Eight Quick Childrens' Quilts, Part VI

This post originally appeared on my quilting blog State of the Craft a couple of hours ago.

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A few months ago, I found myself with two new Babies of Note entering the world, and figured it was time to get cracking on the ol' quilting front.  When I took stock of the works-in-progress department, which was in considerable disarray, I eventually determined that I had one baby quilt face left from the "Eight Quick Children's Quilts" series.  It was the one I'd called #8, but that's not why it was the last one.  It was the last one because it was the boring one.

Well, obviously you can't give a baby a boring quilt.  It might screw up their development!  So, after mulling over the situation for a bit, I decided to add some warmth and visual interest by intercutting it with some bright orange stripes.  "Bright orange stripes," with the orange contained in a thin dark outline and the stripes overlapping each other in a weaving pattern, was an idea I used to tolerable effect to liven up another lackluster pattern, in 2014's "Jennifer Challenge Quilt II."

Did it do the trick this time?  You make the call!

The parents like it, that's the important thing.  It's possible that the baby herself will weigh in eventually, but it's still a little early for that.  (If you just can't wait to see a toddler be adorable about a quilt, though, I encourage you to revisit the video in last Friday's post.)

The Specs

Pompous Title: 8 Small Scrap Quilts for Children #8
Serial Number: 69

Dimensions: 50" x 36"

Batting: large scrap piece of commercial batting.

Backing: Pieced scrap flannel.
Quilting: Close machine-quilted grad.

Begun: May 2012

Finished: May 8, 2016

Intended Use/Display: Child's blanket.

The Infinite Art Tournament, Round Two: Ribera v. Rivera!

Some unusual doings in the Tournament this week.

• First, one of the matches feeding into the contest that was originally scheduled to run today has failed to make quorum!  Therefore, if you are someone other than Christine M, Morgan, pfly, chuckdaddy, Mrs.5000, Susan, Candida, or me, it it your duty as a good citizen and art enthusiast to proceed immediately to this match and register your vote! Chop chop!! The rest of your Tuesday can wait!
• Second, there was a First Round tie in the matter of Riley v. Riopelle, which of course causes the usual shake-up of the brackets.  In the original line-up, we couldn't have had a Ribera/Rivera lineup before the Fourth Round, but now we're getting it in the Second.  I'm calling it the Spanish Homophone Bowl.

Meanwhile, I also discovered and recovered the original Manet/Mangold post that you didn't know had gone missing.  That restores the complete record of the Tournament in all its glory, which is oddly satisfying.  But enough news.  Let's get to voting!

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José de Ribera
1591 – 1652
Spanish; worked in Italy

Beat living guy Gerhard Richter by a two-vote swing in Round 1. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!

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Diego Rivera
1886 - 1957
Mexican

Crushed Luca Della Robbia in Round 1.

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Vote for the artist of your choice in the comments, or any other way that works for you. Commentary and links to additional work are welcome. Polls open for at least one month past posting.

The Infinite Art Tournament, Round One: Rothko v. Rouault!

Mark Rothko
1903 - 1970
Russian-born American

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Georges Rouault
1871 - 1958
French

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Vote for the artist of your choice! Votes go in the comments. Commentary and links to additional work are welcome. Polls open for at least one month past posting.

June's Element of the Month: Fluorine!

June's Element of the Month:

Fluorine!
F
9

Atomic Mass: 18.998403163 amu
Melting Point: −219.67 °C
Boiling Point: −188.11 °C

Whatever else you might say about Fluorine, it is most certainly not a noble gas.  It has one too few valence electrons for that.  Neon, Fluorine's neighbor on the periodic table, is the noble gas.  Fluorine is a halogen.  And it doesn't have any of the inert qualities that you would associate with the noble gasses, either.  Truth is, it reacts rather violently in its elemental form, especially with the alkali metals and hydrogen.  In fact, Fluorine is so rowdy that it can even form compounds with some of the noble gasses.  That's just how unlike a noble gas it is.

We read that Fluorine compounds were being used proto-industrially* in the 16th century, and that chemists were pretty sure it must exist as early as 1810, but that it wasn't isolated in its elemental form until 1886.  The problem, apparently, was that pure Fluorine is so darn reactive that " several early experimenters died or sustained injuries from their attempts."  That sounded sort of like Campus Legend to me, but when I scratched the surface I found out about the "Fluorine Martyrs."  We will pause to honor these secular saints of Chemistry:

• Sir Humphrey Davy, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, and Louis Jacques Thénard: experienced severe pains from inhaling hydrogen fluoride gas. 
• Thomas and George Knox: severely poisoned; they are often said to have "suffered horribly."
• Paulin Louyet and Jerome Nickles: died from hydrogen fluoride poisoning

The first thing I usually associate with Fluorine is that it is one of the hardest Elements to spell.  That's Davy's fault, he picked the name.  It wasn't one of his best moments perhaps, but he certainly didn't deserve severe pains for it.

The Centerfold!
 

