Sore fingers

 With more "down time", my Coronaville quilt is progressing toward the outer borders. Now that many trees are down to their last leaves,  taking sweeping breaks are less frequent. Zoom time keeps going up and my note taking is done in stitches.

After making a sore hole in my middle fingernail and several bloody holes in my index finger, I began to use some rubber thimbles on both. The one on the middle finger was soon torn to bits. 

I used to have a silver thimble. In my family it was a traditional gift for a girl's 20th birthday. Mine had a band of cloisonne flowers and my name and the date engraved on the inside rim. Long ago, while sitting in the bleachers at the junior high, that thimble rolled off and fell to the floor under the bleachers. I quickly went to the end and crawled underneath looking for it, not to be found. Thinking it might have rolled to the front under the shorter steps, I waited until the game was over and the people were gone to search again, but it was not to be found ... even in the final cleaning of the gym. In all the years since, I have never found a comfortable replacement. L size? M size? if they are in a plastic envelope, the fit is no guarantee. I have a metal one that is too tight to fit all the way, and a plastic one that falls off between stitches.

Last night as I was just putting in a few last stitches before going to bed, I found a thread I had left waiting until I got to that part. Instead of taking the needle from the thread I had been using, I grabbed another needle from my pin cushion. It had a larger eye so was easy to thread and surprise, the eye was not attacking my fingers. Maybe my stitches are not so small as with the little needle, but this is a bed cover. I do not plan to enter it in a quilt show so no one will be counting the stitches. They hardly show as I am quilting in the ditch, and since the backing is white, they don't show on the back either. I think my fingers have just won a reprieve.

Meanwhile, this seems to be the "year of reform". It started with the house next to the one across the street to the west, then the one next door to the south. All up and down the side streets, there are frames surrounding houses that are getting renovations of paint or new roofing etc.

Last week, while I was sweeping, this huge truck piled high with frames, was trying to get down the street past my house,

My Japanese isn't all that good, but here is the sign that truck had driven past. It was already with the front end in the parking space of my neighbor (usually filled by her small car) and trying to get between the fence on the left side and my wall on the right. My plum tree is now farther over the street than when this picture was taken, but, had that truck managed to fit through that space, it would have taken out the tree as well.

I just stood there in the middle of that space, keeping the truck at bay, until a worker ran up and talked the driver into backing up and taking the wider street to the south across from the sign.

I felt like asking that driver if he could read. Even if he had managed to get past my house, that large of a truck could never have made it around the corner and down that small street. As it was, he had trouble backing from that one-way street into the space where he parked.  Another house under renovation ... and less than an hour later, there was another truck in that same spot, blocking the street the first one went down, and setting up scaffolding around the second one from the corner. This morning my doorbell rang and there was a worker asking me to be the next to be renovated. Hah! All we need is one more truck. And, how would they set up scaffolding in the 18inches of space between my house and the wall that is filled with AC units? I was glad to say I am not the owner.

And, now with the autumnal equinox well over, here is my Christmas spiderlily.

It is enjoying a bit of morning sun, reflected off the windows of the renovated house to the southwest. Unlike it's bright red cousins that pop up in the fall, this one sends up it's leaves first.

The flowers open slowly day-by-day and it lasts long into the new year. There are still a few buds to open and this picture doesn't do justice to the lovely purple color.

So ... now, to the rhythm of hammering in all directions, I will go back to a bit of stitching, thinking that next is the outer border with no seam allowances to challenge my needle.