Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 7

I went to the quilt guild meeting yesterday, with the first six sections of the Cone Nebula quilt in tow. I laid it out and showed it to a few people, including the person who had taught the kaleidoscope quilt class I took a few years ago. She was very gratified to see a student progress in this way, and she gave me some helpful suggestions. It was very funny that as I was laying out the quilt on the floor, someone came along and gasped, "Whose pattern is this?" I answered, "Umm, mine!" The questioner gave me a funny look and said, "It's just very complex looking." "Thank you!" I am SO not a kit person!

Anyway, here is the seventh section all sewn together.

In case you are wondering how this piece fits in with the rest of the sections, today's piece sits to the right of this piece:

and right below this piece:

I'm going to take a little break from this project. The next few weekends have stuff going on that may preclude serious sewing room time. Also, the speaker at the guild meeting yesterday showed a couple of pictures and said a couple of things that led me to an idea of how to pursue a project I've been noodling around in the back of my brain for about two years. I'll post some pictures as that unfolds.

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted pictures of cats, so this week, I have two. First, I provoked the Brat Cat and got this picture:

Ooohh!! Look at those scary claws!! (I LOVE her SO much!)

Second, here is the Princess on patrol in the front yard on a GORGEOUS spring day:

It's good to have a guard cat!

Thank you for the very kind comments after my most recent post. I think I was in a state of serious freak-out that morning. One of the things I have to keep telling myself is that numbers may be indicators, but, in the end, they're mere things, and they are not the be-all and end-all of life. My husband would totally snort if he read this as I have been obsessed with numbers like this:

Yeah. I wear a pedometer, and I have let it take over my life. I signed up for a first-quarter million-step challenge - that's an average of 11,111 steps per day. I have seriously been going out of my mind trying to meet this goal. I've been on a 10,000-step-per-day program for the last three years, and it's been good for me. I can go out and walk for five and six miles at a time without very much effort; what's doing me in is the focus on a significantly higher goal. As of this minute, I'm within 64,000 steps of the goal. In order to get this far, I've taken to spending a couple of hours a day on the weekends just walking vigorously around the neighborhood. That's fine and wonderful, but there are art projects I'm not doing, dust bunnies I'm not chasing, books I'm not reading. (Okay, this paragraph feels like something out of a support group meeting. "Hi, I'm Liz, and I'm a pedometer checker.") What I think is hilarious (in a sad sort of way) is that I have put on five or six pounds during this challenge! Must remember Liz' Rule Number Three: "Moderation in all things, including moderation." (from James Hilton's Lost Horizon)

In case you were wondering, Rule Number One is "In order to live fully, you must love people and use things, not love things and use people." (John Powell's Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?) Rule Number Two is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, read in a George F. Will column back in the 1980s) It's amazing how often really complicated-seeming problems become clarified when I stop and ask simple questions, "Which is the person? Which is the thing? Am I focusing on one aspect of the problem and ignoring other parts of it? Am I acting out of habit or in response to the actual situation? Am I getting overly concerned with this?" Usually, by the time I get to the last of those questions, I've come to a decision point. When I've not asked those questions, that's when things have gone very wrong.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #31

Before I get to my stuff, I want to remind everyone that this is part of a ring that is centered at Tami's blog. Please be sure to check out all of the cool projects over there.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a period of reassessment and revitalization for people in certain segments of Christianity. (Several years ago, a friend who is deeply engaged in another branch of Christianity came to me and asked me where Lent could be found in the Bible. That was an interesting conversation and showed both of us that we were coming from very different points of view within this faith tradition. I so appreciate the fact that there's so much variation and room for so many different kinds of people.)

Anyway, I got on the scale. This is not something I do very often, mainly because I don't like being governed by numbers, etc., etc., etc.; however, there is diabetes in my family, and it usually hits in the decade in which I find myself. So, because of the number I saw, my work in progress for the foreseeable future will have to be making the number smaller. It was a seriously scary number.

Moving along, my house is another work in progress, and this weekend with company coming over, I fixed the bathroom. I had two paintings on the wall: Summer and Winter. So, I painted up Spring and Fall. Here they are individually and as a group:

This is not great art, but it suits the purpose, and I'm pleased with these.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #30

I am so sorry I missed three weeks of Tami's WIPW! I'll be playing catch up for a while, I see. Everyone has been SO productive. To see what I mean, follow the link above and watch all sorts of interesting projects in process.

I've been working on the Cone Nebula quilt. Here is a numbered map to show you where we are:

I don't do conventional, so the numbers are all over the place. I was afraid of having too much of one thing in one area, and not having it evenly spread through the rest. Anyway, here is Section 5:

and Section 6:

(Yes, I know that I need to get up on a chair and point the camera down - Section 5 - instead of backing up and hoping - Section 6.)

I've also been working on the Every Way Wrap. It's 15 rows bigger now than this picture, but you all have imaginations:

Last week, I got discouraged at how slowly this is coming along that I put myself on a schedule - at least one 16-row repeat every week by Friday. It's Wednesday morning, and I am seriously considering aiming for a second repeat by Friday... I had a really complicated cable row last evening just before I went to bed. This is a row where each cable is a mirror image of the ones on either side of it (hold the first two stitches back instead of front). I was falling asleep, Hubby had a PBS thing on about the battle of Stalingrad, and I simply screwed up. I dropped stitches, lost count, had to rip back the row, had to go to the back side to find my errant stitches. I got it all cleared up, and by then I was wide awake and knew a whole lot about the Eastern Front of the Second World War.

The transition at work is in process. The official date for the changeover is April 4, but a gal in the building retired last week, and some of her duties have come to me. My new supervisor-to-be has me writing procedures for various tasks (this happens to be something I enjoy doing and have done on nearly every job since starting as a very low-ranked clerk nearly 30 years ago). My current supervisor is telling all of us to do whatever we can to make the transition go smoothly, and she's going around to each of us with virtual hugs and pats on the back. I have been SO fortunate to have worked for her for the last 15 years!

Have a good week everyone and check out the other projects at Tami's blog!