Why I am a Block of the Month

For several months now, I’ve been enrolled in two “block of the month” classes at Cool Cottons, just a few feet from my house as the crow flies. (And you won’t believe how many crows actually fly there, but that’s another post.)

One class is the Quilt as You Go Block of the Month, taught by quilter and teacher extraordinaire Joyln Buhl.

Handout from Jolyn Buhl's Quilt-as-you-go Block of the Month Class

Each month we get instructions and fabric to make a block. Many of the blocks are quite intricate.  Joyln loves her triangles! (And lucky for us, she teaches a totally cool way of constructing them…you need to take a class from her so you can learn it too!)

Once we finish a 9-inch-square block, we then add sashing from fabric of our own choice to increase its size to 15 inches.  We make a companion block called a setting block, from the same fabric as the sashing.

Then we machine quilt each block, then sew the quilted squares together in pairs, then join the pairs, and so on… the idea is that at the end of the year, we have a completed quilt of 24 squares (a square of a different pattern and its setting block for each month of the year).  Of course, this happens only if we keep up on our homework.  Because I fell so far behind before escaping from nerve pain hell, I’ve been sewing and quilting double time for the past few weekends.

The Maple Star square

Maple Star with sashing

And you just keep going and going.

After quilting both blocks, you add the setting block to the main block.

Then you sew two 2-block sets together like this:

Note how the setting blocks and main blocks are set opposite one another in all directions.

I’ve taken care to find fat quarters to use in the same color family for the backs of the blocks.

The back of a 4-block set.

If that weren’t enough, I also joined a Wool Applique Block of the Month club.  We’re working from one of Sue Spargo’s Folk Art Quilt patterns – Flowerbed

Each month, get luscious hand-dyed wool for one block, which we finish and embellish as we wish. You can see that my confidence is gaining:  my first few blocks were very basic, but now I’m adding embroidery and thinking more outside the box….I mean block.

So that’s how I’ve been spending lots of my weekend hours. There’s something so soothing about creating something with your hands when you spend your work hours making things with your mind. It’s my mediation and therapy all rolled into one.

One of the first blocks I did. That's why it's so simple and unembellished.

One of the last blocks I did. Note all the embroidery embellishment.

Why global warming keeps me up at night

As I’ve confessed here before, I am something of a weather geek. I watch the weather, track the weather, watch weather disaster shows on tv, consult the weather channel frequently, and think about the weather.

I actually studied the weather in college and grad school in the early 1970s, and learned about the greenhouse effect and global warming long before it became a popular media subject.

The amount of carbon dioxide human activity pumps into the atmosphere has only increased dramatically since then, of course. As has general awareness of the issue. And since today is a day when bloggers are invited to blog action day on climate change (see blogactionday.org for more info) participate in a global project to bring more attention to this issue, I am compelled to share what I believe I know for sure. (Sorry Oprah!)

What I believe I know for sure about global warming:

1. There has been a dramatic rise in CO2 in the last three centuries of human history. While there are short term variations, the graph below shows an unmistakable exponential increase over time since 1700. This is not a scam, it is not a conspiracy, it is simply data. Period. It’s not political, it’s not left or right, it’s just data. Data doesn’t care about our debates and arguments. It just exists. It doesn’t lie, it doesn’t care whether we listen or not. It just is.

2. If you look at the graph, you see that the dramatic rise started around the mid-19th century. What happened at that time? The industrial revolution, of course. Just as it dramatically altered the human experience, it dramatically changed the extent to which human activity produced CO2, and the only place for it to go was the atmosphere.  I think there is a lot of evidence that human activity is contributing significantly to CO2 level increases. It’s not the only cause, of course, but it is a contributing factor.

3. The global warming effect that gets the most airtime is rising sea levels. While that would be catastrophic for much of humanity because they live next to the sea, I think there are worse things to worry about. Like the release of methane, released into the atmosphere from melting permafrost, from the ocean as water temperature rises.  And methane traps heat radiating from the earth (which is where our heat comes from as opposed from direct solar radiation) 20 times more efficiently than CO2. At certain levels, it actually begins to burn. As in massive fire. The atmosphere ablaze? Now that would be bad. Even worse than rising water.

3. Given that data clearly shows that global temperatures (see right hand graph above) are on a rising trend, wouldn’t we humans want to do everything we can to keep our actions in check so we aren’t fouling our own nest? Disrespecting the only home we have? Can’t we live without consuming so much, satisfying our every desire or fancy? Can we bring it down a notch? Might it actually improve our quality of life? Beginning with us. Me. You?

4. And in the end, as this video shows, we may as well do whatever we can to take action to save our planet, because it’s a win-win or lose-lose proposition.  Please take the 10 minutes to watch this video. Do it for me. Do it for you. Do it for the future of humanity.