A FINISH

 Over the past weekend I finished knitting the second scarf, the one for Helen.  This morning I put on the fringe.  Here it is just trimmed with the rotary cutter and the scraps picked up with the lint roller.

This one is 90" long, rather than 100" as Tom's was.  I took a second picture to give an idea about how long it is.  It's wrapped completely around two times, with ends hanging down.  I think it will be really cozy.

I will mail it this afternoon, and hope it reaches Helen on time to be useful this winter.  That's not saying I hope their winter weather hangs on much longer!

We had a nice break with rising temperatures for a few days, warm enough for Jim to spend a few afternoons trimming shrubs in the landscape.  Now we're back down to -15ºC, about +5ºF, with light snowfall.  Oh well, it makes the old snow that was looking dirty and discouraged all fresh and white again!

At quilt club yesterday Sharon showed us a different approach to pinwheels that she learned from a pattern.  I so very impressed, because her points were
meeting so precisely in the middle.  That
quilt I made last year that was half pinwheels pretty much decided me to never, ever do pinwheels again.

In this method you begin with two contrasting 10" squares.  Lay them down right sides facing.  Sew the outside edges together, all four of them.  Now cut across the squares diagonally from corner to corner, turn and do the same cut from the remaining two corners.  You then have the four parts of the pinwheel block.  Sew these four together in the traditional manner .

The pattern she's using is called a "Disappearing Pinwheel," because the next step is to make four more cuts, 2 1/4" from each center seam.  That gives you a smaller pinwheel and some rectangles that can be arranged in various ways around the pinwheel to give an interesting block.

I was kind of excited about trying this new method, so when I got up just before 5 a.m. I cut two 10" contrasting squares and made the large pinwheel.  It did come together very nicely, but what I discovered in doing this is that the outside edges are all on the bias.  That makes it a little tricky to handle.  You would have to be quite careful when you sewed the blocks together, but, for sure, it's an interesting alternative to your regular method for pinwheels.