Crafting on the road

I'm on the road again, this time visiting Vanderbilt University in Nashville.  While waiting for today's programming to start, I had to wander over to see the Parthenon replica and read about why it is here.

Turns out, it was built for Tennessee's Centennial celebration.  Cool, but seems pretty random to be plopped down here in the middle of Nashville

I doubt I'll be stranded here for two extra days like I was during my trip to Washington University in St. Louis last month (knock on wood), but I'm prepared, just in case.  In addition to more hexies to stitch together,

I only brought 5 flowers worth of hexies to stitch together.  I should be able to finish that in a mere evening of watching Heartland on Netflix.

I brought my current mindless knitting project,

Based on the Dourado pattern, but I'm altering it to work with the Katia Ombre yarn that I have.

as well as three paperback books and three audiobooks.  One of them, of course, is a crafty cozy mystery:

I've read the first in this series, and was waiting to read this third installation until I had read the second, but it was the smallest paperback on my shelf that I hadn't read, perfect for travel, so the second will have to wait.

Back home, I've been plugging away at my myriad current projects - hand quilting the quilt for my new niece who arrived on Friday,

I still have a long way to go.  Not marking, just quilting organically concentric echoes to fill the white spaces.  Not sure yet what I'll do with the colored spaces.

My new niece with her older sister and brother.  Love fest!

I spent most of Saturday doing just this.

making more 3" nine patches for my 5" Sister's Choice project,

Nine patches are so simple but make me so happy!

Why, oh why, do I love tiny piecing so much???  It's going to take A LOT of blocks to make a useable quilt out of 5" blocks, but I'm not going to think of it that way, just gonna enjoy the process.

On Ringo Lake has been on the back burner, as has my Flutterby project, but I'm still up to date on my Temperature Quilt.  I do like having a choice about what I want to work on every time I sit down at my machine.

I'm linking up with Oh Scrap and Monday Making.

Temperature quilt progress

Regardless of how I flit from quilt to quilt - from On Ringo Lake to Flutterby to Sister's Choice to hand quilting the Starburst quilt - my Temperature Quilt is a constant.  Each day, I complete another simple block.

This block represents March 31, 2018 with Kona Daffodil representing the high temperature of 55 and Kona Cabbage representing the low of 33.

The two bars in each block represent the high and low temperature of a day here in Deerfield, Massachusetts, with the seams pressed towards the low temperature.  When assembled, I alternate the orientation of the blocks: vertical seam, horizontal seam, vertical seam, horizontal seam.

This segment represents January 1 through March 22, 2018.

My final quilt will be 18 blocks wide and 21 blocks long.  Each block is 3.5" square (finished), so the final quilt will be by 63" wide and 73.5" long.  I imagine I'll probably add some type of border to make the quilt bigger and to try to tie together all the various colors.  In addition to blocks representing each day of the year, there is also a block representing each monthly average and one final block representing the the yearly average high and low.  I'm getting my daily data from Weather Underground.

I like the unpredictability of what colors will show up next, reflecting the unpredictability of the weather.  Look how out of place the little rectangles of Kona Cheddar and Kona Amber are in this segment, representing February 20 and 21 which boasted daily highs of 61 and 73 degrees respectively.  I'm mighty thankful that there isn't so much dark blue in there - the darker the blue, the colder the temperatures.

I'm linking up with Monday Making and Oh Scrap.