Situation Update

 

We're back to Situation Mostly Normal now. The three weeks solid of rain have finally taken a break. It was gloriously sunny out yesterday. We're cleaning up from the garage flood, which is a lot of bleah work I won't bore you with, but the drier days will help out. The slide on our road hasn't budged, and the trees have gotten trimmed back from the power lines in more than a few places.

Our power finally got restored on Sunday night, so we ran around and did chores like laundry, running the dishwasher, and vacuuming with All Of The Lights On. One of the very rare occasions I was happy to do chores. We also got to turn the lights on our tree back on. 

It was a long nearly two weeks (12 days) of no power, which meant we didn't plug in the tree. It made me sad to have it sitting there all decorated but dark.

It's really really nice to have our tree lit up again. Thankfully, it's still very green even with the use of the wood stove keeping us warm during the power outage so it can stay up a little while longer. 

The Situation

 

So here's a pictorial adventure of our Situation. Over December (19")and January to date (17") we have had a total 36" of rain, That's too much for most mountainside communities. That's a normal amount for an entire rain year. For us personally, all that rain has meant that on our road we have a mudslide.

This is how it looked after our neighbor with a tractor and front scooper cleaned up the slide including downed dead trees. We are lucky that it only partially blocked our small road. And that he had to get to work.

Some organisms are quite happy with all the excess moisture.

There are mushrooms all over the place.

I don't know the names of these, just admiring them from afar, and certainly not foraging and taking the risk of eating them.

Further up the road, we come to the main issue, the reason we've been out of power continuously since 1/4. Trees came down and hit the power lines, snapping them off the power pole. Small dog for scale.

This is on the other side of the crossed trees over the road. You can see the power line coming down diagonally toward the pavement.

The line is being pulled out of the road by the red caution tape so that one car can just pass by.

You can see a small red diagonal line, that's the red caution tape holding back the power line. We've been assured that it's not live, but you never know, especially when they're working on getting the power back on.

The rest of the mountain we live on has had their power restored, but we have not. I guess because it affects so few people on our small road we got prioritized down lower on the list. Understandable, but still very frustrating. We're lucky to have the Powerwalls and a great generator (and lots of extension cords), but it's getting very very old. And still the rain keeps coming.

Iron Generation

 I finally got to try out some ironing powered by the generator. My DH asked me to tell him when I turned on the iron, he wanted to see how much it would affect the generator we have powering the house. It really dipped down to accommodate the sudden surge, then evened out, every time the iron needed to re-heat itself, another surge, but it held up and didn't poop out on us. Irons really take a lot of power. We don't usually think about it, except maybe at retreats when a bunch of irons and machines are plugged in and breakers are tripped.

I finished sewing another Clover block and now there were 3 that needed pressing so that I can sew them together for 4 finished blocks.

I finally got to try out my new wool pressing mat (Oliso Felt Pro-Press Link) and it worked really well. Here's the before, a big wrinkly mess that I didn't want to try sewing together with the other 3/4 blocks.

Nice and flat! And not wet wool smelling at all (phew).

Here they all are, nice and ironed, but only one of the Clover blocks is sewn together so far.

As seen from the side angle. That's the "please photograph me" pile of quilts in the center. And my studio assistant on the red fabric.

Nicely ironed fabric is of course, a great place to take a bath.

Another Bundle

 

I received the 3rd bundle of Color Collective fabric this week, and I love love love this color selection. So lovely and vibrant, especially with those two on the bottom, the brown "Roasted Pecan" and the weird yellow "Grellow". I also apparently love the grape Hi-Chew that was so nicely included.

 I'm unfortunately not able to wash them as our power is Still Out (9 days now!) so I can't even contemplate trying out the new pattern suggested. Also, there's the issue is that I haven't even finished the first or the second one. Not that I have to do them in order or whatever. But I'm just finishing my fourth block for the Clover quilt. They take a while, that's paper piecing though. The new pattern is a curvy one, so I'm honestly not as excited about it as I still kinda suck at doing curves consistently.

Feeling a bit like I'm drowning in solids lately, my next project will have to have lots of prints or something.

Wrinkles In Flood

Storm Report Update: Power was finally back on last night at 7pm, so we ran around and did 2 loads of laundry, ran the dishwasher, etc. Then it went back out at midnight, so we're back on the generator. There were than four inches of rain over night so it's flooding all over here, and we're sort of cut off from driving due to trees down and mud slides. 

So I'm hunkering down, staying inside and sewing Pantone Project blocks and trying not to be too disaster-maven-ish. They're coming out a little wrinkly as you can see as I'm not using the iron, only the seam roller. The sewing machine doesn't take nearly as much power to run. 

How funny, out my second story window, I just saw our neighbor from down at the end of our street drive by with his tractor with the scooper on front to clear the mudslide partially blocking our road. Pretty handy to have a dude with that equipment around.

Color Choices

Storm report: Power is still out, Internet was out and is back on, still have cell service. We got another 2.25" of rain yesterday. More to come today and a lot more expected on Monday. 

Instead of sewing, I decided to choose fabrics for the backlog of Pantone Project postcards that I've received from friend Jaye. As you can see it's a nice selection of colors to work with.

This red plum was fairly easy to match up, I had a lot of plums-y colors to choose from.

This one took a while, sorting out the different grays (brownish, purplish, bluish, etc.) and then choosing.

This is not a great picture of the card, it's showing up as rather dark. I didn't have my usual studio overhead light, only my table light.

This is a nice green isn't it? Kind of soft.

This is definitely not the color of a mimosa that you can drink, but it's a nice in-between mustard and cheddar yellow.

