Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Pix of New Project

My husband has two more days of his IMRT which is cause for celebration. There are no guarantees of anything in life but we have every expectation that his prognosis will be good. His brother had a more rare, more aggressive type of prostate cancer, plus he lived on the big island in Hawaii where the health care is spotty at best, especially if one is not a rich tourist. Even rich tourists have to go to Oahu to get any kind of advanced treatment. I'm not pointing fingers at rich tourists but rather pointing out that the choices made in life can have unexpected consequences. So learning how to surf and dropping out of college to go to Hawaii didn't lead to fame or fortune for my husband's brother but he chose that life and from all indicators was happy with the choice until it killed him. He loved making ukeleles, surfing, and taking care of his mother and wife and two kids.

My husband's path was different and his prostate cancer is different as well. We know that because if he had the kind his brother had he would already have died. The radiation therapy has advanced to the point where there are very few side effects. We won't know more until July when he gets his psa checked again. If it is back to low, then all signs are positive. Fingers crossed all the way around.

I have been working on the Wheel of Fortune quilt. There are a number of blocks with that name and the one I am using is not as complicated as some, but it still has its moments of problems. Making a quilt like this is great fun for someone such as I who has a fabric stash that stretches over decades and styles. I am trying to use some of the older pieces but I don't have any particular plan. These are still loose, unpressed blocks (except for the seam pressing as they are sewn), and probably won't end up in this order.

 Right now the plan is to make 15 blocks but I might make more and I might make fewer. 15 makes a twin sized quilt and I don't have any twin sized beds or any grandchildren. So it might end up being 24 blocks to finish at a double/queen sized quilt.  

Saturday, March 23, 2019

Cheers For New Zealand

Jacinda Arden, the prime minister of New Zealand, reacted quickly to the horrific massacre at the two mosques in Christchurch. The NZ legislative body voted to ban sales of assault weapons. Cheers for that. Would that other jurisdictions would follow suit.


I will never convince anyone to give up guns but I applaud the people of NZ who supported their legislators in the fight to control their availability.

Deceptively Difficult

I have been having quilter's angst lately. After my magnum opus (Baltimore Album), no matter what I tried just seemed wrong. Either the colors were dull and boring or the plan needed too much tweaking or something. I did finish two quilts in the few months since I finished the Album but one was from more than 20 years ago and the other (for which I have no photos) just didn't please me. Perhaps it was the unrelenting winter weather but everything seemed flat and boring.

Yesterday I sat down to make a quilt that I have liked for quite a while but never attempted. Despite looking simple, the Wheel of Fortune variation of Grandmother's Fan is fairly complicated. Like all pieced quilts it depends on very precise cutting and sewing results but those are not as easy to achieve as one might think. I didn't want to purchase the blade cutting ruler that is on the market--I already have more rulers than any reasonable person should, including several that are either set at odd degrees (the 9 degree ruler) or have a screw that allows for different degree settings from the standard. So I traced the blade pattern on to freezer paper and then welded several layers of freezer paper together with my iron. Once I had a stack that seemed thick enough to act as a rotary blade guide, I cut out my stacked sheets. I have only made the fan section of one block so far but it seems to be working out. I will probably have to make another template as the freezer paper will get worn but my fingers are crossed right now.

What I like about the pattern is the interplay of all the different fabrics with no two blocks being the same even though they all follow the same design. 

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Happy St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick wasn't Irish and he was never canonized by the Roman Catholic church, but today is the day to be proud of my heritage, or at least that portion that is Irish. Many of my mother's maternal ancestors were Irish, both of her maternal grandfather's parents, though born in the US, were from County Cavan families. I don't know where the Batterbury side, her maternal grandmother's side, came from but the Lynch and Reilly group were from County Cavan. Given the difficulties with Brexit now, it is a time for some reflection on just how much Henry II damaged Ireland to make up for killing Thomas Becket, damage deepened and extended by Cromwell.

This is worthy of modern reflection given the propensity of modern leaders to invade countries, to take children from their parents, to assert primacy over other peoples and other cultures. The wounds in Ireland persist and they certainly aren't just from The Troubles. None of us has the answer to life. None of us should be allowed to declare that we do. While treating others as I would like to be treated is my fallback position, it isn't always received well as nearly everyone I meet says I am too honest.

What Price Insanity?

