No Kings in Los Gatos

Saturday morning, my family joined up with one of my mom's groups, a local branch of the AAUW for a spontaneous gathering for No Kings day. Most of their members live in a retirement community nearby, so there were mostly older folks. DS was one of the youngest people showing up. We had 120 people, flags, signs, cute dogs, walkers, wheelchairs and enthusiasm.  And yes, that's $4.99 a gallon gasoline, (car wash included)!

We found a nice shady spot to expand the demonstration when the corner got too full.

Mom was glad to have some shade, and to have us show up. She got to introduce us to a bunch of her AAUW friends which was super cute. She's holding her sign from the first Trump presidency, a vintage yet still true item. We got a whole lot of supportive honks and thumbs up and only one middle finger that we noticed. That person actually stopped and videoed us, so we waved and said "have a nice day!"

After the first group tired out we went about a mile and a half down the road to one of the larger Los Gatos protests where there were about 600 people gathered in front of a Tesla dealership. They had music and two of those car wash dancers that had slogans that went with the demonstration, "Protect Our Democracy"

And "Trump Lies", DH seen grinning like a maniac because he thought it was funny (and true). I had no idea you could buy one of those with your own slogan on it, they're not very expensive.

It was super fun seeing both of these groups, one average age of about 80, and the second closer to 40 being so passionate and engaged and fired-up. We skipped the demonstration in our little mountain town that had a turnout of 400 people. Turns out on that day, all around the whole country there were between seven and eight million people out on the streets at various sizes of demonstrations or marches. There were even international efforts like the No Tyrants rally in front of the US Embassy in London (note, not a No Kings rally). I really recommend going to one of these, it made me feel all the things: Proud to be an American, happy to wave our flag, thrilled to see so many others in our communities out there too. 

 

iPad for Quilters class

 

On my first day back after another trip to Spokane and back (successful injections so far, yay!) I took an online class through Mancuso Brothers Virtual Schoolhouse. Thankfully it started at 9am instead of lots earlier. The teacher,Cristina Arcenegui Bono, was located in Italy and she was mindful of wanting to include West Coast students. The class was called iPad for Quilters, and it was six hours full of all kinds of  new information for me. There are so many little tips and tricks for using the iPad, and they're hard to remember without using them all the time. Or to have them taught to you in context so you know why they're important to try and remember. So some was a review, and some was absolutely new. All of it useful and now I feel much more fluent with using both Procreate and my iPad.

Now I know how to use layers much better and see why they're so useful. Cristina was a great teacher, really funny and well-prepared to help the people in the class who were at very different stages of adeptness with the iPad.

And I am now planning to try out using my Cricut to cut out appliqué pieces from my sketches.

 

 I had a clementine as a snack during class and we were learning how to make our own color palettes from photos or files. So I snapped a picture with the iPad and made a palette out of all those great shades of orange.

This picture made for a really lovely palette. Palettes are useful for color choosing when you're sketching on the iPad, it narrows down the limitless colors to the ones you want to concentrate on using.

Patchwork Palooza Ingredients

 

No new blocks assembled for Patchwork Palooza quite yet. 

But I have block ingredients all cut out to catch myself up.

I may have to break out another scrap box. Most of the pieces are on the small side now in the one I've been pulling from.

Blocks 12-15 are ready to sew together. I even ironed and spray starched all the pieces as there are many triangles ahead.

7 Community Giving Blocks

 

At the September Sew Day (which feels like years ago), I picked up a bunch of Community Giving block packs. These sixteen square blocks are the standard that they like to use.

I got into production mode to get them all sewn together.

They're a fun, diverse group of fabrics playing against the white or white-patterned backgrounds. Seven more to add to the stack.

Airport Snake

 

Well, I've finally finished off one of the colors of threads for the Snake In The Garden piece. It's nice to finish the purple off. Now to finish the blue and green, and figure out what to use on the black and white checkerboard.

I got to the airport early enough to have time to settle down by a bright window and get out my stitching. The TSA rules now say no scissors with blades longer than four inches are allowed to carry on board. I measured, and the ones in my Go Bag aren't even close to that long. 

Wandering Wednesday - Copenhagen

 

The city hall plaza was near where we stayed in Copenhagen. It was a beautiful open space, very walkable and with a metro station.

A view through the wrought iron window of the churchyard of one of the oldest building in Copenhagen, the Church of the Holy Spirit (Helligåndskirken)

We stopped by the botanical garden, just to "walk through" but I had a lot of fun finding plants from my own garden like redwood trees (!).The famous Little Mermaid statue. It was a gorgeous day as you can see.

The Kastellat or Star Fort was so quiet and lovely compared to the mob-scene of tourists at the Little Mermaid statue area.

Still don't own what those metal things are but they look very cool on that lime washed red brick wall.

