April Fools’ Day

OK, who knew that there is properly an apostrophe after “fools” in April Fools’ (plural possessive) Day?  Not me! I just thought it was a day in celebration of the Fools of April, without any possessive rights. But grammar aside, it also means that Angela at So Scrappy will be announcing a new Rainbow Scrap color of the month for April. Personally, I was rooting for yellow because I’ve kinda-sorta forgotten what yellow sunshine is like. But, it’s Purple!

On Wednesday, the rain and/or snow kindly paused just long enough for Grass Masters to come in and rip out the grass/sod in the east side yard and the front yard between the walkway (that leads from the driveway to the front porch) and the house. They capped off the old sprinklers, installed new drip lines and valves so I have plenty places to tee-off drip lines to my front walk flower pots. The grass was replaced with a weed barrier and small rocks that match the front parkway. It’s all so neat and tidy, and the remaining flower beds are almost ready for planting. We have a load of soil coming next week to even out the grade along the front flower beds. It’s something I’ve needed to do for a couple years. But do I have a picture? NO! It has snowed every day since Wednesday, and you can’t see anything under the snow! So stay tuned as I play with this new project this spring!

Wet weather outside means sewing time inside. I knocked back a lot of my smaller green scraps by constructing ten candy blocks measuring 8.5”, unfinished size.

They were followed by fifteen 6.5” crumb blocks.

I also finished assembling the green scrappy “creature” quilt (so named because my Creature Quilts, like Frankenstein’s monster, are assembled from scraps and bits and leftover and then “reanimated” into a quilt). In the case of this green Creature from the ???, I also had to assemble a backing from scrap strips and chunks. (No picture). It’ll be pin-basted and quilted next week, fingers crossed.

But I did manage to quilt, bind and label two Community quilts (pictures coming when I finish the other two of this batch) and baste my batik jelly roll race quilt. Oh, I love these colors!

And finally, the elephant blocks have a turn on the design board. The quilt will have Kona Snow vertical sashing between the elephants in a row and between each row itself. But I’ve decided to make the perimeter stop border in magenta - or whatever you want to call it - before adding the final gray print border. See the pinned-only sample, below. How do you think it will look?

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Three miscellaneous things; two good and a rant.

1.  Celebrating: I hit the 45 pounds-lost mark this week at Weight Watchers! I’ve started riding the exercise bike indoors 3 days per week too. I’ll add walking outdoors to the routine for 2-3 days per week once the snowy and icy weather passes.

2.  Pleased: Former President Donald Trump has been indicted! And although these hush money payment charges are the least grave of all the pending investigations and alleged crimes being investigated, we are ever hopeful that the other DA’s and Special Prosecutors will be following through with their charges later in the year. 

3. Rant: Old El Paso taco shells. They didn’t change their packaging, the item count, the contents net weight or the nutritional information of their crispy taco shells, but look what I discovered when I put a shell from an older box (on the right) next to a shell from the new box (left)…

How is it possible that twelve of the new smaller shells are EXACTLY the same as the larger, older shells? I know it’s just a devious way to screw the customer - give less for the same price, a perverse price increase. Yeah, I know, I know…. First world problems….

Have a great week!