Getting Unstuck • This and That December 2024

What do sunflowers have to do with getting unstuck? And why on earth does the term “Fibonacci” sequence come into play?

I happily pinned up this quilt, finding some cheerful plaid backing in the never-ending stash closet. I rolled it up, set it on the machine and…then what?

I printed off the quilt in a 50% saturation, and started doodling. Some ideas came right away, but I became stuck on the petals right away, finally breaking through those with the sketch in the upper right (“yes”). But those giant centers!

So I decided to go to the source: the sunflower plant. And on the way I found out the official name (Helianthus annuus, L.) and then I added the search term Fibonacci to the mix, and found myself deep into mathematics. This site, which combines sunflowers and coding, had some beautiful arcing designs of the path of the sunflower seeds. And the picture above came from a website called Synchronicity, which was a fascinating read. When I watched the video explaining this principle, I learned a lot, getting only a little bit lost at the end when square roots entered the picture. That I didn’t get more befuddled is a tribute to my high school math teachers.

I went into my Affinity Designer program and using their spiral tool, I drew this. And when you know, you know. I think I will add a little bit of arcing grid at the tops of the petals (shown in the sketch, above), but we’ll see. Sometimes Mies van den Rohe said it best: Less is more. (Also said by Robert Browning, apparently.) So now I can get going, after being stuck. Sometimes it just takes a bit of time to figure things out, and while I am certainly One Who Likes a Project, I’m thinking maybe I had too much going on at this time.

Like the church Christmas breakfast that I agreed to be in charge of. Our church had always done nighttime parties, but this year we tried something different, asking the members to gather Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. Here is the church hall night before, as we finished decorating and setting the tables. The real Christmas miracle was that we handed out the recipe for 14 breakfast casseroles and all they all came in looking the same, save one (they’d used a tin foil pan, rather than a glass pan).

Again, if you know, you know. That so rarely happens!

On our way there, we picked up the cinnamon rolls/sticky pecan rolls from our grocery store (Ralph’s). Thank you, Ralph’s, for your baking. We served the casseroles and sweet rolls with fruit salad, orange juice; we entertained people with a coloring contest and a piñata. We all had a great time.

I finished off my time in a bee with an old favorite: the Block Lotto birds blocks (she asked for three).

We did some decorating with nutcrackers, little figurines and quilts. Yes, that’s our “tree” there on the center small table.

We made a stop here, too, at See’s Candies, looking positively celestial.

Thought this was a nice pairing. If I manage to get out of my pajamas yet only go walking for 30 minutes a day, I evidently leave some benefits on the walking trail. Is less…more…in this situation? And who dreamed up that chart on the left anyway?

One nice thing about darkened skies/shorter days, is lighting candles, with the tablecloth from your mother and your Christmas dishes on the table. And soups seem to be on the menu a lot. Above, my husband made Creamy Spicy Pumpkin soup (topped with squares of ham and peanuts), which we served with baked puff pastry squares, topped with roasted fennel bulb and brightly colored persimmon wedges.

Last thing: my daughter (who was baking for the thousands this week) called up to ask if my recipe for cheesecake had sugar in the crust. It took me a while to find it as I hadn’t made it in years. It came out of this bible of cooking, the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, which I bought when I was in college. Click on the recipe to get the whole thing.

Happy mid-December!