I've been sewing madly in between other chores today, and much progress has been made. I've finished adding the sashing strips to the PA Dutch quilt, once Mereth professed herself totally over it, with only the outside bits to do. I wanted to see this in one piece, so I completed it, and will choose borders tomorrow when the light is good. Rule number 1. is never choose borders or sashings at night; it all looks different the next day. I will post a photo of the whole thing later.

I'm sooo pleased with how this little quilt turned out; I can just see it as the backdrop for our Christmas tree, so I'd better get it quilted without delay. I will do up the directions for it as it was a delight to stitch, and used up whole bunches of my red and green strips. I don't feel like I've finished with the block yet, I enjoyed stitching it so much, so there might be another one in a diferent set of fabrics soon.

And I put the borders on all the placemats and they're just waiting to be quilted and I can cross them off the list. I think I may be done with the whole red and green thing for a while.....

Settlement day for my hall is getting closer, and I'm trying not to be impatient. We went up there yesterday to have another look, and it's almost empty so I took some photos. We could have a dance in that back area, if we ripped up the ghastley blue carpet. There is dreary wood grain lino beneath it, and pine boards under that. Hopefully the boards will be worth polishing at some date far in the future. I need windows out there far more urgently.

I read on Nadine's blog about her dilemma with inaccurate rulers and markings; Mereth and I have found the same thing with different brands of rulers. Mereth is much more concerned with accuracy than I am, I tend to fudge and trim and lop off what shouldn't be there, while she wants everything to measure what it should. Many of my rulers have variable measurements, which is a bit frightening; the longer the ruler the more it shows up. It's hard even to know what to use as a standard, but I measure them against a steel engraved ruler as the markings on those are very fine and easy to see. So far I think my Omnigrip ruler is the most accurate, but I only have one of those. I don't think I'll be replacing all my rulers any time soon though. My 6" pinwheel blocks had 44 pieces each, and were 1/16" larger than they should have been, but I can certainly live with that.

Of course, once you start doubting you can never be sure of anything!

I remember when I was in primary school we were subjected to a visit from the School Inspectors each year. They were exalted beings, and even teachers, those lordly beings, were scared of them. I recall two visits very clearly. One inspector, to demonstrate the weight of air, borrowed Gavin Lugg's wooden ruler and balanced it half on, half off the desk; laid a large sheet of paper over and hit it karate style, snapping it in half. We were all astonished, not that he had proved himself so thoroughly, but that he just calmly handed Gavin's useless ruler back to him.

Another inspector picked up a ruler (I guess they just had to work with whatever was handy) and flummoxed the class by asking 'How do you KNOW this is a foot long? It could be wrong!' He then launched into a dreary talk about official standards for weights and measures, but in that instant I had become a sceptic, and learned a valuable lesson; Trust Nothing!