New mosaic sections

I had an incredibly productive weekend. It's hot enough outside to make me stay inside all day with my quilting, my wall and an audiobook. I finished the border quilting on my quilt and am ready to start the green spikes. But I can only quilt for about an hour at a time. I have some sort of nerve damage in my left wrist that probably has roots in the fact that I broke it almost 50 years ago. It became an issue when I first got a knitting machine (around 1990) and pushed the carriage back and forth so many times that my wrist eventually went nuts. It causes numbness in my pinkie and ring fingers. Since then I have to be careful and I try to remember to tape it when I'm doing a lot of quilting or whatever. It's just another welcoming aspect of aging and my body saying "Stop, you idiot, you are aren't 20 (or 30 or 40 or 50) anymore.

So in between quilting I worked on the wall. It's way too hot to do glass work and fire the kiln so I'm going to try to power through the wall over the next few weeks until I can fire the kiln again.

This section is my tribute to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It was cool that I had 2 blue pottery plates with actual ridges in them. I think this leaves me 9 full blocks to do.

Last night I worked on this corner block. The shards are from a platter from our wedding china. Chris' Dad was a Navy Captain and in their day, Chris' Mom had to do a lot of entertaining. She regularly hosted parties for 60 or more and she did all of the cooking herself and served everyone on china. She told me that I was lucky to become a Navy wife when I did because the social requirements were basically gone.
She was right. I would have been a complete failure in her Navy.

When Chris and I got married she gave us this china set. It has 12 7-piece place settings and a myriad of serving pieces. It's called Frederick The Great by Rosenthal. It's absolutely beautiful and we used it exactly once in 28 years. Why? Because it had to be hand washed and I have 2 other sets of china that can go in the dishwasher. I recently took the whole lot to Greensboro, NC to Replacements  and sold it all, except for this platter. There were several pieces that they did not want (wouldn't pay for) but I gave them everything except this one platter so I could add it to the wall. I hope the gold edging holds up to grouting, but, if not it's too late!

I have the next section started and will try to spend this week focused on the quilt and the wall. I might also work on the border of the vintage flower quilt too. But nothing else. I hope.

About Replacements. A lot of people complain that you do not get much for your china when you sell to Replacements. We were paid the most for the plates (about $25 each) and they sell them for $70. But, for some other pieces, like salad plates, were were paid about $6. Most serving pieces were about $15. Considering how they have them priced, that doesn't seem like much. Well the reality is that they don't sell many of the serving pieces and if you are buying from them you rarely pay full price. I've seen sales as deep as 60%. They ALWAYS have a sale so you can't base the offer you receive on the list price on the web site. 
The truth is that people just don't buy china much anymore so it's a buyers market. I know that my MIL paid $300 for this whole set of china when she bought it and it cost us nothing. The important thing is that I decluttered and, instead of it winding up at Goodwill, we got a little coin. I was happy to just give them the extra pieces because it saved me a trip to the thrift store.