Pinwheel Hell, Part Something-or-Other, with Bonus Double Wedding Ring

Here, let me distract you with some pretty pictures. Here's the evening sky, just a few minutes before sunset. 


I went for a walk, just because I'd been cooped up in the house for too long, and dusk is my favorite time of day.

Just as I got home, the sun went down, and it was a nice sunset. Not the most spectacular, but a nice one nonetheless.

Oh, you want to know about the pinwheels, and why I feel as if I've been dropped into the fifth circle of Dante's Inferno?

Would you also like to hear about my giant math fail?

Here we go. See that picture over there, the one that shows a white and a colored half-square triangle set on top of a print square?

I made a whole lot of those white/print sets. And I was very clever, and while I was sewing them I carefully set aside one colored square for each set.

Do you see the problem?

As I started sewing, I realized that I was rapidly running out of colored squares. Duh. Of course... each of those white/print sets was cut into TWO squares, so I had half as many as I needed.

 In my defense, last week I was fighting off some kind of nasty little bug. Just lots of fever, chills, aches and an overpowering need to sleep.

 One of the things I found when I was stash diving--because, when disaster threatens, I always shop my stash first!--was a pack of 50 precut 5" squares in 30's prints. Well, my 1/2 square triangle squares were mostly 5 1/4" or a little less, but I determined (yes I used a ruler and measured!) that using them would work and still leave me with 4 1/2" squares.

Would you believe I used all 50 and was still working on the blue squares? Yeah, I'm making a metric ton of pinwheels.

Yesterday I took what I'd done so far to my some-Mondays quilt group and spent something like 3 hours cutting what I've done so far apart. I had my little iron and my cutting stuff with me, but never got to the point of actually being able to press any, much less square them up.

 Of course, the Quilt Supervisor has been expressing his feelings about the whole project.

He doesn't see why I would rather play with bits of fabric than pet my beautiful cat.

I had a little trouble taking this picture. That's my arm and hand he's resting his head on.

Ever try chain-piecing when your "steady" hand is pinned down?

Not the easiest thing to do!

Then he moved over a bit, but kept his paw on the pieces so I couldn't move them.

I love those little chubby white paws of his, though.

Look at that defiant stare!

I've been busy with other stuff, though, so no sewing today or maybe not even tomorrow.

In case I forget I'm a knitter, I have a few UFOs to remind me.

This particular one has been hibernating for a while, and I finally decided that I wasn't going to like it when it was done. It's a pretty design, and the yarn is to die for--cashmere, silk, merino wool, in a heavenly lavender--but I wasn't feeling it.

So I decided the wisest thing was to frog it. Directly onto the ball winder!

 Then there was another round of purging the yarn stash. The first picture is stuff I've set aside to sell, either in person or via my eBay assistant (aka Courtney of the eternal patience and talent).

This is all really good stuff. Not that I've really had any crap yarn around the place for a while, but I have finally realized that I can't possibly knit it all.

So time to rehome it. I've already sold one skein out of the stack, so go me!

The next picture is stuff I decided to just give away.

There was more added to this after I took the picture, In fact, there wound up being two large tubs' worth.

The Great Wall of Rubbermaid

Some of it went to people who are going to knit for charity, and some for people to knit for themselves.

I'm very happy to have it gone.

Those empty tubs next to the full tub are boxes and bins that were emptied out. So now there's less in the Great Wall of Rubbermaid.

Speaking of which:

 And now for something completely different.

With all the interest that was shown over the Double Wedding Ring bits that were left on my doorstep, I thought I'd follow up a bit.

I passed it along to Tim Latimer, who does the most amazing things with vintage quilt tops and unfinished pieces. He blogged about it here. 

I'd mentioned the DWR quilt Id made for my son and his wife when they were married in '87, and texted JP to ask him to send me some pictures of their quilt.

So here are his pictures!

I love the hanger he made for it. JP has a real talent with woodworking, among other skills.

It's all hand quilted and uses the finest of quilting fabrics that were available in '87. I guess that kind of makes it a time capsule.

Maybe some day a quilt historian will look at this quilt and have some comments about the choices. Some of the fabrics have faded a bit, but I personally am glad to know that they've had it and loved it for all these years, and that it's been a background to much of their family life. Much better for a quilt than to be hidden away carefully "preserved" and yet meaningless!

One thing my hypothetical historian might notice is that the quilting stitches are mostly not perfect, and there's a wild variation in skill levels. That's because I had help quilting it from friends who wanted a part of it, from my daughters who wanted to learn a bit, and even--wait for it--from some celebrities.

This quilt had a "cameo" part in the John-Boy's Wedding episode of The Waltons. So the Quilting Consultants (a co-worker, Janeen Lewis, and I) got to spend a day on set, coaching the actors on how to appear to be quilting (for the ones who didn't actually know how). A few of the ladies did know how to quilt, though. Michael Learned  (Mom Walton) is an accomplished quilter.

So, there's my update about what's been happening. I have a piece of deadline knitting that needs to be finished ASAP, which I can hopefully show off the next time I blog, and maybe I can start dividing my time a little more evenly between the quilting and the knitting.

Well, it could happen. I could finish a pinwheel quilt or two in this millenium. too. Weirder things have happened!