Blue and White

My quilting buddy's vacation has stretched from it's original two weeks to the point where I've lost track of how long long it's been. We used to meet every Wednesday and put in four or five hours on our quilts. Without that dedicated time in my schedule, I just haven't been able to get much done on my quilt. It's odd, but as much as I love quilting, I sometimes find it hard to stay on task. Last week I decided that I just had to start working again. So I sat down and made ten of these 3 1/2 inch, blue and white Nine-Patches for my Carolina Crossroads quilt.

Last night I did some more piecing, this time combining it with another family activity: reading-aloud. Anyone who's read my other blog knows that everyone in our family is a great reader. And we've always made it a practice to read aloud to one another. Before we had kids, my husband and I read to each other. After the munchkins came along, we read to them too. And we kept on reading to them even after they'd outgrown the age for bedtime stories. Eventually they began to read to us.

Now that the family has dwindled to just myself and Fillius Minor, the custom had fallen into abeyance, but lately we've been trying to revive it in an effort to enliven our quiet evenings. While I pieced Fillius Minor read from Engineers' Dreams by Willy Ley. Published in the '50s, it describes various engineering schemes that never came to fruition, such as constructing a tunnel between England and France or producing energy from the difference in temperatures between the bottom of the ocean and its surface. Listening to the description of these and other projects somehow makes it seem all the more likely that someday my quilt will be done.