I've sewn the basket blocks together, but discovered a major mistake when I started adding the setting triangles.  They were too small, or rather some of them were too small.  They should have been cut from a 11.5" square, cut twice diagonally; who knows what measurement I cut, but it wasn't enough.  I wasn't going to tear my hair out or weep bitter salty tears, so I just shrugged and sewed it all together.  My quilt,my rules.

 This was never going to be a competition quilt, and I'll like it just as much with the points of the blocks chopped off at the edge.  Mereth is having more of a problem with it than me, but there's not enough fabric to recut the triangles, and there's that I-don't-care-a-bit thing too.  My motto is Aim For Perfect, Accept What You Get.

Of course I made another mistake too, because I mislaid the photo of the antique quilt and put my blocks together the way I thought they should go.  When I found the photo (about an hour after I completed the top) I realised that there are half-baskets all around the edges, not plain fabric triangles.  Sigh.  I'm not pulling anything apart, so it will stay the way it is.  I just adore this block and it was so much fun to put together, I can see me making another quilt in this pattern some day soon.

I am going to put a tiny border of triangles around the edge, but I think I planned to do that anyway.

Why didn't I write out a plan of attack and store it with the kitted pieces?  I must try to do better next time.

I'm getting close to having 20 UFOs crossed off the list, so I want to get busy on another couple of them.  I have trouble using one for leader-enders, as I get rather confused, so I succumbed to another project.  A while back Bonnie posted pictures of a red and yellow nine-patch,  from her Leaders & Enders book.  I've always loved that quilt;  I had the book and the fabrics, nine-patches are the perfect leader-ender, it's a huge quilt so I wouldn't have to think about other leader-enders for ages.  I can talk myself into anything.

I'm glad to be working with such strong colours, glad to be using up all that yellow that I accumulated, and glad that I've weeded all the shirtings and reds out of my scrap drawers.  And it will be fun to piece a scrap backing for this once it's finished.

We are having bitterly cold nights and early mornings, I have to chip the ice off my car every morning;

it makes such pretty patterns, I would love fabric like this.

Then it heats up so that the afternoons are almost too warm.  It feels like spring already, so I have to get busy in the garden.  I dug up a nice crop of yacon last month, and have 2 buckets full of the crowns ready to plant again, so I need a whole bed just for them.  It's taken two years for them to produce a decent crop, so I want to make sure that I always have enough plants to have a steady supply. They are so sweet, like a super crunchy carrot, and they're supposed to have a lot of health benefits.  If I don't grow them myself I'll never have them, as they are not in shops anywhere here.

 I also need to plant out hibiscus and crysanthemum, gerberas and geraniums, daisies and gazanias.  There are climbing roses and jasmines that need trellises, and the existing wicking beds readied for spring plantings.  Part of me is cross that we're missing out on a proper winter, and part of me is glad that is perfect gardening weather already.  I can't change it, so I might as well celebrate it.