Category Archives: Scrabble

Half a Lifetime

by Dawn Posted on November 21, 2020

Hello from Atlanta, where my husband Charlie and I are visiting my twin sister Diane and her husband Ed. It’s our annual Thanksgiving trip. We arrived earlier than usual this year for a special reason: Diane and I turned 70 on November 16th and we wanted to celebrate the big 7-0 together. We weren’t going to let Covid keep us apart.

Charlie and I took extreme precautions on the trip here from Oregon, including wearing safety goggles in transit that made us look like very large insects. Two days after we left Portland the governor of Oregon announced new statewide restrictions because of the alarming increase of Covid cases. We will self-quarantine for two weeks on our return.

In the interim, we are having an absolutely wonderful time doing not very much at all. Lots of Scrabble games, brisk walks outdoors in the fresh air, reading, watching movies, making favorite recipes and trying out new ones. On our actual birthday we got all dressed up — Diane and I in our Little Black Dresses — and went to an early and very properly socially distanced dinner at a lovely French restaurant.

As fraternal twins Diane and I were never dressed alike by our mother but half a lifetime ago, when we turned 35, we bought matching sweaters and posed for this photo:

Fast forward another 35 years. We decided to recreate the photo with new matching sweaters:

Who says you can’t be silly at 70? Of course we can never go out in public wearing these outfits at the same time!

Here’s Diane in her Little Black Dress (which is actually midnight blue) . . .

. . . and here I am in mine:

I whipped up masks for us to wear with our LBDs:

I’ve taken to adding neck straps to my masks after hearing from a fellow quilter, Linda B. No more needing to stuff a mask into a pocket or leave it dangling on one ear. (Thanks so much for the idea, Linda!)

That’s the extent of my sewing on this trip to date but I hauled a bunch of fabric all the way from Portland to start on a new quilt. Here’s hoping I have a couple of test blocks — Quatrefoil blocks, in fact! — to show you real soon.

Posted in face masks, family, Quatrefoil, Scrabble, update | 10 Comments

Great Expectations

by Dawn Posted on December 4, 2018

I was so sure I would get lots of hand appliqué done on my Hazel’s Diary Quilt blocks during my two-week visit to my sister’s home over Thanksgiving. Instead I found myself occupied with other things. Fun things, to be sure. We experimented with new recipes and baked and went shopping and watched Poldark on Masterpiece Theater and decorated Diane and Ed’s home for the holidays. And we played endless games of Scrabble.

It’s that last thing that kept me from getting more handwork done. My husband and my sister share this obession. Many times the three of us could be found sitting in the living room with our noses in our iPads, playing Scrabble with each other and not uttering a word. Diane’s husband Ed — who does not play Scrabble — looked on, bemused.

I did manage to complete one red scalloped frame (pictured in this post) and got started on another one:

Since returning home almost a week ago, I’ve picked it up a couple of times but keep putting it down. It may look fine from a distance but I’m not at all happy with some of the points and curves. I don’t know whether to keep going or rip it out and start over.

Best to put it away for a while. Not the entire project, though! I still have one more block that needs appliqué in the center (and I still want to remake the last block I pieced since I don’t like my original fabric choices). Maybe needleturning some small shapes will get me going again on those red scalloped frames.

I know: the more I do it, the easier it will become. I need practice — and patience.

Posted in appliqué, family, needleturn appliqué, Scrabble, update | 3 Comments

Tiles in Style: A New Scrabble Bag

by Dawn Posted on November 24, 2012

Scrabble is on the daily agenda at my sister Diane’s house in Atlanta where my husband and I are visiting. During our two-week visit over Thanksgiving this year, we will probably play at least 20 games. The three of us are pretty evenly matched in skill and extremely competitive — unless one of us has the possibility of a seven-letter word, in which case the other two jump in to help.

The bag that holds Diane’s Scrabble tiles was in pretty sad shape so I decided to make her a new one. I found some soft sueded fabric at JoAnn’s the other day when Diane and I were picking up notions for the home dec projects I’m working on while here (subject of a future post).

It took a mere half hour to make the Scrabble bag. Instead of making a casing at the top for a drawstring, I sewed Velcro strips.

We went from this: