Photo Play 2024: February Summary

I didn't do a lot of photography in February, my leg issues limited my mobility the last half of the month. But I do have a few images from earlier in the month.  

It was still mostly brown on my walks early in the month.  But even brown in the right light can be interesting.  I showed a lot of single leaf photos from my January efforts, grouped leaves seemed to be the favorite subject for February. 

It really is all about the light for these three photos.  Even all brown can be interesting under the right light.  My favorite of these three is the last one of the green leaves, the dead leaves on the ground is a close second.  

Sunrises are easier to photograph from the house, sunsets are harder, but I caught a pretty one on our way out for our Valentine's dinner. 

That's downtown off to the right.  

It snowed a couple of days before Valentine's Day. We ended up with about 3".  

The last photo is my favorite out of this set. It's a bit over exposed, which was a deliberate choice on my part.  It's a much more stark photograph, looks almost like a painting to me.  I'm getting better about using the aperture and the ISO settings to get interesting images without using Photoshop effects.  

The sunset was captured with my I Phone, all the rest of the photos were taken with the Canon 70D with a Sigma Telephoto lens.  I've gotten back to studying photography a bit. The book I'm reading now is by Henry Carroll. 

I found this when we went to Powell's City of Books last fall when we were in Portland, Oregon.  He uses photos by well known photographers to demonstrate various techniques and settings. It is available from Amazon.  It's a quick read and interesting, but I'm going to have to practice a bit before I get "great" photographs like what's in the book. 

To Do List for the Week of 03/12/2024

It certainly seems like March is moving along.  Friday is the halfway point of the month.  The end of the month marks the end of the first quarter of 2024.  There is still 3/4 of the year left, but boy does it seem like time is moving quickly.  

Thankfully I was able to make good use of the time I had last week so there was good progress on the To Do List. 

To Do List for 3/5/2024

1. Stay at Home Round Robin:  Finish border 5, work on border 6 ✔

2. Betty: Finish borders ✔

3. Malted Mystery:  Finish February clue - no progress

4. Wild and Goosey:  Continue making purple blocks ✔

5. Scrappy Butterflies: Print label, make binding ✔

6. Indigo Way: Continue as leaders and enders ✔

Five check marks and one no progress is a really good week.  Betty is a finished quilt top. So it will drop off the list for now.  I've plenty in the sewing room to replace it with.  Here is this week's to do list.

To Do List for 3/12/2024

1. Stay at Home Round Robin (Quilting Gail): Finish border 6.

I've made good progress on making the blocks for the border. Just a little over half the 36 blocks needed are pieced.  The final parade starts on Monday, so I'd like to have a finished quilt top by then. 

2. Scrappy Butterflies (A Flutter): Finish the quilt

The label is printed and is ready for pinning to the back.  The binding is made.  So I just need to machine stitch it to the front and finish the hand stitching to the back.  That should be doable this week.  

3. Guild BOM: Fix February block, finish March block.

Somehow I completely missed that turned piece in the upper right of the February block. That should be a pretty quick fix.  The March block isn't too complicated, so fingers crossed it goes to together pretty quickly.  

4. Malted Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Finish February clue, start March clue. 

I've gotten a bit behind on this one.  If I can finish the March clue, this project will move to the finished quilt top category on my list. 

5. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Continue making purple blocks. 

Purple is such a fun color to sew with.  One block finished and a start on two others.  I'm hoping to make good progress on these this month. I don't have a lot of purple blocks finished, it's the color I've the least of. 

6. Indigo Way (Bonnie Hunter): Continue making blocks as leaders and enders. 

I need to regroup at some point this week and see what component parts need to be cut.  I need to make two more A blocks for sure. I'll need more B blocks and side triangle blocks, I'm just not sure how many.  

Once the SAHRR and the Malted Mystery are quilt tops, I'm hoping my weekly to do list will shrink a bit. It's hard to make progress on six items each week.  Linking up with The Quilt Schmilt: For the Love of Fabric for this week's To Do Tuesday.  

A Finished Quilt Top and More Progress on the SAHRR

The leg continues to heal, but then I had some issues with my back one evening.  A couple of days on muscle relaxants and the back is as normal as it gets these days. That did cut into my sewing time a couple of evenings, I just didn't feel much like sewing a lot.  It certainly seems I get one body part healed and something else goes out. Unfortunately a trade in just isn't in the cards, so maintenance is key from here on out.  

