Gadget Intervention

True confessions:  I grew up in a family of eight. I was the ONLY ONE who did not wear glasses.  Hah!  I made a point of throwing it in their faces - HAH HAH HAH.  Then, when  I hit about 45, I noticed it was getting hard to read the newspaper.  (Small fonts, sure. Yeah.)   I made do with a fist full of cheap-o reader glasses from the Dollar Store.  Then,  about 3 years ago, I graduated to prescription lenses.  Progressive lenses, no less.   Welcome to middle age, next stop .....MENOPAUSE.    I am still angry about having to wear glasses,  but my intervention is not about that.

I love me a gadget. Kitchen gadgets, cleaning gadgets, they are all good. Where I go off the deep end is with.....quilting gadgets.  I have not met a quilting  gadget I didn't like.  Granted, I like some more than others (the Clover needle threader gets taken out of a burning house before my husband)  but I'm knocking on the door of needing an intervention.  Today's gadget purchase was a beautifully clear, square acrylic template. Mind you - I already have one the same size - but this one is different. This one is special.  This one is just for my EYES.

My previously most-used template was about a 6 inch acrylic square, with markings for inches, half inches, quarter inches and eighth inches.  Seriously. ONE-EIGHTH of an inch.  These marking were not little ticks, but the full line.  Looking at that thing was like staring down an Escher print. Besides,  I base my quilt blocks on the size of a  ---  and a half inch measurement, or maybe a ---  and a quarter, but that is IT.  The eighth-inch thing is just inhuman.  It's just wrong. Anyway, old tempie is nicked, scratched, pitted and due for a replacement.

You can imagine my joy when I found one in the identical size, but with LARGER NUMBERS, and only 1/2 and 1/4 increments marked.  I can read this so clearly I am beside myself.  Having already made quilts that involved cutting up to a  bazillion and eight half square triangles,  I feel renewed and ready to go back to the cutting mat.  I'm so inspired  I think I'll design a new line of quilting gadgets for the discriminating,  perimenopausal, myopic woman.  Each will come packaged in a protective layer of chocolate.  I like it. HAH.