Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

I went to Adelaide to visit family for 10 days, and now I'm back. What a hectic time it was, and Isla turned 10 years old. It's so hard to comprehend that 10 whole years have gone past since she arrived and made me Nan. She's an inch shorter than me, and growing like a weed, such long legs! That is because of her grandfather's genes, not anyone on my side of the family. We're all like hobbits, and DH was a man of Gondor. It's a Lord Of The Rings thing.

 I succumbed to another $1 FQ sale at Spotlight. Isla scored another lot for her stash, and we used some of the new FQs to make pajamas for her teddy.  I showed her how to sew the top by hand, and we did the pants on the machine. She's much more comfortable with the machine than with a needle, but we'll work on that.

Finn was his usual energetic self, but we had some good times reading. His siblings have been lording it over him because he couldn't read and they could; we spent a lot of time together going through his school readers and something clicked. He knows all the sounds and the theory and the sight words, but he just wasn't putting it together and then suddenly he made sense of it all. When I left he was reading cereal boxes and the toothpaste tube and the instructions in the games he plays. I said to Seonaid, it's sad when they are able to read the headlines on magazines and papers in the supermarket, and become aware of the news. They get to know a whole lot of stuff you wish they didn't.

My brain was fried by the time I drove home, too much energy and movement from the kids, too much traffic, too many people in my space every time I left the house. I'm so glad to be returning to my quiet life for a spell. I sincerely hope I haven't jinxed myself with that statement.

I left these blocks on the design wall when I left, so yesterday I sewed them all into a small top, probably just lap size. 

There are leftover bright squares, but I'm working on a plan for those. What I also have are 214 bonus HSTs from the snowballed squares. They finish at 1.75", so I will have to come up with a plan for them.

Instead of using 2.5" squares to snowball the white squares I used  3" squares.  

That gave me a larger bonus triangle to work with, and subtly changed the block without affecting the overall look. It also meant  that I didn't have a big lump of seam allowances to deal with, so it was a good idea.

I'm looking forward to getting back to these scrap blocks. I've gone from thinking these blue and green strips were garbage to loving the look of these blocks.

They are so easy and fun to sew, and they look a lot more complex than they are. Proving yet again, that no scrap is too small to use.