Rainy week activities

This has been a dark rainy week....
Sometimes heavy rain with loud crashing thunder and a very trembling, drooling dog at my feet.

A few more four inch blocks were added to my four inch collection. I have yet to decide what I will do with these eventually.  My one-inch box is getting a bit tight to close and these, I hope, will cut the stash a bit. Maybe I should be making the blocks larger but this is just about the right size for take-along work.

I arrange the squares between scraps of thinsulate batting and put them in a zip-lock baggie. This size block can be carried conveniently and finished on a train ride into town.

This week I also finished reading "Sarah's Quilt", the book club read for June by Nancy E. Turner.
I thought I might make the block for this book by copying the quilt on the book cover. Actually, not much of that quilt was shown but it seemed to be a lot of diamonds arranged into hexagons. It seemed a bit complicated to figure out for a 12 inch block.

Here is what I came up with. The dark paisley and white are to represent the windmills that were built to overcome the drought. (The small one was the damaged one and the dark, the new replacement.)

The nine patches represent the close family ties in the story, those homes where the story took place. I thought of using a log cabin piecing but at only three inches, the nine-patch worked better.

The reds are all different fabrics and they are joined to the rest with a small heart print.

The resulting block is rather bright and red but I hope it will work with the others. I have not laid them all out as yet. It is really to dark on rainy days for photos and the flash does not add much to the picture as you may note in the picture above.

Now I am waiting to learn the next book pick. Meanwhile I get the feeling there may be one more book added to this story. I hope so, because Turner can spin a really good tale from the first page to the last word.

The last picture is a "stealth flower".

The Magnolia is one of the first blooming trees in our neighborhood. It is setting buds for next spring's blooming already, and they usually open long before the first leaves appear. All winter we watch those fuzzy buds swell.

I guess some of those buds just couldn't wait for next spring because almost every tree has a bloom or two hiding among the leaves.

The power cord to my laptop gave up working and I am faced with a computer problem. The connector came with the computer from the States and in made in China and not sold in Japan. I can still charge the battery by setting the computer on the "audio station" but it can't be used while in this mode.

I wish Dell had made a stronger wire than the the one connected to the converter. I think the last laptop my husband had, died for the same reason. I can read e-mail on my call phone but I think my computer time has been severely cut.
Time to do some house cleaning? Sigh!