I Found A New Love

 10-inch "layer cakes," which are 42 pieces of usually coordinating fabrics bought together as a set.  I needed a break from "hard" quilting after getting the stained glass quilt top together, so when I found an easy pattern, I made:


which I loved so much I made:

and then I found a set of fabrics that was perfect for a friend having a rough year, so I made this one:

Honestly, I didn't know there was such a thing as an "easy" quilt.  I think I'm in love.  And I might have found a new thing to develop stashing problems with, but that's beside the point...at least until I run out of room.  

I did take a break to make some new Spicy Spiral runners,



Which have a slightly "scrappy" look because the batik fabric sets I used had a few pieces with color changing patterns, which look really interesting when put into the table runners.  

Next year is my year to make Christmas gifts, so I'm trying out another new pattern,
which is again, easier than it looks.  I love the blue and white and I haven't made a lot of "winter" gifts for people.

I'm generally a pretty conservative person with colors, so I decided to use the new layer-cake discoveries to play with more intense colors, so I'm working on this


made with a fabric set from Kaffe Fassett.  It turns out this is MUCH harder than it looks.  I don't know if it's because in spite of what he charges, these are pretty thin fabrics or because the bias squares are just insanely hard to work with, but it's a very slow process and is much more of a "learning opportunity."  

Idaho had another record-breaking summer, and this time the insane heat continued all the way into September, which is unheard of.  Thank heavens we put additional air conditioning upstairs in the sewing room because it's just too hot in the summer to be up there otherwise.  It's supposed to hit 90 again this week, if you can believe it.  

The cats are missing us both working from home, so are very excited when we do it occasionally,

and Charlie is just generally excited about everything:
I bought a new bicycle this summer!  Because of my hip problems, I hadn't ridden in years, but we got out my old bike and started very slowly, which worked reasonably well except that my old bike was a hybrid mountain bike, and being tipped so far forward was causing wrist problems, so we went test driving and...

I have new wheels!  We live within riding distance to a very long system of bike paths, so that has been a great new addition to our weekends, and now that the insane heat has broken, evenings!

In other news, we went somewhere together!!!!!  During the pandemic, Andy traveled down to take care of his parents, and I recently traveled for work, but we haven't been anywhere together in years, so we took the week of my birthday off and drove to Walla Walla to go wine tasting:




We had such a nice time just being ANYWHERE else, and had a really fun time getting to know some of the wineries.  Walla Walla is about 5 hours from here, and for a town of something like 30,000 people, it has 120 wineries.  It's crazy. To be honest, I think most of their wines are seriously overpriced, but we had a fun time and it was nice to relax together.  

Work is going well and it's nice to not have anxiety-attacks every Sunday night.  We're having our 4th record-setting month, so that's exciting as the Marketing Director.  It's been intense to learn a new industry, but that's also really interesting and challenging, so it was definitely a good move.  I'm starting to learn the seasonality and weather challenges, and can generally count on snow when I launch air conditioning ads and blazing heat when I launch furnace ads, but it's all fun.  

Hope things are well in everyone else's world as well!


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