Massey En Masse

As soon as I awoke on Friday, I looked up Bonnie's Clue 2 for Allietare mystery quilt. After a couple hours cutting fabrics for Allietare and continuing work on my Orange Blossom quilt (based on Bonnie's Orange Crush pattern), I was ready to sew.  I am happy to report that all 20 sets of "headless geese" are done along with the cutting of neutral, black and gray. All I need to do to finish up is to sew the neutral rectangles to those "headless geese".

It was great to work on both quilts at once, each acting as leader-ender projects for the other. I am trying to decide if I want to put the Orange Crush blocks on point as Bonnie designed or lay them out as a straight set.  The first makes a straight grid and the latter makes a diagonal grid (opposite what you would expect).  I prefer the the diagonal grid. The straight set requires more blocks while the diagonal set requires some half blocks to fill in the side triangles.  The limiting factor is the constant blue print used in center of the whirly block and there is only enough for 32.  So it will work out as a 8x8 square quilt. I can always add a print "bar" across the top and bottom to extend the quilt and echo the bar in the outside border. Or not. At least the name of this quilt made itself known - Orange Blossom - from the orangey "flower" blocks. Progress so far:  22 blossoms, 16 whirlys.

On Sunday, hubby and I flew to Massey Aerodrome for their annual Christmas party. The weather was great with low wind and a touch of haze. That means everyone in the area decided to fly in, too. There were over 200 airplanes on the field!  We were parked in rows near the hangers and on the crosswind runway and along the taxiway next to the active runway. There were RVs (the home-built aircraft, not campers), Sonex, a Kitfox, FIVE Cessna 170s including mine, 3 Cessna 195s, several 140s, several Bonanzas, several little bi-planes, three ultralights, a gyroplane, a V-tail Bonanza, an Eurcoupe, a Stationair, numerous Aeroncas, Cubs, Luscombe,s Citabrias, and a Stearman, Many of us stood atop the hill and watched as many as 12 airplanes in the pattern lined up to land. Then we walked the field to check out the various aircraft. They even had an antique car section next to the DC3.

The really interesting part of our trip was the clear deliminator line over the haze layer at 1200'. We flew above the haze and saw a sharp line between upper sky and the haze layer. Okay, I'm not describing it very well, but I had never seen anything quite like it. Very cool!

Later that day, my daughter dropped by for a visit (hmm, she should be studying for finals!) and free food.  It was nice to catch up with her. We see less and less of her as she stretches her wings, learning how to live independently of us.