Stay At Home Round Robin: Week 6

The last prompt for the SAHRR was posted by Quilting Gail last Monday.  Borders 1 and 2 are done, I'm still working on 3, 4, 5 and 6.  I did decide on what the final border will look like.  I'm not a fan of the typical 4 patch pinwheel blocks. Not sure why, they just don't appeal to me. So I typed pinwheel into the search function of EQ and found another pinwheel block that I did like. 

Of course this block requires 8 HSTs, all at 1.5" to end up with a 4" finished block.  I can't seem to make anything easier, more complicated just seems to appeal to me more.  I've only got one of these blocks made, but there are several other versions in various stages of completion over at the sewing machine.  

Here's all the bits and pieces of my SAHRR up on the design wall.

The hourglass blocks are all finished, and two of the sides have been sewn on to the top. The remaining two sides are being sewn together.  I'll need to add spacer borders of the background fabric before assembling all the flying geese to make border 4.  It looks like more flying geese than I'll need, but once they are sewn together they should shrink to fit the spacer borders. There are few more to make to have enough for the bottom border.  I've got one border of the square in a square blocks finished  and started on the blocks needed for border 6.  The final SAHRR parade is March 13th. Hopefully I'll have a mostly assembled top by then. There are still a lot of blocks left to make to have a finished set of borders.   

Linking up with Quilting Gail for SAHRR Round 6, Monday Design Wall and Patchwork & Quilts. 

Stitching Stuff: Week 9 of 2023

This week was much better than last week.  The shoulder is healing, though I still have to watch how long I'm on the computer even with the more ergonomic set up. So long as I take breaks and stretch, sitting at the sewing machine doesn't seem to cause me any issues. The last time I had a big flair up with the shoulder, I did some research and found a new sewing table that was a lot more ergonomic than the old desk I'd been using.  It was definitely a smart move. 

My stitching week wasn't perfect. We had some appointments on Wednesday and I just didn't make it to the sewing room that day. 

• 15 minute days/week = 6/7 days
• 15 minute days/Feb = 25/28 days
• 15 minute days/Mar = 3/4 days
• 15 minute days/2023 = 55/63
• Success rate = 87.30%

 

Two months into 2023 and I'm still on track with my goal to stitch at least 75% of the year. This is my 12th year of tracking my stitching time (wow, time flies!) and my average stitching time over that time period is 76.5%.  My best year was 92.9%, but that meant being being really, really focused on getting the time in.  It took some of the fun out of being in the sewing room.  I've tried to correlate my stitching time with finishes, fabric usage, etc. There is no consistent correlation.  So if I sew more days than I don't, it's good.  

How are you doing on getting in your stitching time? 

 

1. Gretchen 2. DonnaleeQ 3. Ivani 4. Shasta @ High Road

5. Lyndsey 6. Janice 7. Frederique 8. Quilting Gail

9. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 10. Susan in TN 11. Carol @QuiltSchmilt

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Week 61 Photo Challenge: Hair

The challenge card for last week was a pretty easy to find subject.

The hardest part of this photo challenge for My Guy and I was to figure out how to get good picture of our own hair. Why we didn't photograph each other's, I'm not sure.  It certainly led to some interesting ways to hold a camera and take a shot.  

Kate: Does She or Doesn't She?

It wasn't easy to take a photo using the mirror and avoid getting my hand in the shot too. I had to use my left hand to hold the camera. I'm right handed. That this photo was mostly in focus is a miracle. My photo reminded me of a very successful ad campaign. Do you remember those commercials and magazine ads? 

I'm not sure how My Guy got his shot, he didn't use a mirror. I'm positive he doesn't have eyes in the back of his head contrary to what Grad Girl believed when she was little. 

My Guy: Ponytail

My Guy chose to photograph what he commonly calls his Covid curls.  When not contained in a ponytail, his hair is quite curly and wavy. He does have really pretty hair.  I'm not sure how he got the camera back there to get this shot.  I'll have to have him show me, he had to have used his left hand. Like me he's right handed.  He did say that it wasn't an easy photo to get. 

This isn't the photo that Grad Girl sent me last night as her submission for this week. I'm using (abusing?) my power as the author of this blog to post a photo she sent me earlier this week that I think is much cuter.  

 

Grad Girl: Cute, but Angry Hairball

Queenie is never happy to see Grad Girl getting ready to leave for school and work. I don't know if she thinks that sitting on her shirt will make her stay home or not.  At any rate she's still a cutie even if she's complaining (which per Grad Girl's comment she was being very vocal about something at that moment).  

