The upside of having a computer in the shop over the weekend is that you're less tempted to waste lots of time online.

The downside is the amount of spam you have to clear out of your inbox Monday morning. (I got a bunch that said, in the subject line: "Why people like FAKE watches?" which I keep hearing in Homer Simpson's voice. Or maybe Adam Savage's - a Mythbusters re-run I happened to catch this weekend featured him saying, "Why not work?" regarding the homebrew Van der Graff generator (which was actually working; they pranked him into touching it and getting a shock. As much as I love Mythbusters I do not think I could work there; I have a horror of electric shocks all out of proportion to the pain they cause and I don't think I could put up with the practical jokes))

Anyway.

This is a sampling of some of the blocks for the newest quilt top. It's using the Yellow Brick Road pattern and a bunch of (mostly Westminster) fabrics in sort-of sea glass colors:



I have most of the blocks done; I think there are 12 to go (these are just a few of the ones I finished). I really like how it's turning out; I'm considering splurging and buying enough of that "Zen clouds" (or whatever it's called; it's a Kaffe Fassett fabric) for the back (it's the one with the blue green background and the big pink, yellow, and orange swirls that look like stylized clouds from a Japanese painting). I really like that fabric and would love to have a bigger expanse of it than the little pieces that are in the blocks.

There's something very satisfying about making a top. Part of it is taking a stack of fabric I had on hand - these are (mostly) fabrics I bought a year or more ago (the Zen clouds one was a recent addition to the stack, replacing a fabric that was in there that I decided didn't go) and turning them into something.

But part of it - I can't quite explain it. I think what it is is that it engages the part of my brain that is normally engaged in fretting or picking at things I've done the previous week, and because that part of my brain is kept busy, I calm down.

I also listened to music while I was working. I've been going through one of the periodic times where I 'rediscover' that I have a CD collection and I listen to it instead of trying to find something worth watching on TV. And I think that helps make me "saner" as well. I'm finding that a good studious avoidance of news stories, both on the television and the radio, helps immensely.

(This is just thrown out as a suggestion to anyone else who is troubled right now. Perhaps I am alone in my reaction to them, but when I hear too many news stories about the economy, I begin to believe that (a) I am one of very few people who is still actually employed and (b) I have good reason to believe that (a) may cease to be true sometime in the near future. And really, neither of those is true - overall unemployment is still less than 8% and is not even as high as it has been at other points in my lifetime, though at those other points I tended to be more concerned with other things than with employment numbers. But whatever. In the little pocket of reality that is my world, I am actually doing just fine, and while I sympathize with those who aren't, I also don't think it's healthy to worry excessively about it).

I feel more "myself" after a weekend spent working on piecing. I do not know why that should be so, other than, as I once told a colleague, I sometimes "run out of words" during the week and I need to do something that doesn't involve words for a while to allow my stock to rebuild itself.

Yellow Brick Road is a very popular pattern among quilters. Rightly so, I think. It has a lot of virtues - for one, it's a simple pattern. I suspect it would be a good "first" pattern for a new quiltmaker. There are also no points or fiddly bits to match, making it relaxing, even for more advanced quiltmakers. It looks good made out of a variety of different fabrics - from the big loud Kaffe Fassett prints like I've used here (and the other large bright fabrics I used for the previous one I made). It also looks good in smaller, more delicate fabrics.

It's also fast to make up - I went from just having pieced-together strips to having 2/3 of the blocks done in an afternoon - which makes it a good "gift" or "baby" quilt.

But the other thing that it has in its favor, is that it's a quilt where you don't have to do "all" of one step all at once - you can cut for a while, and then when you get sick of it, piece for a while. And then press for a while, then cut again and sew again - some quilt patterns you have to have every single piece cut before you can start sewing. And this quilt has a lot of points where you can stop and put fabrics together - the fun part of making a quilt is deciding what colors go with what. So it's just generally a good pattern that works up into a nice quilt.

(Oh, I am sure there are some "Nuffers" out there who will sniff and go, "What? You don't even have to worry about matching seams? And you call that a QUILT? Why would anyone bother, when they can take 15 years of their life and make a Baltimore Album instead?" But whatever. I get very tired of the people - you see them in the knitting world as well, the people who can't bear the fact that some people knit with, and enjoy, self-striping yarns - who have to tell you how you are doing EVERYTHING WRONG because you are doing something an easier way than what they would choose.)

But whatever. The Nuffers, I do not like them.

I also wound off some sock yarn:



Left to right: Damselfly Designs in "Shadowed Snows," Dream in Color in "Chinatown Apple," and BeBop Kettle Drum in "Recycle."

The "Shadowed Snows" has already started its journey to sock-hood, using the Caledonian Mist pattern I bought a while back and just couldn't find the right yarn for.

Of the other two, the "Chinatown Apple" will become the "Gentleman's Half Hose in Ringwood Pattern" from Knitting Vintage Socks (they will be for me, but apparently what was considered a shapely calf for a man in the late 1800s is about the size of my (searching for a nice and not too self-hating way to say chunky) calves today). The "Recycle" is going to become the "Uptown Boot Socks" (an allover cabled pattern) from the Interweave sock book.