Bridge Abutments

For the men in my audience—yes, I know that’s sexist, but it’s only ever the men who ask for more concrete pictures, so make of it what you will—here are pictures of the bridge abutment pour. Quilting content below the fold.

Wall framing:

Wall framing from a different angle:

Looking down into the wall framing:

Another perspective on the wall framing. (Truly, it’s hard to write engaging content about concrete):

A nice view of the small creek:

The boom truck wasn’t available that day, so they brought the regular line pump:

I am always amazed at the ability of these mixer drivers to get these trucks into all sorts of jobsites. I know where this job is and the husband keeps telling me not to try to drive up there.

This is the bridge—an old railroad trestle—that is going to go over the creek. It will sit on those abutments that the husband constructed. The trestle is upside down in this picture, so you’ll have to imagine it flipped over.

I asked the husband if he was going to do the foundation of the house that will be going in on this site, but he says he doesn’t think the homeowner has gotten that far in the planning yet.

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

I took a break from working on Noon and Night yesterday. The quilting is going reasonably well, but it’s accompanied by a lot of me chanting, “Finished is better than perfect!” in my head. I also have to push down on the surface of the quilt to compress the wool batting enough to use the ruler, and that tires out my forearms after a while.

I was noodling around in EQ8 yesterday morning and came up with an intriguing quilt design, so instead of quilting, I got out the 9” Qube, pulled some fabric from the stash, and started cutting. I might sew up a couple of test blocks today. I like where it’s headed so far.

If I do end up publishing more quilt designs, they will be scrap-focused for a couple of reasons. I discovered when I was a knitting designer that it was virtually impossible for me to stay ahead of the “new and exciting” yarn releases. Some of that was due to being in the backwaters of Montana. By the time I was able to get my hands on a line of yarn and make a sweater out of it, it was out of date. I could—and sometimes did—get comp yarn from manufacturers, but I was also conscious of not being beholden to any one company. I am not interested in playing those games with fabric. And if this pandemic taught me anything, it’s that I can’t rely on there being a consistent supply of black Kona.

I’ve also built up a large—my family says “huge”—stash of fabric over the past couple of years. I love being able to go through my bins of fabric and pull the ingredients for a quilt. (This is very similar to how I cook, interestingly.) And if I don’t have enough of something, that inspires me to be creative and come up with a solution.

Bonnie Hunter’s overall design style appeals to me, but I am not interested in making tiny little blocks or working with 1” pieces of fabric. Her quilt designs sometimes end up so busy that they make my head hurt. I like scrappy, but I want coherent scrappy.

As I said to the husband, it’s a matter of finding my lane and staying there. I will publish patterns for quilts that I like to make. They won’t appeal to everyone and that’s just fine.