Gratitude and Glimmers #91

Welcome to my post for the month of all things I like and for which I am grateful.  You can find links to more posts like this one at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color. Glimmers are the little things that give me a frisson if you will, of joy or happiness or excitement or all three.

When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around. 

--Willie Nelson

1. I like this post Nine Things That Sewists do That No One Understands at Melly Sews written by her husband from the perspective of someone who doesn’t sew, but lives with a sewist. Numbers 8 and 9 I can especially relate to!

2. I know I've said it before, but I do love how Bella joins me every single morning for yoga.

3. I love watching Rufus dribble his 'soccer' ball (it's a hard plastic herding ball designed to get them to use their brain and also to tire them out). We got it for Rocco but he didn't like it (probably because it really is hard and he was a little gentle soul of a gay doggy). Rufus LOVES snow too, so he's been in his glory the past couple of weeks.

I also like Rufus's winter boots because they protect his paws from the stupid salt they put down in over-abundance despite our local environmental society constantly asking them to cut back, but I also like these boots because of how he walks when he first has them on. He looks like a moose or a Tennessee walking horse!

4. I like Bella keeping me company in my sewing room. She truly is my cat, happiest wherever I am. This photo I particularly like because her tongue is out! She'd been in the process of washing herself, (hadn't quite got to her face, ha) purring away, and looked up at me. She actually stayed like this for not one but two photos. 

Yes, that is my SAHRR project beside which she's sitting 

5. This post is animal glimmers heavy but I'm okay with that. Whenever we've been out and left Rufus alone, when we come home we ask him, "Were you a good boy?" and more often than not, he comes towards us with his head down a bit, showing his teeth in a sheepish smile sort of way. It's hilarious. I think it's his emotions that he has trouble with, not sure how to express, "Well I really tried but I just had to bark at the dog that walked by with its person."

6. We get a lot of beautiful sunsets. Well I am sure that every single spot on this beautiful planet does. Maybe it's the added reflection of a humongous Great Lake that gives more luminescence to the sky but wow, the sky is often on fire, and this night this past month was no exception. Quite the glimmer I got!

7. I got the best glimmer today, Wednesday, the day I'm finishing up this post when Brady sent a group text to our family thread with a photo of a cup of tea and this was his text:

'Thought I would make afternoon tea around the time nana would be having hers."

He is the best person ever. I can't wait until we can have tea in person when he comes again this summer. We'd both read our books and have our tea, and on alternate days he'd have a Mountain Dew with Grampa on the deck while they were both on their iPads.Time with loved ones is the most precious gift.

8. I subscribed to Britbox in January and I am wondering why I waited so long. Well, tbh a ton of British TV is on CBC Gem as well as our Detroit PBS station, so that is partly why. I also can get DVDs out of the library which is how I'd been watching Shetland, recommended by a friend. It is so very good. Our library only has the first five series, so I'm now in series 6 thanks to Britbox. I've also been able to start Vera, and Sister Boniface Mysteries. CBC has some exclusive new shows and I am quite liking two, Saint Pierre and North of North. The former is a detective series set on the French island of Saint Pierre which is actually in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and a place I've long wanted to visit. I like that both Canadian and French actors are in it. As for the latter, it's my favourite of the two, filmed in Iqaluit, Nunavut, written by two Inuk women with a cast of several Inuk actors. The scenery is stunning, and it's true to the typical way of life in the high Arctic (no they don't live in igloos), and although the dialogue is mainly in English, a lot of Inuktitut is spoken as well.

9. Books. So far I've finished two books this month, and will have another finished in the next day or two. All three are and have been excellent. Half Life by Jill Cantor was about the life of Marie Curie, but in alternate chapters it was about the 'what if' life she might have had, had she and the man she first loved, in Poland, gone against his mother's orders (he was from a well-to-do family, she was not) not to marry. The Lake House by Kate Morton was really good. Right now I'm in the fourth Jenny Cooper book, The Flight by Matthew Hall, and it is gripping as per usual. And yesterday I picked up (yay! I was something like 34th in line) The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny at the library so I'll be reading that next until I can get Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon which is our current book in my University of Alberta Alumni book club! So many books, and the more I read, the more I find TO read! 

10. I like Canada Reads, and have followed it and read the top five contenders each year for several years. It's a great way to expand my reading interests. They've announced the five short-listed contenders with debates starting in March.

