Progress, or It's A Good Thing I'm a Process Person

 The first two photos here are an experiment for today's Photo A Day challenge. The prompt for the day was "below."

So I tried taking a picture of the jacaranda tree from below the pergola--that's the fence-looking thing in the lower right corner. Looking up from that is the house front.

I had a pretty hard time keeping the sun from glaring through--you can tell where it is by looking at that really bright area over in the left center.

 This is a more straight-on shot of the tree. It's much thinner than it was before the big windstorm in December of 2011 took out the whole top of it and a couple of main branches.

But, it's back and blooming and seems pretty happy. Which makes me happy too!

I'm pretty sure it was planted by the original owner as part of the landscaping. It, the Italian cypress at the corner of the property, the crape myrtle tree, and one old (enormous) rose bush in the back are almost all that's left. There is a concrete curb that runs around part of the back yard which we've been told was originally the perimeter of a croquet lawn. The garage sits where part of it would be, and the neighbor's garage sits on the north end of it. 

When the boys were younger, Jeff and his friend Gregg dug an enormous hole in the back yard and came upon the remnants of an old fish pond, about 5 feet down. Cruel parents made them cover it up--it was right in front of the utility pole and we really didn't want to be liable for some poor lineman breaking a leg in a hole in the yard!

So, back to the pinwheel quilt. Are  you sick of it yet? I'm not, but then I really am a "process" person rather than a "product" person. I'm enjoying the process.

This picture has  some of the "parts" in it. The half-square triangles on the left side are sewn down twice and ready to be cut apart into two mirror-image pieces. The raggedy looking stacks at the back of the picture are the ones that have already been cut--I'm making two piles as I cut. The right side of the picture--with the ruler and rotary cutter--is the stack of squares ready to be sewn onto the rest of the half-square triangles.

This is what it looks like in progress. I didn't really pose that piece in the middle, it just fell that way, but that's what the blocks I'm making will look like when I'm done sewing and cutting and pressing and squaring them up.

I decided that I'd better sew some of the ones I'd been sending through the machine, on their second side, because they do get wrinkled when they pile up like this. Also they have a tendency to tangle together, and then I have to snip threads.

Luckily the second side goes really fast, because I'm not stopping and making pairs. I try to be somewhat random but I can't be totally careless with the pairings, because some of them look really barfy together. I mean, really look like the dog's breakfast. Or whatever your favorite expression for a curdled mess is!

So on this side of the machine, here are the rest of the pairs all ready to be matched up. I counted (first time in all this that I've counted much of anything) and there are 18 different fabrics here. There are at least 6 of each color, but some have a few more. I'm pretty sure I have enough squares (you know, those ones under the ruler in the other picture--the ruler is so the cat doesn't mess them up trying to get comfy in them) to match up to all these.

Which brings up the question of why I'm sitting here blogging instead of sitting at the machine. Hmmm. Maybe it's time to go back there. Or pour a glass of wine and go watch the Tonys. Have I mentioned I love my DVR? Because I do.

Over and out for tonight!