Wide borders, Complaints, Kitchen, Covid

 Wide borders can be a bit challenging to quilt.  Oddly enough, I had TWO quilts that came in with wide borders, and even ODDLY-ER (Yes I know that's not a word.  Who cares?) the same border design worked beautifully on both of them.

Yikes - all paper pieced!

The body of this was all done with s.i.d.  There is no quilting I could ever imagine that would improve on that piecing.

The turquoise thread in the border really adds a gorgeous pop of colour on the black.

Applique, with a bit of additional batting behind the leaves for a trapunto effect.

The leaves were all outlined, with added veining.  Background cross-gridding with a tight fill behind the leaves, then a bowknot between the blocks.

A variegated thread was used throughout.

THE COMPLAINT UPDATE

As I reported in my last blog post, I was working on 30 days of continuous non-complaining from my most recent start date of August 22nd.  Holy mackerel!  I finally made it and pulled the plug on Sept. 23rd!  DH might voice a little skepticism over that but I'm sticking with my story.  My first start date was July 12th, and I had to reset eight times, sometimes two days in a row.  When I was discussing this little project with people, several of them kinda screwed up their noses, tilted their heads, and asked me "like....WHY?".  

Actually, I found it to be a really worthwhile exercise.  I discovered that if you start your day complaining (well - me, anyways) it begins a downward spiral where many parts of your life are crap.  Complaining tended to amplify whatever was irritating me, and I'd feel pretty miserable by the time I went to bed.  NOT complaining really helped with that. 

Try it!  Let me know how it goes.  See if you can manage 30 consecutive days in less than 75 days (or something like that).

KITCHEN

OMG, please get me out of the kitchen.  Many many pears were gifted to me.  I've made pear cobbler, pear honey, kale & pear salad, diced and frozen pears for more cobblers, and now I'm getting ready for my retreat with the Beach Girls.  Can you say Peartini?

Apples have been coming at me from TWO neighbours.  I've made apple sauce, apple cake, apple pies, apple cobbler, butternut squash & apple soup, and diced and frozen bags for the winter.  I've also made a few new friends - just call me the Apple-Pied Piper.  Heh heh heh... notice the little Apple Pie pun there?

I've done so many tomatoes that yesterday I finally started putting them in garbage bags.  I quit.  I am NOT doing any more this year.  

The butternut squash are ripening and a few of them have split from the abundance of rain we've gotten the past couple of weeks.  Thankfully, squash will keep for a few months so I can harvest it and ignore it.

You know you've been too generous with people when they stop answering your phone calls.  😆  And don't even get me started on the fruit flies!  Who, by the way, are wine drinkers.

OH, COVID...

I spend a couple hours every morning pretty much wasting the early part of my day.  I read and post to a quilting forum I belong to, read the CBC news, and then I move on to facebook (which has turned into mostly ads - anyone else notice that?)

One of my favorite parts of the news is reading the comments.  An interesting comment caught my eye this morning, about the number of covid cases in Canada vs. the state of Florida, so I had to do some research.  

Yes, our whole country against one American state, as of October 1st-ish.

'Nuff said.  Get your shots!!!

Colour, Christmas, & Complaints. (And Covid, I guess.)

 This is the hard 'C' post, pronounced 'K'.

Colour.  This one is self-explanatory...wowsers.  I love it!!

Christmas.  Actually it's Winter, not Christmas.  But that would ruin the alliteration.  A great strippy quilt.  This was fun to quilt.

Love the crochet doilies!

Complaints.  I'm running a personal challenge - 30 consecutive days with no complaints.  This started on July 12th, and I'm now on my FIFTH start date.  At this rate I will still be trying in 2022.  Interestingly, the first two restarts were because I was trying to one-up somebody; "Hah, you think that's bad...".  Also interesting is that not complaining (on those rare days when I seem able to do that) forces me to find a new way to talk about something.  Instead of expressing a complaint I will talk about an issue with a view to correcting or eliminating the irritant.  Mind you, any discussion around politics really does include complaints.  So how I should handle that is a good question.

I had a few conversations with friends as to when something actually becomes a complaint.  Is it when I think something, or only when I say something?  And is stating a negative-fact (as in "you left a mess on the counter") also a complaint, or can that be reworded in such a way that it becomes a conversation topic rather than a complaint?  Does the tone of voice dictate where that falls?

Most people I've mentioned this challenge to have been pretty intrigued with the notion, as in "why on earth would you do that?".  😆

Covid.

Ontario - 378 new cases on Saturday.

USA - averaging 100,000 new daily.  In June they were 11,000 per day.  Yikes.  Delta variant.

World - 201.8 million cases, 4.3 million deaths.

Personally, hubby & I have had both shots and I am working my way back to normal.  I've had a few customers who came in the house.  I've had four restaurant patio meals.  I had a friend over for dinner, and we have another couple coming here tonight for dinner.  I've been away with the Beach Girls overnight.  I'm getting a HAIRCUT next week.  And as you will see in the pic below, I'm back to making the girls interesting cocktails.  This time it was Rhubarb Martinis.