december adventure

December Adventure Log

Sophia Wood

02 Dec 2025 • 7 min read

December Adventure was started by Eli_oat at Oatmeal. I love seeing what others do this month - here is a log of logs.

This December, I plan to make a generative quilt, play with origami, doodle some mossy mandalas, set up next year's journal, and who knows what else. This post is the log where I will update and share my adventure.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23-25 26 27 28

29 30 31

Day-1

Pick a quilt

I have a jellyroll of 4-5 tones of fabric, which I hope to make a small quilt with. Using randomness and p5.js, I picked a quilt. There is both a random block generator and a random rotation pattern that I used to get this. I started the code last week and plan to clean it up to share over the month. There are a lot of features and options I'd like to add. My mom looked through the patterns with me, and we had fun looking at ones that sometimes seemed translucent, woven, or jittery.

Here is a snapshot:

Screenshot of jellyroll quilt UI with the chosen quilt and the block.

There is one block (and its reflection). The rotation pattern that wraps is 0 degrees, 0 degrees, then 270 degrees of the reflected block - so a 2:1 ratio of blocks.

A light vertical stripe, then a stripe with a black square and light grey strip, the a dark grey strip and lighter grey square, then a black strip

reversed block with the black stripe on the left and bright stripe on the right mid tones in the middle withsquares from the light and dark.

I am not sure how much fabric I have - because I haven't done the math yet, but I am happy with various sizes of the 0-0-270R pattern with these blocks. Here are some different sizes using that ratio/pattern.

A A7x8 quilt using the jellyroll pattern that almost makes a herringbone pattern.

I made three blocks tonight:

Three jellyroll blocks with fabric that has a mix of flowers, stars, plus signs, and mathematical curves. Two blocks are the same, the other is reflected.

Day-2

doodle-meditate + more blocks

Today I doodle-meditated and quilted 6 more blocks.

vortex doodle with ribbons wrapping around the tendrils - all slate blue tones. it is spinning clockwise. Digital art.

Day-3

Svelte Skeleton

Today I couldn't get my sliders to work right, but got some of the skeleton together for a generative quilt site to share my toys. I plan to put the jellyroll blocks there along with the Hilbert Quilts, Aperiodic Hexagonal colourings, truchet, hex-a-quilts, and more.

I didn't sew any quilt blocks today after work, but have some cut.

Day-4

Jelly Blocks

Today I quilted 3 blocks while hanging with Recurse Center friends. I got more of the jellyroll site working and deployed a draft of it at https://www.genquilt.com.

Day-5

Fix more of the site

Today I fixed the pdf export to not have transparency on export.

Day-6

Run then potato mode

I ran 11miles and thought about the quilt, my journal, and a generative slide program (where the essence of your slide deck is the same, but the colors, font, and visuals are procedural. After my run, I became a potato.

Day-7

More blocks, more pages

Today I quilted quite a few blocks - I lost count at 12. I now have 7x4=28, and I cut enough for one more row to make a 7x5.

7 columns and 4 rows of the jelly roll quilt block that shows the zig-zag stiars that are almost woven. many blocks have separations since they are just laid next to each other on a wooden table and not all sewn together.

Some are sewn together in pairs - and this is a horrible shot, but it was dark, and it gives the gist of it.

I also ported over the Half-Square Hilbert code from CodePen to the genquilt site and added a main page and some navigation. I am not fixed on the design, but will circle back to it later.

Screenshot of the Half-Square Hilbert page showing a hilbert curve similar quilt with white and dark blue-green half-square triangles and controls on the right to change the level and colors of the pattern or download it.

Day-8

mobile fixes

Worked on fixing the Hilbert quilt mobile view and download

Day-9

finished Hilbert page

Finished fixing the Hilbert quilt page. Helped with some Genuary site stuff.

Day-10

Tic-Tac-Toe

Played with tic-tac-toe code for a math session.

Day-11

Journal ideating

I played with what I really want for my experimental journal practice this coming year. I haven't settled on implementation, but I do know I am going back to daily Haiku.

Day-12

Make your own buttons

I made a prototype of a make-your-own buttons to use in math groups: https://inquiries.link/tools/number-theory/two-button-calculators

The default settings are meant to start thinking about the Collatz Conjecture. I hope to write up an activity soon.

Two-button calculator with the number 1 in the output, a reset button, and starting number input of 1. there is also a (-_-) button that looks like an eyes closed face. The A button is red and the B button is green.

Day-13

Quilt top done!

