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.