I almost chose that top fabric which was Grunge, but it had too much green overcast to it.

I thought I was just about done, but then my DH came home with the mail and there were two more cards. My studio walls are fairly close to these colors.

The orange was fairly easy to match up.

Here's the whole eleven color family ready to get worked with and made into blocks.

Solid Choices

Post Pineapple Express Storm Report: Our power is still OUT, cell service is BACK, internet is still very miraculously ON. Our solar production is just barely powering the house, with a little trickle left over to recharge our nearly depleted backup batteries. So there'll be no sewing for me today unless the sun really really starts shining on this day in-between rain storms or that PG&E gets around to turning our power back on.

I've signed up to make the Temperature Quilt with JayBird Quilts over the next year. She had some recommended tools on the first class instructions, so I went ahead and got them. First is her new release of Fussy Cut Shapes templates. They have a nice see-through yet still dark 1/4" edge which helps to figure out your fussy cutting placements. I have found that I like fussy cutting (go figure, right?!) and I think these are really usable sizes that work well with her other rulers.

The second tool was one I haven't used before, it's the Clover Hold It Precision Stiletto,  It has a silicone tip which is grippy for guiding fabric through the machine. The silicones also heat resistant, so you can use it with your iron.

Instead of doing this quilt in all solids, I'm considering using hand-dyes and/or small prints in addition. These ones in the picture are the ones left over from making the Sightlines Triptych. The problem is having enough of one particular fabric to represent that particular temperature throughout the making of the whole quilt. Also, I really really like the look of the all-solids quilt.

Along with the tools, I (of course) bought some fabrics. It's always to not pay shipping, that always works on me.

I'm pretty excited about the Pantone Color of the Year for 2023, Viva Magenta. So I ordered some of the Kona solid color of the year, Crush, which is awfully close. Along with it, I chose a few other hot colors, for a quilt I want to make this year, potentially entitle Hot Hot Hot. My initial idea is to make two versions of the same block with each color, using the Crush as the foreground and the background. I'll have to plan that out in EQ8 I think.

Through the Storm

 

While we still have internet , here’s a little post on what I’m doing. Our power has been out since noon yesterday, so I don’t want to turn on the iron. There’s so much storm damage and power outages we need to make our battery power last in case PG&E doesn’t fix it soon. I’m honestly surprised that the internet is working, usually it’s out within 8 hours of a power cutoff. But our cell service got knocked out too, guessing that the cell towers up on the mountain tops got hit by too much wind. 

So that means I’m back to doing a project I have cut out, and doesn’t require an iron until the very last steps. That’s paper piecing another Clover block. This time the purple is background and the weird yellow is the flower petals. 

January Illustrated To-Do

 

Well, here we are starting January and that means that it's time for an illustrated to-do list. I find these very useful to refer to during the month, so I'm going to posting them as long as that's true. Back in December, I pretty much repeated the November list, and there's going to be an on-going theme you'll notice.  This time the list is separated into two sections this time. 

Sew-A-Long Thingies

I'm starting the new year with a few sew-a-longs of various type already going, .

Pantone Project - keep making blocks and passing them along to Jaye, this will probably go on through most of the rest of the year. (who really knows?)

Color Collective which is going for three more months this year which makes 6 total.

Stitch Happens which is taking place just during January.

Temperature Quilt with JayBird quilts which goes all year.

Secret Lives of Colors - This is a Pat Sloan sew a long from 2022, based on the awesome book of the same name, I've gotten partway through it and it's going to be lovely with alll the colors, so I want to get it done the whole way.

Keeping up with all of these will be A Lot all on their own, but they're all something I want to try, do, or finish.

Finish It Up Already

Sew down facings, add hanging sleeves and label to Sightlines triptych.

Finish quilt photography (and put away photographed quilts)

Sandwich, baste, quilt, bind and label the Orange Bullseye.

Y.E.S. Coat I need you, so get some blocks, parts made.

Sandwich, baste, quilt, bind and label the Japanese Houses.

That's plenty to choose from I think!

I See January

Hey, hi there Happy New Year! Our New Year's Eve was a wild one with the big storm keeping us stuck in town for a day because of slides and trees down, etc. We ventured out on New Year's Day for the traditional hike with my SIL's family. It was a very muddy trail, but very clear and blue skies and fairly warm. Even though we weren't house-bound for too long, it was still really nice to get out in the world and move around.

January's monthly marker photo is a mixture of two photos edited in SnapSeed.

The first is a picture of one of the printed/quilted pieces I made in December:

And the second is of the San Francisco Bay as seen from the shores of Alviso on our New Year's Day hike.

Here's my One Second Everyday video for December:

And my compilation video of all 365 seconds for 2022, it's more than 6 minutes, which is a very good reminder that all of those seconds add up!

My monthly look back at what the heck I did in December is as follows:

Monthly I-Did List for December

I kept making more blocks for the Pantone Project 

I updated my  spreadsheet/database for the Pantone Project.

I made another block for the first month of the Color Collective.

I made 20 blocks for my 5x5 quilt top.

I printed on my hand-dyes with several techniques.

I made three small quilts in a triptych with my hand-printed and hand-dyed fabrics.

I kept going on the Secret Lives of Color quilt-a-long (but still haven't posted it here yet). At some point I will share it, once I catch up.

I very very occasionally added to my Visual Journal aka Ephemera Journal.

I blogged here 18/31 days and Instagrammed 7 times and tweeted 10 times.

I traveled by air for the second time in years to participate in a medical trial.

For a December where I was recovering from being ill all November, and traveling, and doing all the holiday things, not as bad as I would have thought.  ie not zero! Ready to go in January...