Made the quilt top! I also started working on pen plotter postcard sketch - not sure where I am going with it yet - but initial idea was with stitches:

Quilt top with black white and two tones of gray patterned fabric, creating a zigzag stare pattern that almost looks woven like a herringbone. The block pattern repeats with block, block, reflected Blox rotated 90°. The layout is a 7 x 5 pattern. The block has a dominant black strip on the right and white strip on the left with an eye then an exclamation between made of jelly roll fabric strips.

dashed lines in a circle that make a pattern that almost looks like a stem and then curving lines of parallels stitches forming a circle. the center has nothing in it.

Day-14

Clean up

I cleaned up old posts that had not ported over that well from wordpress and added some CSS to this site to fix some of the excerpts showing where they should not.

Day-15

Abstract Algebra, pen plotter sketch, banjo

I worked on some of the exercises and reading for an abstract algebra group I'm in. Ordered paper and planned my pen plotter prints for this year's postcard exchange. I've decided to go with a fork of this year's divergent boundaries sketch.

Three wavy curves drawn with Voronoi boundaries that are close together on the curve and break away to large shapes.

Day-16

Mixed evening

Printing adapter for my Cricut to use micron pens for the plotter postcard exchange.
Einstein Origami (Sy Chen) book came in! aperiodic turtles!
I am contemplating using Obsidian, Joplin, or something homemade for next year's journal
I went for a 5-mile purge my mind walk
Started reading "How to Know a Person"
Started working on what this year's website wrap up will be for the 2025 journal - I am thinking a zine.

three aperiodic turtle origami peices with all three heads in the center forming a triangle. the tiles are all green with one leg a different color. one is blue, one is purple, and one is yellow. they are on a wooden table.

three aperiodic turtle origami peices with all in a row. the tiles are all green with one leg a different color. one is blue, one is purple, and one is yellow. they are on a wooden table.

Day-17

Plotting postcards

I folded another 6 origami turtles and started plotting postcards. The first three ruined my pen on watercolor paper, so I changed back to cardstock. I didn't like my wash effect with the sketch as much as without color.

four postcards with black pen curves made of voironoi areas in sinusoidal patterns with some ruptures of larger areas on some of them . the paper is off white and the table they are on is wood.

Day-18

Plotting more postcards

I plotted another few postcards and continued to contemplate my organisation strategy for projects. I explored Joplin and Obsidian a bit, but am not sure how much I want to invest in time building vs. time creating. If you want to download a postcard svg - go here and press "s" to save or spacebar to change it. (also below)

Day-19

Finished the postcards

More postcards. Making a hugo site for haiku journaling.

Day-18

Day-20

Finished and shipped postcards

Finished printing postcards and continued making hugo site. I also continued thinking about summary stuff for the 2025 journal.

30 postcards with various amounts of waviness with voronoi cells that are small and concentrated along sinusoidal-like curves. The prompt originially was plate technonics, so there is a sense of pulling apart with some areas that feel like ruptures.

Day-21

2025 summary

I summarized my solstice-to-solstice year. 212 species of birds, 2,263 km on foot, 4 days without seeing a crow, 272 sunrises I was aware of,...

Somewhat settled on thoughts for the next journal and tested out the implementation.

Day-22

New journal

I started a light version of my next journal with Hugo at banjomagpi.com. I am playing with how I want it to look and feel. I also still logged my birds in numbers today - and will continue to do so until I don't.

I ran over to the quilt shop to grab backing for the quilt, but they were closed.

Day-23

and day 24 and 25: Journal, birding for the journal

Got a word cloud working in d3.js, then decided I don't need JS, and now it uses Python to make an SVG.

So my journal now does this: Enter data in a numbers file (on phone, iPad, Mac). Run Python to update Hugo files (distance, birds, and notes are done as YAML, and haikus are separate markdown posts.)

Next, I am drawing my icon and homepage image.

haiku | banjo magpi

banjo magpi

I also doodle an image for it:

a banjo with a magpie sitting on the bridge sideways so that the strings are like a fence. The image is two tones - salmon on the top half and blue-green on the bottom with the sketch made with eraser marks in the paint.

Day-26

Code doodle

Played with p5 for the Birb's Nest weekly prompt - "factory."

Day-27

String art

Picked up backing fabric for the quilt - it might be shown in February's Salem quilt show.
Worked on string art tools for mathy tools for learning on my svelte site. Ended up making a second one with a multiplier to play with two different ways of thinking about the petals.

a cardiod with slider controls and a slate and peach color for string gradients

cardiod-like string art with more complexity with slider controls and a blue and purple color for string gradients

A 6-petal complex string art with points = 500, strings = 500, and multiplier = 39 and peach and blue colored strings.

Day 28 to 30

String art post

Finished making a post for Beautiful Chords today with some extra tools. It would be really easy to keep going and make a Monte Carlo for random chords, rotations of connected shapes, moire strings, and shadow art with strings.

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