people who will say, “See, everyone overreacted and nothing happened!” without realizing that it is precisely because everyone overreacted that nothing happened. (Read that again, slowly.) The husband and I have been ridiculed and laughed at for the past 20 years because we’ve structured our lifestyle to be prepared for exactly this kind of situation. And while I have no doubt that we’re going to feel an impact, that impact will be far less than what other people may feel.

These are interesting times, that’s for sure.