Lone Round Robin - Round 8 Progress

 

I've been tussling with the next round on the Lone Round Robin. The prompt for this round is to add an Hourglass block. My first idea was to have a streeeetched out one. Usually they're a square made up of contrasting triangles.

This is the usual way you make an hourglass block. Two fabrics, sew on both sides of a diagonal then cut apart on the two diagonals.

Yeah, that's not gonna do it.

Rip it, rip it.

Okay, try this again, sew the pieces together in a way that'll actually work. Those points look like they might be in the right place...

Yes, much better.

But now what?

Trying out some "regular" hourglasses.

Hmmm, can work with that.

It's going to be hard to get this just right. It's a bit much as far too many colors and prints in this round. Might have to take some of them out or maybe put the greens on one side and the oranges on the other.

I'm going to have to play around with this a little before I sew it together. Maybe some "background" squares in-between?

Lone Round Robin - Rounds 5, 6, 7

 

The fifth round's prompt was to make a black and white striped fabric with 1" strips. I knew I didn't want it to be a continuous round so I broke it up in to sections that I framed in the center's fabric.

This is how it looks at the end of round five.

The sixth round prompt is to use a polka dot fabric. Now unfortunately I did just that in the fifth round, whoops. I almost just counted it as two rounds, but instead I decided to search for a fabric that was polka-dot-ish enough to count that would work. 

I tried out several things, and a lot of them would have worked.

I settled on this black and white batik polka dot, the printing is slightly askew and non-regular so it looks very interesting to me, gives it more movement.

Here are almost all of the fabrics I've used so far. All prints.

The seventh round was to include four half square triangles. I took it mean "at least" four. I used a reads as solid grey print that was used back in the very first round and the central fabric.

Here's how it looks at the end of the seventh round. It's really shaping up, three more rounds left to go.

Wandering Wednesday - Skyline to the Sea Trail

We started our annual New Year's Day hike on The Skyline to the Sea trail from the parking lot of the scenic vista pullout on highway 9.  This is one of my favorite traditions that we've established as a family. It's always different combinations of family members from year to year, but we always go somewhere and hike the first day of the new year, no matter what.

It was a little cloudy but at least there wasn't any rain. This shot is one of my favorite techniques to lower the cellphone to knee height and take a picture just to see how it looks later.

This is looking out towards Monterey in the distance.

It was fairly quiet on the trail even though we were fairly close to the highway.

There were some clean-picked bones on a rock, someone had a good New Year's Eve feast.

This tree was a good balance beam for the kids to try out. We couldn't convince the gymnastics niece to do her routine (smart decision on her part). This was the other side of the highway, it didn't have big views, but was a very cool trail, very different plants like ferns, etc. and no big grassy meadows. It's all about the light in the redwood forest.

The masked up crew, minus the one niece who doesn't like taking photos. It is not fun hiking with a mask on, but I did it.

The sun came out just as we got to the end of the trail. We'd hiked about 3 miles. It was a fairly easy loop trail, not too steep which is unusual up in the mountains.

We snagged the picnic table and hung out eating snacks and laughing at the ridiculous street racers gathering at the pullout.

Little glimpses of the sea glimmering on the horizon.

The beautiful panorama. No idea what the bright blue glimmer is, maybe something on my camera lens?

We hung around just long enough to catch the beginnings of the sunset.

Day, Month, Year

 

Last year I filled this sheet out daily, if I exercised (at all) I got to color in a section. It was a motivator, as dumb as it truly is, it worked for me. Finally by this age, I've figured out how to trick myself into doing what is actually good for me. So after confirming this for myself, in addition to doing this sheet for daily exercise again, I've found a few more Fill In The Section type of things to keep myself going creatively in 2021. 

Every Day I'm:

Coloring in a square on this cute monthly worksheet from Karen Abend whenever I do something creative. If it works for me, I'll do it monthly.

Taking a one second video using One Second Everyday. This app will make a compilation video monthly, yearly, etc. So far, I've been taking a little snippet of my sewing activity. I saw an online friend's video from December and found it utterly fascinating and charming and inspiring.

Using my iPad and Apple Pencil to sketch a doodle of some kind, sometimes inspired by the prompts from ellolovey and spoonflower. I'm working up to being brave enough to actually share an image online somewhere, we'll see. But I'm enjoying learning to use the tool of the iPad and pencil a lot better.

Lone Round Robin - Round Four

 

Another round done. After a lot of fabric auditioning, I found a "floral" that would work for this piece. 

The look of it really took a turn, and changed a lot didn't it? And I've managed to get it back into a rectangle shape. Six more rounds to go...