You might kind of expect Element #9 to be a major player among the atomic matter of the universe, but it's way down at 24th place among all of the elements in creation. This is because it doesn't play any part in stellar nucleosynthesis, the violent dance by which stars burn hydrogen into helium and then, in their late life, into (for example) carbon, then nitrogen, then oxygen. Fluorine is so not a part of that whole process, in fact, that there is a fairly exotic realm of theory that tries to explain not why there isn't more Fluorine around, but why there is any at all.

Since it is light and reactive, though, it's the kind of matter that tends to concentrate in the surface scum of your iron-nickel planets, and that is why it is the thirteenth most common Element here on the Earth's crust. Naturally it doesn't appear by itself -- remember how reactive it is -- but rather turns up in a zillion different compounds. Many of these compounds, either by themselves or in synthetic form, have been used for an infinity of commercial and industrial purposes by human beings. I would tell you all about it, except that I try to keep these little Elemental write-ups to four paragraphs.

* The Blogger spellchecker doesn't like "proto-industrially."  It suggests "pronto-industrially."

"fluorine: number 3," by trademarkrain, as offered for sale here.

The Infinite Art Tournament, Round Two: Rembrandt v. Renoir!

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn
1606 - 1669
Dutch

Survived a brush with Guido Reni in Round 1 by a two-vote swing. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!

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Pierre Auguste Renoir
1841 - 1919
French

Pulled away from Sir Joshua Reynolds in Round 1.

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Vote for the artist of your choice in the comments, or any other way that works for you. Commentary and links to additional work are welcome. Polls open for at least one month past posting.

Eight Quick Childrens' Quilts, Part V

This post appeared yesterday on my long-dormant quilt blog, State of the Craft.

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I suppose you could say more cutting things about a fellow than that he has fallen down on the job of documenting his quilt output.

Right?

Well. I suppose the most pressing question on everybody's mind is "Gosh, Michael, whatever happened to those eight children's quilts you started knocking out four years ago?

In fact I finished the last of them last month! But this post isn't about this one.  This one is about the third-to-last of them, which I gave away sometime in early 2013.

In case it has slipped your mind, this series was all thrown together from my stock of premade squares in mostly checkerboard patterns.  Obviously we're not talking about particularly adventuresome design concepts, here.  That being said, I like this one!  The rich maroon and green trim (which was just salvage bedding) lends some dignity to the proceedings, and though I say it myself the off-kilter diagonal quilting was an inspired choice.

I also like that this one has a subtle theme.  There are four Asian-style dragons scattered through the piece (they are in light blocks, if you want to go looking for them).  That made it appropriate for the Bhutanese-American little girl that the blanket ended up with.  Look up the Bhutanese flag if you don't believe me.

The back was pieced together from a riot of smallish flannel scraps.  Again, of the eight quilts, this one seemed best aimed at the household it ended up in.  Doesn't it look kind of South Asian?  Also, if you look closely at the back, you can notice something that I had completely forgotten about: I interrupted the quilting pattern in order to pick out the four dragon squares.  Again, I have to congratulate the 2012-13 version of Michael5000.  He seems like he was pretty on the ball, to judge from this quilt.

The Specs

Pompous Title: 8 Small Scrap Quilts for Children #7, "Four Dragons"
Serial Number: 68

Dimensions: 54" x 41"
Batting: did not record.
Backing: Pieced scrap flannel.
Quilting: Conventional machine quilting with scrap thread at 30 degree diagonal.

Begun: May 2012
Finished: June 2012, according to my suspect records

Intended Use/Display: Child's blanket.
Provenance: As of this writing, still in active use as intended.

The Blog Turns Nine

It's the Fluorine anniversary of Infinite Art Tournament, formerly known at the Life & Times of Michael5000!

Having a blog with such an incredibly long debris trail means that there is a lot out there in the world that, although I wrote it, isn't exactly key to my current lifestyle.  One of my posts that has been read by the largest audience over the years, for instance, is a guide to Scrabble strategy that I wrote back in Year One, in November 2007.  Last week, along comes a comment:

Question: I have been playing Scrabble on my iPad with the computer as my opponent. Occasionally, a window comes up which says I'm playing with a beginner computer player. Is there a way to have the computer become more competitive? Thanks, Nahnah

Now, as much as I like to be a good host, this is a really tough question to answer.  For one thing, I'm not really an iPad guy, and I've never played much Scrabble against computers in general. But even more to the point, I haven't played Scrabble for at least five years.  Scrabble is so... so... aughts!!  Sorry, Nahnah.  If you have any Agricola questions, I'm your man.

Fluorine is a noble gas.  Nobility is all fine and good, but the noble gasses are also a notoriously inert section of the periodic table.  That's appropriate, perhaps, for a blog that has been a bit inert lately outside of the steady march of the Tournament.  But then how many internet ventures do you know of that have lasted nine years without ever asking you for money?  Probably just one!

And mind you: when I get my flow, I'm still Dr. On-the-Go.  [blog inside joke so deep inside that only I will get it]  Wish me joy of the tenth year, will ya?