Not that I get around much, but there is one thing when you go to someone's house, or in this case, a retreat house, that always throws me for a loop. One thing every time, and it's in the kitchen. Can anyone guess? Almost everyone has one, and while they all look similar from the outside, they are NOT!!!! I'm talking about the microwave. The difference is the wattage? Power? I'm not sure what you would call it, but oh my --- they are totally different.
I know from cooking oatmeal in many microwaves. Yesterday I struggled, but I was watching, so I was able to stop it before it boiled over. Today, I set the time for 90 seconds at a power level of 3 out of 10. The oatmeal still boiled over. Sigh.......
And last night, when I put my Magic Bag in the microwave before going to bed, I burnt the contents, and the house stinks like burnt popcorn. I had put it in for 3 minutes the night before, and always do three minutes at home, I never thought about the power, and VOILA -- burnt popcorn smell. Sigh.....
Perhaps I need to shy away from all things microwave!! Tomorrow, I shall try 90 seconds on power 2, but I'll watch it! And my Magic Bag might be toast because of the burnt contents.
OH MY --- I'm a law-abiding citizen, and I can't cross the line! I decided to find a geocache on my morning walk. It wasn't that far from the house, and then the plan was to cut across the golf course from one road to another. The owner of the house said they do it all the time.
I quickly found the geocache - it's amazing when you walk into a parking lot, and you know immediately what tree you are going to find the darn thing.
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| The geocache container |
By the way, that was find number 993, which is a small number. But I'm OK with that. I recently saw someone celebrate his 75,000 th find!!! Now that is a serious geocacher. I just do it from time to time and mostly on walks in new neighborhoods. Perhaps I can top 1000 while I'm here.
Then I continued walking down the road to get to the golf course. As I was approaching the gate, a car was pulling out, but not before the guy had opened it, which had a very large NO TRESPASSING sign on it. Hmmm ---- I stopped and contemplated entering the driveway through the gate, then decided I didn't need the hassle of being in the wrong place when I had no right to be there. And while the fellow in the car was coming out of the gate, I could hear other people on the grounds.
I'll go further down the road and see if I can find a spot to cross the ditch and walk along the edge. I spotted an opening in the trees.
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| A perfect spot to cross the ditch and get into the trees |
I walked about ten feet into the wooded area, only to find this.
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| Hmmm - I'm not the first person to think this was a good idea. |
Hmmm—someone is telling me something. So I turned around and had to walk all the way back around the road grid. And that was OK -- it was a nice morning, the sun was out and not too cold, and I got a good walk.
Then it was back to the house, where I went back to dealing with all those little scraps of white fabric.
I kept at it all day. How is that for focus? I was finally down to the last handful of white scraps. Most of them needed to be pressed before I could do anything because they were literally crammed tight into that box.
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| The last handful of scraps |
And I'm happy to say that I have a lot of 1" strips of white fabric.
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| 1" stripes of white fabric |
I also cut some 2 1/2" squares to make some half-square triangles, and I'll need some 2-inch pieces, so I cut some of those, and I found some triangles that I can use for making half-square triangles. I brought my bag of bags, so each is now safely stowed in the appropriate bag.
I decided to keep some of the larger pieces of white and nice full strips so that, if and when the time comes, and I might need some white scraps, I still have some, and they are organized. The piddly little scraps - they are gone!
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| The scrap bin! |
As I sew the white strips with the colours, more scraps will be generated, since I won't use all of the strips, as some are not 1" for the entire length. For the moment, the white is done!!
I finished after dinner, and it was dark outside. I cleaned up my cutting area, loaded all that stuff into a tote bag, and took it to the car Then I grabbed the next bag of things to do This time, it doesn't involve cutting but rather some handwork I'm going to try to advance my two jackets as far along as I can I've already been hard at work on that this morning, so you'll see it later.
What precipitated all this cutting of the white strips is these boxes of batik scraps, which are the cutoffs from the very first QuiltWorx pattern that I ever did. It was called the 4th of July. I didn't know enough about these patterns, so I didn't realize how wasteful they are with fabric. I couldn't bear to throw this stuff out.
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| Batik scraps |
While there are some pieces I can use, I think most will be too small, and I still hate to throw them out When I looked through it last night, all those colors were so exciting, and I think I'm going to try to make some kind of collage Hmmmmmm --- thoughts are running through my head And I could use those white castoffs as well Hmmmmmmmmm,
I took a break in the afternoon and went to the local quilt shop, which turned out to be a mistake I found a few things I "needed" I had visited the shop when it was in its original location in DocVille, which is a very interesting place I first came across that place on my cycling trip across Canada back in 2013 Shoot -- I am struggling to copy the DocVille link without a mouse I hate this touch pad!!! Just Google it if you want to see the western town!
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| Annie's Quilt Shop |
What was funny was that I spotted a jigsaw puzzle on a top shelf and thought it would be neat to have, so I asked the owner to get it for me. Well, it happened to be holding up the line of pillow forms, and once the puzzle box was down, a domino effect set in as all the pillow forms plopped onto the floor!!!!
And for a point of reference, if you think I am a lunatic (that's OK) at cutting 1" strips of fabric, I am not crazy. Look at what one lady is making. That center square. It's cut at 3/4", way smaller than what I'm working with!!! I'm not so crazy after all!!!
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| This is teeny tiny! |
And don't you love this sign!!! How true, and we are doing a great job of chatting without our phones, although my phone and only my phone was on the table last night. However, we did need it to fact-check something. You sure need to keep a phone handy these days for fact-checking!!!!
On that note, I'm out of here! My first seam that needs hand stitching to finish is ready to go. I hope to finish both sleeve/shoulder seams fairly quickly, then move on to the next set of shoulder/sleeve seams to prep. Still, those ones will be stitched by machine when I'm home If that doesn't make sense, it will when I forward a picture to you Then onto the next thing, and I'd like to try sorting those THREE containers of batiks Do not worry if I can't find enough 1" strips in those three boxes of very small scraps, because I have another three boxes of larger scraps still in the car Oh yes—I came prepared for four retreats.
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