Improvements in the 'hood

Three things to be happy about:
(1) a brand new year
(2) comfortable shoes
(3) improvements

The city government is making improvements to - repaving - the alley behind my house, and it's waaaaay past time!

I've lived here since 1978, and this is the first time they've ever made any kind of improvements to the alley behind this street.

The notice we got two weeks ago said the project would take three weeks, and they would be working from 7 am til 5 pm.  Yesterday morning, sure enough, 7:30 came and so did the equipment!

They started at the midpoint of the alley, which happens to be where my house sits.

Drilling holes and breaking up the existing concrete; I could feel the vibrations from my toes all the way to my ...

Big piles of gravel were dumped, shoveled, spread out, dragged, kicked at and tamped down...

This is how it looked just before they left at 5 pm., looking towards the rec center at the end of the block.

I asked one of the workers if the job would really take 3 weeks, or would it more likely be one week.  Based on how much they did yesterday, surely one week should be all they need!

He said, "Yes, one week, 5 or 6 days."  I wonder if he understood what I was asking.

Meanwhile, the good quilty stuff - I'm still working away on the Allietare mystery quilt!

I laid out these units for the first block and they formed an interesting block design, so I took a picture ... too many pieces, though!

I chose to press the 2" black squares towards the black rather than away from it as Bonnie suggested, because I was having to rip out too many seams.  They weren't locking, causing the block to skew off and go crooked.

Then I pressed the horizontal seam open; I'm having more success that way!  I can't help wondering if anyone else was having that issue??


That's it for now; today if you peek in you'll find me alternately taking pictures of the alley progress and at my sewing machine.  Sew forth and sew on til later...