A Matter of Degrees

I couldn’t let go of this Noon and Night block now even if I wanted to. It is inside my head and shows no sign of leaving. I’ve been getting my garden work done in the morning when it’s cool and spending the afternoons cutting and measuring and sewing. The good news is that as I make more of these blocks, I get faster. Yay.

One more block of Version 1, where the star points rotate, will give me enough for a wallhanging:

That block at upper left has some badly-matched units, but I didn’t feel like taking the block apart. That was a math error that has since been rectified. I haven’t been terribly picky about color placement, either, as I am using up a bag of Kona scraps, but once the blocks are made and laid out, I start to see where I might change things. I do think the blocks need some kind of sashing to give them some breathing room. And as much as I like this scrappy version, I am curious to see how this block looks with more controlled fabric choices. Luckily for me, I can try out all these ideas in EQ8 ahead of time.

That math issue drove me nuts for a couple of hours. Three units get sewn together, then two units get sewn together, and then those two combination units get sewn together. The two units that get sewn together to make the second combination are the same shape, so I started out by making them the same size. However, when it came time to sew them to the three-unit combination, the star point kept getting cut off. I made the two pieces smaller, thinking that would solve the problem. It solved the star point problem, but another problem popped up in a different place. It was rather akin to having too short a sheet on the bed: if you tuck it in at the bottom, it doesn’t come up high enough, but if you pull it up to cover you, your feet are cold.

The solution was easy, once I figured it out. Those two pieces, even though they are the same shape, have to differ in size ever so slightly—by 1/8”. Cutting them that way makes everything go together perfectly.

After this is done, I need to make some of the Version 2 blocks, where the star points are mirrored.

The husband and I were having cocktails on the veranda the other night and I asked him if he had ever had a set of these as a kid:

“Nope,” he said. “I had Tonka trucks and GI Joe dolls and a cap gun. Are kids allowed to have cap guns anymore?”

Just so you know, I didn’t have one of those tangram sets, either. Perhaps that would have helped my spatial perception development.

*****************************************************

Back when this pandemic started and the call went out for sewists to make masks, my neighbor Theresa asked me if I could make some for her daughter’s pediatric nursing unit in California. Dawn and her fellow nurses were having trouble finding masks because of the PPE shortage. I must have made at least three or four dozen for them. Dawn has been here, visiting, and last night she brought me a thank-you gift:

Dawn made the card and all the nurses signed it—it made me tear up to read all the sweet things they wrote.

And Dawn made me this beautiful picture, which is going to get hung up over one of my sewing machines:

On the back is also written a thank-you note and dated “Pandemic 2020.”

Somehow, I don’t think any of us are going to forget this year.

*****************************************************

A black bear is roaming the neighborhood. Fish and Wildlife knows about it, but they’ve been busy with grizzlies closer to town. Our neighbor Mike called the husband Friday night to tell him that a black bear had just come through his yard on its way to the piggy pasture, so the husband headed out there. (I can always tell when something is an emergency because the husband—who normally isn’t in a hurry—moves with speed and purpose, although he rarely runs.) I went upstairs and got the shotgun and the bear spray, but by the time I got out to the pasture, the bear had moved on. Our renters’ dog chased it off; he is a 16-pound terrier who thinks that he’s a Rottweiler, but he does a great job of scaring bears.

I was awake at 2:46 this morning, though, and heard another neighbor’s dog barking. It is normally very quiet out here, so when dogs are barking at odd hours, I pay attention. Rosie sounded very insistent. The husband got dressed and went out with the shotgun and walked back to the pig pasture to make sure the pigs were okay.

I am a bit concerned that this bear sees the pigs as a food source, but the pasture has an electric fence and he’d have to be incredibly determined (and hungry) to breach those defenses. Most bears are pretty lazy.