Triangle Troubles

I had big plans for getting a lot of sewing done last week but Christmas shopping and a quick trip to New York got in the way.  I braved the cold on Thursday evening to make my annual trek to Rockefeller Center for a picture of the tree. It was much colder than it has been the last few years!

I am very happy to report that I did manage to finish step one of Celtic Solstice over the weekend.

I had serious issues with counting when I cut these. I was happily sewing my way through the remaining neutral/purple blocks when I realized I was running out of purple pieces. I was pretty sure that after the initial cutting snafu I had finally cut enough of the purple, so I decided I had better count the neutrals. Turns out I had cut about two dozen extra "tri" pieces!  How does that happen??  Luckily I caught the mistake before any ripping was required!

I started on my half-square triangles for step 3.  I decided to try Bonnie's method using the Easy Angle ruler.  It was very frustrating at first - I kept cutting the pieces too small.  After screwing up three or four I realized that the markings on the Easy Angle ruler are very confusing.  Maybe it's just me - but to me it looks like the 2" marks are the horizontal and vertical lines that intersect with the number "2", not the line above the "2". The ruler in Bonnie's pictures has dotted lines rather than solid for those "in between" markings.  I think that would make the cutting a lot easier.

I finally managed to cut a few correctly.

I finished one pinwheel (yep, 1 down, 60 more to go!)

I decided to put away the sewing in favor of getting the Christmas tree up yesterday afternoon.  My oldest daughter and I came up with the slightly hair-brained idea of getting a live tree this year.  They always look a lot smaller when they are in the tree lot!  It seemed a lot larger (and heavier!) when we got it home. We somehow managed to get the thing set up and decorated.  Ace found the entire process very interesting - he even posed for a holiday picture!

Visit Bonnie's website to see the fabulous progress others are making on their projects - most are much farther along than me!