Back on track, Allietare progress

Three things to be happy about:
(1) traditions with a twist
(2) sleeping under a hand made quilt
(3) getting back on track

Three days???

They said it would take three days to fix!!

I was so unhappy with Windows 10 that I called the Geek Squad on Saturday to help me get Windows 8 back on my PC!  Long story short, the agent said if it was less than a month since I installed 10 (it was!) the change could be made but I shouldn't try it myself.  He made a 10:15 appointment and I took the PC to Best Buy where they told me it would take THREE DAYS to revert back to Windows 8!!

Long story even shorter - it was ready at 4:00; as you can see, I got my 8 back!  Meanwhile, the pop-ups keep coming at me...

On a happier note, I've been busy cutting strips to make Step 2 of the Allietare mystery - that part's almost a no-brainer.  On my Lancaster trip in October I bought a lot of neutrals, but so far I've only used strips pulled from my 2" bin - what a time saver!  The reds were all cut from stash, though.

So here's what I've done at this point:

all the cutting for Step 2 is done, including the black and grey squares we'll need in a future clue...

I made more progress on the HST's from Step 1 (200 are finished) and some of the Step 2 units are pieced together.

Slow and steady wins the race ...

Wait, it's not a race!

Slow and steady finishes the mystery...

I'm linking up with the Allietare Mystery Monday Link-Up on Bonnie's blog to show my progress, go and see how everybody else is doing!

Sew forth and sew on til later...

Mystery progress and, well...

Three things to be happy about:
(1) scented candles
(2) Christmas movies
(3) the smell of cookies baking

You ever have something that's doing just fine but you want to make it "new and improved"??

Well, the little reminder kept popping up on my PC to get Windows 10 because it's got this and that exciting thing, it has almost the same interface as Windows 8 and it's still free - and who doesn't like something free??

So I took the plunge and downloaded it...

Wish I had left it alone!

I can't see much positive difference between it and version 8, but what I do see among other things is I lost my Outlook mail icon from the Explorer tool bar and don't know how to get it back; when I put my camera chip in the G drive it doesn't open automatically as it used to; I had to re-register my MS Word program; I have to search for the "search" tool ... sheesh!

Long story short, I wish I had left it alone!

Do NOT do this at home!

You can put a custom picture on the start up screen but I might just leave it that way - looks like a sad face.

On a happier note, I started on step two of the Quiltville mystery!

I'm not finished with step one yet because I was doing a lot of running around this week; thank goodness it's not a race!

So far I've made 3 sets of the 20 trapezoid rectangles we need - 17 more to go and they're pretty easy.  I opted for the sew and flip method rather than the Easy Angle/Companion Angle method.

The HST's from Step 1 work just fine as leader-enders while I'm making the rectangles.

I had to unsew lot of the HST units; does anyone else find that some of the Accuquilt strip dies are just a teensy bit narrower than when you cut the pieces by the conventional method?

So these are most of the completed HST's, I've started putting them by batches of 50 into this little box.  It's kinda hard to organize all those clips - perhaps I should have just used pins but I didn't like the way they munched up the units.

Oh well!

Have a great Saturday, it's supposed to be a nice one!

Sew forth and sew on til later...

New stuff, Allietare HST's

Three things to be happy about:
(1) Advent calendars
(2) a ball of dough rising
(3) gingerbread men people

Tis the season, get out the gingerbread fixings!

I hadn't planned to jump into the Black Friday madness but I had an errand and, since I was out anyway, I went to JoAnn's!

I took advantage of their 50% coupon and got something I sorely needed ...

... a new mat for my cutting table!

The old one is faded in spots and that doesn't bother me, except that it buckled in the middle and I can't always get accurate cuts.  Sometimes it tends to wobble and the ruler slips.

So, I figured I may as well take the plunge and get another one, they won't get any cheaper!

I got these clips yesterday at the Dollar Tree, to hold my Allietare HST's.

At 10 squares per group, there are enough clips here for 200 HST's!

I know I could have used binding clips, but I don't have any - but since there was a Dollar Tree near the Great Harvest Bread Company (Cinnamon Blast - yum!) I picked these up.

Seventy HST's done so far!

And here's a tip I picked up a couple nights ago on Quiltville's Open Studio Facebook group: someone suggested separating your groups of 10 by a leader/ender.

Great idea!  I don't want to do anything "real", so I'm sewing crumb blocks between my groups.

Hey, it works!

That's it for now, have a great Tuesday, sew forth and sew on til later...