Wednesday Weather Report #133 - 12/4/19

November 27 - 30, 2019 :: 57 - 34 - 28 - 28 F
December 1 - 3, 2019 :: 32 - 30 - 31 F

It was encouraging to start December with a few inches of snow!! We won't discuss the ice under the snow from Sunday, just the snow!! It was heavy and wet and accumulated on top of everything making for beautiful pictures. Luckily not too many trees were damaged.

After work Monday - I love how the neighbor's Christmas
lights lit up the trees when it was otherwise so dark.

I woke from a creepy dream Tuesday at 4:30am and looked out the front window to a view of shear beauty that I just couldn't get a decent photo of: jet black sky filled with stars and the street lights lighting up the snow laden trees.

Across from my office Tuesday morning

The Masonic Temple

North Main Street, Perry, NY

We are now getting Winter Weather Advisories for another 5-9 inches today. Since when is normal winter weather a reason for advisories? A simple heads up is nice but not email after email after text after weather app alert.

The Bibliophile Files - 12/3/19

First I'm pleased to say that I finished my first challenge of the year on 11/22/19 by reading 74 books where one word in the title is also one of the words that spell the months of the year.

The next challenge to complete is to finish a total of 90 books for the year and I have just 6 books to go. Woohoo! Goodreads claims I am actually 2 books ahead of scheduled, which is hard to believe after a year of being several books behind schedule every month.


FINISHED
      Private Down Under - this is a new to me series that open private detective offices in various cities around the world - a fun way to learn about different countries
      Notes from a Young Black Chef - I enjoyed the book other than the constant "woe is me" stories. To learn about someone learning to be a chef and try to run a business and then look up videos of the chef online was educational for me as someone who has done catering and just plain likes to cook.
      The Golden Day - eh.. just eh. Sorry.
      Spill - I'm generally not for sound effects in my audiobooks but this was different. This was a LA Theater recording and I just happened to be in my car when the oil rig exploded in surround sound. I white knuckled the rest of my drive home that night...
      Erotic Stories for Punjabi Women - this book is hilarious but I don't recommend listening to it in public for obvious reasons.
      Firefly Lane - A memoir of 2 girls who grow into women as friends but who don't always treat each other fairly. I can't wait to read the next book.
      Murder in the Reading Room - A good book, a little hoitey toitey, but the murder referred to in the title was such a small part of the book, it was misleading.
      Mean Streak - a fantastic book that I had not expected the twisted ending.
      Chocolate Fever - Yipp, a quick kids book to up my numbers. I admit it but I had fun doing it too. It was encouraging to know I'm not the world's worst chocoholic.
      The Wright 3 - another kids book. They referred to some kids toy a lot. They were apparently 3D and had letters on them to build words or shapes. It was a little distracting to the rest of the story, especially since I had never heard of the toy before
      Escape from Mr Lemoncello's Library - a fun educational book about libraries and there are several more in the series!

IN PROGRESS
     on my iPhone - Beartown
     on my home stereo - Lousiana's Way Home

I've got another challenge lined up for the new year... I call it Spell that Place. It's a very long name of a "farm" in South Africa so I'll be looking for books that have a word in their title that starts with any of those 40some letters. If anyone wants to play along I am happy to share my Place.

Let us know below what you've been reading! Anything counts: novel, magazine, quilt pattern or cereal box.

Quiltville Mystery Clue #1

Sadly, Bonnie is not going to host the weekly Mystery Monday linkups on her blog the same way this year. She's using Instagram, which I don't plan on getting an account for as I don't need yet another time suck on my phone :(

Anywho...Clue#1 came out on Black Friday and after forcing myself to do my usual chores first, I got stuck in to making those 4patches.

At some point, Chantal asked how many I had done and I took this photo of the paired twosies I had just loaded on my ruler to carry to the sewing machine. Now, I carried this around 2 rooms trying to get a better photo (no dice with no sun) and it wasn't until I was 12 inches from my sewing machine that they all slid to the floor. I might have said a few naughty words...

In the end I got them re-paired, sewed, pressed and spinned the center seam.

As with the past couple of years, I am making "half" the number of blocks needed for each clue. What that generally means is that is I cut a bunch of strips in the needed sizes to make the units, cutting more strips as needed until I am close to the halfway mark. I clearly overshot the strip cutting this time as I have way more than half the number of 4patches. They can always live in the orphan bin if I don't later decide to make more than half of the mystery quilt, this is just a good way for me to keep up with the weekly clues.

The 4patches didn't allow me much reason to work on my shoefly leader ender project but I did spend a few hours kitting up the rest of the blocks that I'll need. Now I'll only have to struggle with not just stitching more and more and more shoefly blocks, especially since I had a $10 coupon and treated myself to a blockloc ruler. The ruler is a little fiddly but much easier than not having the ruler.

This weekend Mom gave me the jean jacket she wants me to hexify as her Christmas present. Only a nonquilter would think I can bang out a jacket in 3 weeks when I spent months doing my own. She may get a box with the jacket and a bunch of hexies under the tree if I'm not inspired soon. Wish me luck...