This week's challenge should be interesting. There are several interpretations you could go with. 

I have some thoughts, I'm sure My Guy does as well.  Should be another interesting week on the photography front.  

PHD in 2023: February Update

February wasn't the best month on the stitching front. My shoulder issues sidelined me for about a week. I'm finding that there are still schedule disruptions, outside appointments, and other errands that intrude on my days.  That's OK we have stuff that needs to get done and I'm grateful that we can take care of those things now.  But it does cut into my stitching time and probably will for a bit. We delayed a lot of repair work because it was hard for us to get off work. At some point we'll get caught up on the backlog and then it shouldn't be a routine occurrence.  

All that to say there's been no change in my PHD status. 

So that's not all bad, at least there have been no new projects started in February.  Plus, there has been good progress on several projects this month.

Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter, from Addicted to Scraps) saw the construction of the first additional blocks since 2020. 

Only three blocks were added last month, but any progress is good progress. Fingers crossed I do better on that front this month. (There is an error in both layouts in the photo, but I didn't have room on the small design wall to lay it out perfectly.)

Some of the Melodic Mystery blocks (Meadow Mist Designs) have been sewn into row. 

I'm hoping to get back to this project later in March. 

The Chilhowie mystery (Bonnie Hunter 2022 mystery) is my current leader and enders project.  

More purple squares need to be cut, but other than that, the third block is ready to be constructed.  

Most of my stitching time in February has been focused on the 2023 Stay At Home Round Robin (Quilting Gail) project. 

I've not kept up, but there are pieces of each border either up on the design wall or stacked by the sewing machine.  I've really enjoyed playing along with this project. It's been fun to design a border for each prompt.  I'm ready to sign up for next year's version, but maybe not do a full sized quilt.  That takes a lot of stitching time. 

On the downer side there was no progress on Unity,  Rhododendron, Macaron Mysteries or Diatom in March.  Hopefully those will return to the rotation once the SAHRR is over.  

Linking up with Quilting Gail who seems to have a magic touch with finishing quilts. 

Photo Play #3: Practice, Practice, Practice

One of my retirement "projects" besides decluttering the house is to learn to take better photos.  My Guy was an avid photographer before we met, he's the one that introduced me to photography as a hobby. I bought my first SLR camera from a pawn shop just before we got married because one of his favorite things was and still is to go somewhere to hike and take photos. It's not that I take bad photos, but I'd like to develop better vision and composition skills. Like anything else that takes practice.  (All photos taken with a Canon 70D with a 18-400 Tamron telephoto lens)

One of the photo practices was to have My Guy bring me three unrelated items to photograph together.  He's been really supportive of my photography efforts, so he really bought into the challenge part.  This is what he brought me.

A mandolin, a bike pump, and an empty can of black olives. He certainly picked an interesting combination of items. How do you get a "good" photo of these together? I took a total of 40 photos of these three items in every conceivable arrangement with various camera settings. The last part of the challenge is to pick your favorite from the set of photos. Here's what I ended up with.

   

Is it a great photo? No, but it was the one that had the best aesthetics. I learned a lot from those 40 photos and that's the point. You have to practice to retain the knowledge, so I tried to do that over the next week.

  

Is this photo upside down?  No it's a reflection, but it's hard to tell that at first glance.  You have to look really closely to see the ripples on the surface of the pond.  I almost walked by this pond, it's not very scenic.  Using the telephoto lens, I was able to isolate just the reflection part of the pond and eliminate the grubby parts.  

 

The day this photo was taken I was struggling with focus and camera shake. Birds are hard to photograph unless you have a really long lens because they are so skittish. Fully extended the Tamron telephoto lens can be hard to hold steady, so I had to work on that. I also wasn't using the best camera settings to help my efforts here.  This birdie wasn't too concerned about me so I was able to get reasonably close. I probably took 20 photos of the robins in the part of the woods, this is the only one that's not blurry.  I really like how the red orange of the robins belly is echoed by the color of the leaves on the ground.  

The last photo was taken at the Dallas aquarium during the trip in January to meet up with Grad Girl.

There are probably 30 photos on my card of the flamingos. They have such vivid feathers and that's what I was after. This is my last shot as I was walking away.  The look in the flamingo's eye has such intensity. It wasn't the shot I was going for and was a shot I almost didn't take, but it's the one I kept coming back to when I reviewed the photos. 

What did I take away from the process of taking these photos?  You have to look to see.  Keep trying, you only need one good shot.  What you intend to photograph may not make the most interesting photograph, take that last shot even if it's not what you wanted.