The only old-school windmill that we saw (the rest were the more modern turbines).

The sunsets looked different somehow on the buildings in the city. 

Lobby Snake

I’m on a trip and I’ve brought along a hand stitching project to work on while waiting in lobbies and so forth.
 

But not on the plane as I’m still not clear on the TSA and other countries rules and regulations on sharp things.

Two Months Together

 

I took the plunge and tried sewing the first sashing strip between the January and February columns for the Temperature Quilt. It's really fighting agains the Old Town background here, but it really looks quite good.

I especially like how the bottom looks.

It took a lot of fiddly pinning and slow stitching, but they got done pretty easily. Yay, I feeling like the dam has finally broken and I'm on track to get this quilt top together.

October To-Do

Here's how my design wall looks on the first day of October. The finished Old Town Mystery quilt top is taking up the majority of the space. And barely peeking out a bit is the Jane Sassaman class project, Sour Grace still pinned up there waiting for the next step.  In the foreground in the scrap box I've been working from to make the weekly Patchwork Palooza blocks. I'm only going to be physically home one week this month, but I'm still going to work on a lot of this stuff!

I'm continuing on with using the not-so-very-new configuration of my to-do list below, as it more closely follows the database categories that I use to keep track of all my work-in-progress. I'm keeping the Design and Finished section going forward. Note: the use of 🥏👽  by a project name indicates that it's on the 2025 UFO Finishes challenge list of six projects that I committed to finishing at the beginning of the year.

QUILTS

Design

Pantone Project - work on a overall design, either in EQ8 or up on the design wall.

Continue Assembly

Patchwork Palooza - continuing making weekly blocks

Keep working on Sour Grass Grace from Jane Sassaman class.

Old Town Mystery Quilt - make a backing & binding

AG Stamp Quilt - continue to make more blocks using the cut-out stamp block borders and centers from Tula Pink fabrics.

Begin the piecing of Selvedge Candy (maybe the name) quilt for MQG challenge.

🥏👽 Sew the 12 columns and sashing together of the 2023 Temperature Quilt together to make the quilt top.

🥏👽 Bohemian Wife -  Sandwich this and start quilting it

                                      Quilting

leaving this category right here so I don't forget to use it next time

Final Steps 

🥏👽City Sampler- the long-armer is still working on it!

HANDWORK/BAG/CLOTHING PROJECTS 

Make a Cotton Candy pouch for myself.

Oxbow Tote - cut out and begin the assembly. 

Toned-Down Circle Sampler - now that I have the appropriately sized grey background felt, arrange and appliqué the circles, start embroidering.

Y.E.S. Coat - continue making pieces/blocks. assemble on foundation, cut out lining pieces from the fabric that I dyed

Snake In The Garden - Finish hand stitching

Kawandii - Finish hand stitching/assembly

Hey! This Is All Finished!

I'm still leaving this category here so I don't forget to use it next time

Well, I couldn't keep up the finishing mojo like the previous two months, but that's okay. I'm hoping that I'll have enough time to advance a couple of projects through the categories during this month. 

Oh October

 

October is here, hurray! My favorite month of the whole year. I thought I'd try and make a sort of spooky-ish monthly marker picture, this is what I came up with, but it's not terribly scary, 

It's made from the above picture, put into the KaleidaCam app, and then the title was added in SnapSeed.

Here's the 1sE video for last month, all thirty seconds of it.

Monthly I-Did List ~ September

1. I sewed the first border onto the Old Town Mystery Quilt.
2. I sewed the second border onto the Old Town Mystery Quilt.
3. I sewed the third and final border onto the Old Town Mystery Quilt for a quilt top finish!
4. I made two Postage Stamp blocks for BAMQ Community giving.
5. I extended the backing for the Bohemian Wife quilt so now it's ready to sandwich.
6. I worked on making some pieces for the Y.E.S. Coat.
7. I got ready for a new class with Jane Dunnewold.
8. I started sewing and then finished making all 21 of the setting blocks for the Patchwork Palooza quilt.
9. I sewed more weekly blocks for Patchwork Palooza and put them all up on the design wall.
10. I started trimming and measuring the columns for the Temperature Quilt.
11. I cut out and started adding the sashing to the Temperature Quilt.

September was quite a month,  I got to travel to Spokane again to participate in a medical study. This took some recovery time as I got a Lot of shots, but I'm better now. And then the last week of September I'm traveling with my DH out of the country. So, the amount of work I got done is pretty fair I suppose. But then I look at my design wall and see the completed Old Town quilt top and I calm down about productivity.  I was only somewhat active on social media, posted on BlueSky 15 times, on Flashes 5 times, on Instagram 2 times.  I attended the BAMQ SewDay, went hiking with family, and got my yearly Covid booster shot. That was a whole lot! On to enjoying October...