Lone Round Robin Round 2 & 3

Working out how to do a flying geese border for the round two prompt for the Lone Round Robin. I ended up cutting down the orange ones to size to fit it together. I like how the variation in sizes looks.

Here's how it looks once I figured out how to sew the flying geese border together.

 I went with three different grays because I wanted to see how noticeable they'd be up against each other.

Trying out a fabric for the next round, the prompt was something black. I think this one worked so I went for it.

I really like it at this point and I almost want to just stop right here at this stage. But I shall carry on with the next rounds. If I hate it, then there's always the seam ripper I suppose. And whoops, it's a square now instead of a rectangle. I'll switch it back in the next round if possible.

January Ho!

 

On to January 2021! Here's my month marker from Instagram. It's a tradition now that I've done it every month for almost two years. Again on Snapseed, combing two pictures and messing with them in the app.

I've got a full worktable on the first day of the year. The HST leftover from the flying geese round on my Lone Round Robin, the worksheet for the month from Karen Abend(Follow Your Heart and Make a lot of Art), the mail goodies from finally scoring a Lynda Barry t-shirt which will be going into a collage.

A photo of the late afternoon sunlight through the redwoods at the end of our New Year's day hike with my SIL and her family. Always a good way to start out the year.

Twenty Twenty Hindsight

Happy New Year!!

Before moving on to this new year, first a small recap of 2020, in 20/20 hindsight so to speak.

My word of the year was WORTH. I made a conscious effort to keep it in mind as I chose what to spend my creative energies on this last year. For the most part, I only made what I felt like making. I didn't make anything out of obligation or because I felt I had to for whatever reason. I feel like I successfully followed my own interests, fed my own muse, that sort of thing. It felt like a balanced year even amongst all the upset of the pandemic lockdown and our fire evacuation. If anything those two events helped me focus more on keeping my self worth in mind as I had even more limited creative time or energy to expend. It made it even more precious and I feel like I mainly spent it on what I needed or wanted to

Finishes:

1 Quilt for the Century of Women's Progress Exhibit

1 Celestial Round Robin Quilt finished

1 Color Box quilted and finished

15 Face Masks for my family.

1 Stitched panel for 25,000,000 Stitches project with an estimated 

2 Couch Pillows - Lucky Charm & Jawbreaker

4 Table Runners - Seaside,  Rock Candy, Tilted Squares, Color Splash

1 flow-y purple skirt

6 Car mirror bird-poop protectors

61 ICAD 

That's 93 finishes! (Okay, maybe counting the individual number of ICAD,  masks and car mirror protectors isn't quite right, but it's my list)

Quilt Tops Finished:

Kaffe Blue Squares

Safe At Home

During 2020 I learned a whole lot about my Cricut Maker, which was a 2019 Christmas present.  I wouldn't say I've mastered it, but I've used it quite a lot and tried out many of the functions. T

Less important maybe, but still something I spent my time on is this blog and the rest of social media. A lot of it is documenting my life kind of stuff, like a curated public diary, one that is mostly for me, but is still moderated on what is shared. For that you'd need my login for my Day One journal.

My Contributions to Social Media:

156 Blogposts here on HighFiberContent

143 Instagram posts

There were a bunch of retweets on Twitter, but mostly I just read there.

What did I let go of in 2020?

I moved the electronic keyboard out of my room, because my operated upon twice pinky finger doesn't work well enough to make any really good progress on keyboard playing. It mostly made me sad looking at all the time.

It all adds up to...a year. One of the weirdest years of my life, and probably yours too. Here's hoping 2021 works out a little more normal and better for us all.

Ending This Year

 

Here’s my Year of Colour for 2020. This is based on the 140 picture posts I made to Instagram last year.

Colors including Green Smoke, Costa Del Sol, Buccaneer, Golden Grass, Limed Spruce, Wedgewood, Nepal, Persian Red, Scooter, Mariner, Purple Heart, Venice Blue, Peach Yellow, Finlandia, Lima, Turquoise Blue, Havelock Blue, Winter Hazel, Seance, Gossip, Bouquet, Gulf Blue, Forest Green, Grain Brown.

Interesting to see how it all adds up through the year. 

This has been a hard year, and I know I have it easy compared to most. Here's to next year being a whole lot better and giving us all of us a chance to be together once more, even if it is masked and distanced.

Lone Round Robin - Round 1

 

The first round prompt for the Lone Round Robin is "anything you choose", so I went with an improvised checkerboard-ish sort of thing. Turns out I like combing squares and rectangles.

It's a little odd and awkward so of course I like it, and the center fabric leading out into the first round gave me an idea. It will now form a pathway through the quilt top on each subsequent row...somehow. More on that as I make it.