A Second SAHRR and First SAHRR Update

For those who do follow me on Instagram, you may recall that I had a backup block as my potential centre block, the 2.5" strips blue and green heart block that was a test of one I'd seen floating around on the internet several years ago.

It became the inspiration for the second challenge of Project Quilting, which I named Winter Blues. I hated to put it back in my Lonely Blocks Club drawer. (I love that--it just came to me as I typed.) What if I did what I saw Kathleen of Kathleen McMusing is doing this year: make a quilt that is not a round robin, rather make a block or two each week following the prompt.

SAHRR Round 1

For this round we were to make a King's Crown block or any block that starts with the same letter as our name. I decided to do a Snowball block, and the original thinking was to put one in each of the four corners, and keep this round fairly quiet as the centre block is pretty busy. Let’s see how that worked out.

Yup. Not what I thought would happen. 

Winter Blues PQ 16.2

My quilt for the second challenge of Project Quilting is done. We were to make something that shows the visual effect of ombré, which is a colour shift in value or hue. As you know, my favourite colour is blue, and a couple of things came nicely together - a set of fat quarters sitting on a shelf and a random test block from a few years ago I'd pulled out as a possible candidate for the SAHRR. This is the result!

I first thought of calling it Twilight Hearts but as the design came together in fabric, and with talk of Blue Monday last week on the CBC Music programme I listen to, the name came to me: Winter Blues. January is a hard month for many of us in the northern hemisphere and I am no exception. Blue Monday, the third Monday in January, was actually designated by a UK travel company as the most depressing day of the year back in 2005, and the moniker has stuck. A couple of serendipitous connections made the name stick.

Jasper

Well this flimsy is sure a lovely surprise and a most satisfying result! You may recall Lorna’s Mod Bear Paw quilt that I started back in November. I had the bear section finished on November 19. The last update was November 25 where I had the lower section with the bear, bear paw blocks and trees mostly planned out, just not sewn together. At the end of that post I had said, What's next? Who knows?! I do know I will be adding in mountains, maybe in a log cabin style, a couple or more stars. For now, I'll sew all these parts together.

Well, the mountains (not log cabin style after all), sky and Aurora Borealis (no stars) are done and so is the quilt.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge Project 1

I really enjoyed making my Scrappy Stars in 2023, and last year had a glimmer (yup, one of those moments) when I thought I might be able to do a churn dash block using the same idea—crumbs and strips in the colour of the month to make the main components of the block. Once I had Cradled finished and blogged, I got out my graph paper, fired up my math brain, and created a 15" block.

I love it! I plan to make nine for a quilt which I intend to give to the Windsor Sexual Assault Centre as I do each year for a child. The tutorial is below if you’d like to make this scrap-(sort of)-busting block.

PQ 16.1 - Cradled

I always look forward to the start of Project Quilting. It helps make January less unbearable. January has long been a hard month for me: spring and summer seem so far away and it is dark and cold. Letting my creativity bloom is a balm for my winter-weary soul. And let's just pause for a moment because seriously, winter in this furthest south part of Canada, Sandra, is pretty mild really. For example, I was looking for a photo last week and came across one of a wild crocus I'd taken on February 26 last year, so that's only six weeks away. I told the trees that same week on Lake Erie's shore at the end of the common path for lake access in my cul-de-sac to hold on, just six more weeks.

When Tricia of @quiltchicken put out the first prompt, Mythical Creatures, I was immediately excited. I have loved magic and witches my entire life, and fantasy is a genre I still love. I let that prompt percolate in my brain for Sunday and Monday, since I was deep into mountains and aurora borealis on my cousin's quilt, and found it difficult to just drop that train of thought/stitching.

A Look Ahead and A Look Back

The words came out of my mouth before my brain fully registered them, "Here's to 2025; we're a quarter of the way through this next century." Gulp. How time goes.

So here's a quick look back at 2024.

A look at my Quilts of 2024 page tells me I made 33 quilted projects. That isn't counting the countless (ha) makeup bags I made or three mug cozies. Eighteen of those were quilts, six were pillows, nine were either tote bags, placemats, or runners, and one was a garment, a pyjama top. A conservative estimate of makeup bags would be around 15-20.

Here are just a few.