Count me in and call me crazy

I may be a glutton for punishment, but I'm officially buying into the new Quiltville mystery. So far with these mystery quilts, I'm batting 0.500. I loved Double Delight, wasn't so happy with Christmas Lights, although it made two nice quilts with a little jiggering. So now she announces the new mystery to begin right after Thanksgiving and what do I do? I start pulling fabric and planning a color scheme. (Keep in mind that I still have six quilts to finish binding. See? I need my head examined. Not to mention that the holiday season is nearly here, and I have to start Christmas shopping.)The mystery quilt is called Carolina Christmas, but I didn't want to make another Christmas quilt after Christmas Lights, so I took a suggestion from Quiltville and made a blue/brown/gold/neutral color scheme. The gold is rather mellow. The blues and browns will substitute for the greens and reds, respectively, and were pulled with an eye to variety of shade, scale and pattern. Not all may be used, but I wanted to get a large pool together to stay really scrappy.

I'm hopeless about taking on too many projects, but after I'm committed to a home for the perpetually overscheduled someone will have a LOT of really nice quilts.

Quilt labels

I've been in a frenzy of label-making recently, and this is one of my favorites.

For this quilt:Backed with this fabric:

I made this label:

When I decided to make this one last year I picked "calico cat" colors for the fabrics, and jokingly named the quilt after my feline princess. The cat fabric I found for the backing had a little calico standing up on its hind feet that looked so much like Molly I was thrilled.

(Sorry for the wrinkles, the quilt was folded up in storage.)

"Helpless" women on TV, and why it drives me nuts

I just saw a television commercial that resonated with one of my pet peeves. It's for a Ford car which has a built-in computer that tracks the service requirements on the car and sends you an email when something like an oil change is needed. The girl in the commercial (and I use the term intentionally) looked to be in her mid-20's and would certainly have been driving several years, said something like "I don't know when my car needs an oil change."

Well, sweetie, there's a built-in piece of equipment on your car that can tell you that, and it's not the computer. It's called the odometer.

Look in your manual and see how many miles between oil changes are recommended by the manufacturer. Or ask the guy at the service station ('cause I'm betting you never did it yourself). Note the number of miles on the odometer; add the miles between oil change and write that down in your manual. Now, watch the odometer. When it gets to that mileage, change the oil. It's S-I-M-P-L-E.

Well, the curmudgeon in me just came out.

You see, I not only don't think we need to rely on a computer tracking such simple things for us, we ought to actually know how to do them ourselves. Not that we would always have to do them instead of going to the garage, but we ought to know enough about our cars to be able to. And know enough to recognize if a mechanic is blowing smoke. A little knowledge can save you a bundle of money.

It has always been my stance that before a person gets a driver's license, they should have to take a class on basic auto mechanics and maintenance. Learn how the thing works. So many people have no knowledge of how a car is constructed and how it operates. If they get in and turn the key and it starts, great. If it doesn't, they don't have a clue. This class doesn't need to be as rigorous as, for example, a high school automotive shop class, but should cover the basics. How an internal combustion engine works, what maintenance is required, where all the components are located, how to change oil, change a tire, check tire pressure, check fluids, change an air filter, etc. The basics.

Helpless women get on my nerves. Representing helpless women in commercials like that is the norm and it's OK - well, that makes me crazy.

Does anyone know the name of this quilt pattern?

I need a little help. In 2008 I made this small quilt, copying a pattern I saw online. At the time, I didn't label it when it was done. Now, I'm catching up on labels and can't remember what the pattern was called. I want to credit the designer but I can't find it online anymore. Here's a closeup of the quilt. I think it's an old traditional block pattern, but I can't find the name.

I just searched through Barbara Brackman's exhaustive (and exhausting!) "Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns" but didn't find it - or maybe just went cross-eyed from all the little drawings and missed it. It is related to an Old Maid's Puzzle or a Jacob's Ladder block. There was another block called Spool and Bobbin that resembled it too.

Does anyone remember this pattern?

Everything's back to normal

My brother-in-law is home safely, he's recovering from whatever crud he had contracted, neither of us got sick, the house is back to normal and the guest room cleaned up, and I have sewn the binding on two of the stack of quilts waiting to be finished. Whew! It's been a long week.

After I completed the binding on one of the Christmas gift quilts, I decided I didn't want to start another one tonight, but I did want to make a little more progress. So I attached the labels to four quilts after dinner. I've got two more prepared labels to affix and three labels for quilts finished earlier in the year that didn't get labeled to design and make. But I think I'll call it a day for now.

Funny how the simplest things become complicated. I left the house yesterday to drive the second, little-used car for a bit to charge the battery and then take it to the car wash to remove the grime that had accumulated over the weeks of it sitting in the driveway. It was dirty, but it was simply dirt, not tar or tree sap or anything really noxious. The weather was a little chilly to be playing in water, so I thought it would be all right to splurge on the car wash. It's a really nice one with new equipment and people to wipe down the cars and clean the windows after it comes through the machine.

On the way to the car wash I got stuck in two, count 'em, two traffic jams due to wrecks. And then when I finally got there, the attendant eyed the dirt on the car and proclaimed "Just so you know, that won't all come off in the car wash." "What?" I responded, a little startled. He repeated his statement that their wash wouldn't remove all of the dirt on the car. "Then why would I pay you to wash the car if you admit at the outset you won't get it clean?" I retorted, and drove away.

I washed it at home. The dirt came off just fine. I guess they only wash clean cars.

House (cough-cough) guest

My brother-in-law arrived safely yesterday afternoon on his way back from the west coast to his home in West Virginia. Snow in the heartland lengthened his trip considerably since he had to detour down through Texas to miss the inclement weather. I made him a good oldfashioned homemade dinner to offset the road food he's been subsisting on since he left Seattle last week.

He also arrived hacking and coughing, and has been sick for weeks, he says. Sounds like bronchitis to me. He has a doctor's appointment back home two weeks from now, but we were afraid by then whatever he has would progress to pneumonia, so we packed him off to the local urgent care clinic. Contagion has been on my mind. Surely by now he isn't, but as things are, if he has any germs to spread they have been proliferating in my house for 24 hours.

This might not end well.

A difference between cats and dogs

I have to sweep the house in preparation for a surprise house guest, so I put the cat in the bedroom with my husband, who is still asleep, and closed the door. Molly is deathly afraid of the sweeper, and I'm hoping his proximity will calm her. I have never figured out how to assuage her fears of the vacuum cleaner. She wasn't afraid of anything when she was a kitten, but as she grew up the sweeper became her major nemesis. I once found her hiding under a skirted ottoman after I cleaned the house, and let me tell you, how she crammed herself under there I'll never know. She's a big girl.

Animal trainers tell you to associate a good thing like a favorite food of your pet's with a bad thing like a sweeper so they will transfer the pleasant feelings from the treat to the sweeper and displace the fear. That might work with a food-oriented dog, but I have never seen a cat eat when it was upset. Cats must have a better sense of priorities:

"You're giving me a treat. Are you insane? There's a kitty killing machine rampaging around the house. Right now I have to hide. Get out of my way. I might have a bite later."

And dogs? "What's that big noisy ---SNACKS!"

I have serious doubts about anything that can be distracted from danger by a Pup-a-roni.