Gratitude Glimmers #80

Here we are at the final gratitude post of the year. Gratitude does lead to a happier human, though I admit I’ve had to dig deep these past few months. You can find more grateful posts at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color.

1. I like the book Dayna got me for Christmas. It’s one of my all-time favourites, and I highly recommend it. I read it in 2022 and waxed poetic about it in a gratitude post that year.

It confirms a sense I’ve had about trees from, well, pretty much forever, but the moment I entered Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island, I was utterly transformed into a tree-hugger, tree lover, an advocate and worshipper. Scientists around the world have been studying their communication powers, and their amazing findings about these sentient beings is ongoing. 

DrEAMi #78

Welcome to another month of celebrating those Drop Everything And Make it! projects.

Pinterest

I’ve decided that this will be the last DrEAMi party. It’s been a fun run and has inspired many more ‘chase that squirrel’ projects I’m sure. Six such squirrels await those of us who participate in Project Quilting which begins next week and I can’t wait!

W-EVdnesday #6 Travelling

My apologies for not posting last Wednesday or yesterday; blame it on the holiday brain fog.

Since we’ve just returned from another 2000 km round-trip, I thought I'd write a bit about this fairly major stumbling block a lot of people have when it comes to considering the purchase of an EV. Although long trips are slightly different, especially in these early days of EVs, they shouldn't be a factor that deters you from buying an EV. We've now got four long trips under our belt since we purchased our Ioniq 5 just about two years ago. This most recent one was to Dayna's in Spring Hill, Tennessee, a distance of just short of 1000 km, thanks to having to go off I-75 to get to a fast charging station.

You can see that it is estimated to take not quite nine hours which doesn't account for stops or traffic issues. Dayna and Tyler usually do it in a little over 9 hours with one stop for gas, food and bathroom. Again, this depends on traffic; going down we ran into major congestion and delays in Louisville which added an hour to our travel time; coming home, out of order charging stations did the same.

Sewing Forever

Since the Christmas Tree Farm quilt finish I've been steadily sewing. I have a baby quilt commission that I need to finish by the end of this year, and I completed a couple of small Christmas presents as well. Here is what I’ve been up to.

I mentioned in The Christmas tree farm post that Brady had requested a bigger library book bag. It took two tries before I got the size where I felt it was not too big, but not too small either… Just right! As with the first bag, I made him in January 2020, it has a pocket on the front for his library card with his initial, which could also stand for books! I found a font that I liked in the computer, blew it up to the size I needed, lightly traced the letter onto paper laid over the laptop screen, and then used my Hera marker to trace imprint it onto the fabric. From there I lightly went over the imprint with a Bohin fine chalk pencil onto the dark fabric to be sure these eyes of mine could see where to stitch! I used a Sulky Blendables 12 weight cotton thread to FMQ embroider, going over it four times to fatten it up. 

Christmas Tree Farm Quilt

Last fall I made the Patchy Pumpkin Farm quilt for my eldest daughter, Brianne, who lives in Alberta. When Dayna was out there visiting this fall, she fell in love with the quilt and asked if I would make her one. No problem. However, I thought, why not see if she'd like the Christmas tree farm version, same truck just with trees as opposed to pumpkins. She did, so I purchased that pattern from White Plains Quilt, and here it is, ready before Christmas!

She wanted it in traditional Christmas colours, so I asked her if she wanted all forest green trees or some forest green and others a celadon or tarragon green as in the original quilt. She liked that, and lo and behold, I had one in my Kona stash, but no clue what name it is, as I never used to be bothered keeping track of the shades I'd bought. I had enough to make all seven of the trees.

W-EVdnesday #5 Precious Metals

Culture changes usually take a long time; people tend to like the status quo. So it is normal to be unsure and skeptical about new ways of doing things; in fact it is good to think critically, something that is lost on a frighteningly large number of people in today's world. When computers first became the norm for research, back in the early 2000s, as opposed to going to encyclopedias and non-fiction sections of our libraries, we, as teachers, had to first learn and then teach critical thinking skills wrt sources. We taught kids to verify the accuracy of a source, look into credentials, and we drilled into them the fact that anyone, anyone, can make a webpage, and claim 'facts' and relate 'actual incidents' that might be seen as true. We sent them to sites like snopes.com and factcheck.com. Little did we know that in less than two decades formerly respectable news sources would print lies and untruth and unreality in order to garner 'clicks' which were unheard of back then, really, in order to get as much revenue as possible. 

Follow the money is a truism. If you follow the money back to many of the myths circulating about EVs, you will find that oil companies are very skilled at promoting misinformation. One of them is that EVs require mining for lithium for their batteries that is worse for the environment than drilling for oil is.

Sunset Strip Pattern Release

Sunset Strip is my newest release! This was a quilt I designed for a challenge when I was an Island Batik ambassador in March 2019. There are (ahem) a few challenge quilts that need to get written up and published into patterns! I've not been as productive in the pattern-writing department this year, just three: this one, and two for magazines.

This pattern was the first design in that year's Design Challenge I was hosting, so it is high time I got it out into the world. It's also the first one I wrote up, graphics and all, in Pages, a word processing app on my MacBook Air. Prior to this I worked in Googledocs, but storage is limited there, so I thought why not learn Pages. It's really not much different than Word and Googledocs, and is actually more user-friendly in many ways.

I had four lovely ladies test the pattern and I am excited to show you their makes! Also I should add that it is on sale all week at the lowest price I've ever released a pattern: $7CA. That's just about half price. ($12 regular)