I made up for the lack of stitching time early in the week over the weekend. The first priority was to decide on a border for Betty (Just Two Charm Pack Quilts, Meadow Mist Designs).  After digging in my stash a bit,  I found an oldy but goodie.  

  

I forgot to get a photo before I cut off the selvage.  In 2005, we were still in Texas.  There was only a yard of this deep blue, but that was enough for the border. 

 

I liked the deep blue with the medium blue printing.  Unfortunately it reads almost black from a distance, but it does make a nice frame for the quilt. 

The quilt top is assembled.  I missed the parade for the Just Two Charm Pack Quilts quilt along. That's alright. I'm really happy with how this quilt worked out.  The blocks are made from 2.5" strips from my scrap bin. The background and sashing fabrics are left over yardage from other quilts.  The blue border is one of my older stash acquisitions.  The goal was to clear out some scraps and older yardage. This quilt certainly met that goal.  My plan is to finish it and donate it to one of the charities the local guild supports.  

The 5th border for the 2024 Stay At Home Round Robin quilt top was finally finished off this weekend. 

The prompt for border 5 was "4".  The friendship stars have 4 points.  The blocks for border #6 are under construction. The prompt for that week was letters or numbers.  The block represents a letter and placement in the border a number.  So I've got that prompt covered once I get enough blocks made to start assembling that border.  

Linking up with Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts this week.  

Stitching Stuff: Week 10 of 2024

I didn't spend as much time in the sewing room as I would have liked this week, but I did get in at least my 15 minutes every day this week. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Mar = 9/9 days
• 15 minute days/2024 = 69/69 days
• Success rate = 100%

It was a busy week with appointments and other commitments, but I still made some good progress on a couple of projects.  Overall, I'm doing better on both stitching time and project progress than I did last year.  Incremental improvement is always  welcome.

How did you do this week at finding some time to stitch?  

1. Frédérique 2. Gretchen 3. maggie f 4. Julie in GA 5. Karen

6. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 7. DonnaleeQ 8. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 9. Quilting Gail 10. Jennifer in Indy

11. Shelina @ High Road Quilter 12. Amanda 13. Bonnie in Va 14. Dq at Dreamworthyquilts

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Week 105 Photo Challenge: Bike(s)

It's been rainy and cold the last couple of days.  Definitely not weather conductive to getting a good photo for this week's challenge.  

Well, I should have said getting photo of a bike in motion.  We have a garage, not full of, but with a decent number of potential subjects.  It wasn't hard for me to choose a subject, but it was much harder to get a good photo.  

Kate: My Grad School Buddy

Back in grad school, many years ago now, when I wasn't in the lab and the weather was good, I was usually out on this bike.  It wasn't unusual for me to put over 200 miles a week on my black and gold Cannondale.  Hard to believe now, but I was into competitive cycling in those days and was the only woman on a small racing team sponsored by one of the shops in OKC.  I even have a few medals.  

My Guy still rides almost every weekend.  

My Guy: On the Road Again

He was out last weekend on his gravel bike riding in the near constant strong winds we have during the spring (well to be honest mostly year round).  The sky this time of year is very blue, but you can see it's still mostly brown.  My Guy has raced some, but mostly just rides for fun and fitness.  One fun fact, right after we were married we got a tandem bicycle and rode across the state of Oklahoma.  It was definitely a lesson in trust and love.  

Grad Girl continues to have lots of commitments with her lab work and she was busy last week with the graduate student recruitment weekend.  So she picked a different type of bicycle for her photo. 

 

Grad Girl: A Different Kind of Bicycle. 

I can see the seat and handle bars. Can you?  This is 2-methyl pentane 2, 2 diphenyl (I think, my organic nomenclature is a little rusty).  It's called a bicyclic compound because it has two cyclic molecules in the structure (which if you are wondering are benzene rings).  She gets the award for the most unique photo for last week's challenge. 

This week's challenge photo is another easy subject, but a difficult one to get an interesting photo of. 

I'm going to have to think about this one a bit.