US  gun laws are notoriously lax but apparently other countries have problems as well. I don't know what else can be done given the sheer numbers of guns in the world but I can't for the life of me understand how someone can transport multiple guns from one country to another. Even in Utah where there are approximately three guns per resident, one cannot simply get on an airplane with those guns, not even to fly to Wyoming where there are also many guns. Please explain how a deranged man from Australia stockpiled multiple weapons in New Zealand. Killing dozens of people from toddlers to seniors who are praying in a house of worship is unspeakable and insane. 

Saturday, March 16, 2019

Newest Project Nearly Done

My youngest son is getting married in a couple of months. His betrothed is "front of the house" and he is "back of the house" which if you have ever been around restaurants will make sense. He is nearly 40 years old and she is early 30's so the occasion seems entirely different from young people going through the same routine. Neither of them have been married before. I have been working on a small quilt which started out as an entirely different project and then moved to what it is now that I am nearly done quilting it. I plan to give this to son and betrothed with the name "The Winding Road to a Long Marriage."

I started with a New York Beauty block with strong contrasting colors but I ended up dissatisfied with the results. Simultaneously my middle son was applying for a new job (he has a good job but he doesn't like the management) that required him to take a battery of psychological tests. As a side note to that, my husband's first job out of business school was for a company that was trying to grow and they had begun to take the advice of business consultants who told them to administer these tests. Just prior to my husband coming to interview, one of their candidates, one who had passed the tests with flying colors, had committed suicide, so by the time my husband arrived they weren't eager to rely on those tests. The company still uses the ideas and program my husband developed forty years ago, but now they are a national company with national aspirations.

My dissatisfaction with my blocks almost made me simply abandon them, but my husband reported that our son's tests showed that he was more likely to abandon a project than complete it. I have written frequently about not having UFOs around except for the blocks that I just finished, and I don't think I am given to defeat, but my son's test results did make me reconsider the blocks. My hesitation now has more to do with the clear idea that I have fewer and fewer years or months to finish a project.

So I am nearly done quilting this project. It certainly is not wonderful or exemplary, but I think I will send it to my youngest son and his betrothed as a wedding gift with the name, The Long and Winding Road of Marriage. I don't have any photos yet but I will soon.

BTW: Trump remains a moron and a dangerous moron to boot. Anyone who still thinks he is good for the economy or good for world peace or even good for a laugh just isn't paying attention.

BTWxII: My husband has two more weeks of radiation treatment for his prostate cancer. At this point we don't know whether it has made an impact on his tumors. After his IMRT he gets another hormone antagonist shot and then he gets another blood test to determine his PSA. If the IMRT was effective, his number will be lower than it has been in years and will stay low. I don't like doctors and I definitely don't like modern medicine, but the improvements in radiation therapy are apparent to me, who took my mother to her radiation treatment the summer after my freshman year in college. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

College Entrance Fraud

I have written frequently about helping students achieve their college goals so today's news about the criminal conspiracy that entangled so many parents and students is both laughable and appalling. It's laughable on many levels including the public knowledge that Donald Trump's father paid Penn $1.5M for the transfer of Donald from Fordham, and Jared Kushner gained entrance to Harvard after his father paid Harvard, ahem, donated, to Harvard, $2.5 million dollars. It's laughable because these parents, unlike so many parents around the country, didn't pay any attention to their children's education until they were faced with college admissions so their kids had no "resume" to give. It's laughable because it wasn't the value of the education that the parents paid for but the name of the school. One of the two famous actresses' children is at USC and doesn't really want to be there to learn anything but wants to party and make connections to make her as famous as her parents.

The situation is appalling because so many people contributed to the success of the scheme. People took money to cheat on the SAT for folks, not by sitting the exam themselves but by proctoring the exam and then correcting answers. If any of your own children have ever taken the SAT, then you know that it is usually a pretty well guarded situation and increasingly stressful. So how does the famous actress pay someone to cheat? Another part of the scheme was to falsify the athletic skills of the applicants including claiming that students who couldn't even swim were water polo players. This required the complicity of various college coaches around the country. So it isn't just the more "pro" sports coaches who are crooked these days. It is also appalling because some of the "fees" paid were in the millions of dollars.

I never cheated for any student. I made suggestions to students about where they might apply, often based on factors that others might not consider. One young lady loathed cold weather so going to any of the Ivy League schools didn't appeal to her but North Carolina fit her to a T. I have been horrified at some of the choices students make despite my advice and I have been dismayed by others. But I always let them make their own choices and their own decisions even when I thought the fit wasn't right. That was true about suggestions I made on their essays, and about where they picked to attend. I never took any money. I never would take any money.