Back after nearly 6 months of silence

Last week, on Tuesday, I actually slept in past 7am (a miracle!) and ended up getting woken by the boys coming in, shouting that it was snowing.

Snow in December? thought I.  Surely not.

Yet there it was, snowing.  Where we live, on the seaward side of Puget Sound, we usually get snow in February, not sooner.  Yet despite the fact that Tuesday's snow didn't linger past midday, we got some flurries on Christmas itself, and as I type this, looking out the window at our front lawn, it's snowing again, and the grass has nearly completely vanished.  So, about 2" overnight and still coming down?  I opened the back door earlier and Sushi (our cat) set one paw out in the snow before deciding hell nope.  I'll have to see if I can get the chickens into their (covered) run in a bit.  It's so quiet that the snow coming down sounded like grains of rice falling.

It's supposed to stay below freezing for the next five or so days, so whatever we get, should stick.  I kind of doubt it'll match February's 11 inches, but I'll take it.

I did get three quilts (and five pillowcases to go with) done for Christmas.  First was Niecelet's, which I didn't get a proper picture of, but here's an in-progress photo:

The colors in the photo aren't true to life, and this was before I appliqued four more starfish and two Flounders in that middle border.  There was a matching pillowcase, and I had also found an embroidered pillowcase at the thrift store at some time, so that went with.  I'm actually quite proud that every piece of this quilt (except the ombre fabric, which was a remnant from Joann's) was a thrift store find over the years - including that red sea glass Kaffe Fassett border fabric, and the sea-green batik that I used for the backing.  You can find good stuff at thrift stores, if you look.

I'll do another post later on the boys' quilts - which are still here, so I can take pictures of them!  And right now they are being slept under.  Everyone got to stay up quite late on Christmas.  Wonderful Husband and I resumed work on that 2000-piece puzzle that's been shoved up and out of the way for months.  We're in agreement that 2000 pieces is just too big, for future endeavors.

Too Hot To Handle

 Ugh.  As you may know, we moved to the Pacific Northwest from Orange County, California a couple years ago.  There were many factors involved in this decision.  My sister lived here already, and when Wonderful Husband and I visited, we were amazed at how green it was.  Our family expanded, and we wanted both boys to eventually have their own bedrooms.  We also needed a better school district for them, and couldn't afford that in southern California, not without moving out to the desert.  (And I was NOT going to move out to the desert.)  And, year after year, it kept getting hotter and drier.  This was before global warming and climate change were as prevalent in my consciousness as they are now, and even so I knew that California's drought was never going to end.

...The pictures I've seen of Lake Oroville, where my family used to go houseboating in the summer, have broken my heart.

At the moment, we are being VERY grateful that we boxed up and brought our bulky portable A/C unit with us in the move.  In the summers, it lives in Wonderful Husband's office, which has an unshaded south-facing window.  A few days ago, Wonderful Husband hauled it upstairs to the master bedroom, where it has been installed in the master bath and running in tandem with the tower fan ever since, trying to keep the temperature there down around 75 Fahrenheit.

We hauled the boys' mattresses into our room last night so they could sleep better.  As I write this, at my desk by a north-facing window, it's 91 Fahrenheit in the rest of the house.  And it's only 11am.  We've been opening the doors and windows at night and in the early morning to let heat seep out, and shutting them (and their blinds and curtains) after a certain point each day.  I've been watering all the outside plants daily, and taking rinse-off showers a few times each day, just to cool down.  The chickens, fortunately, have plenty of shady spots to hide in the yard, and they do make use of them.

Remembering last year's run on them, I bought an inflatable pool a few months back.  It's situated on top of foam flooring blocks on our pergola, and has been a blessing in the evenings the last week or so, as the boys play naked in it before bedtime.

After today and tonight, the heat's supposed to break.  Thank goodness.

This fall, when the boys are back in school, I'm planning to paint their bedrooms.  And at the same time install ceiling fans, because our house sadly lacks them...

Catching Up

Ugh.  First we had a bout of lice.  Which probably came home from preschool with Jazzy.  And I was far, far away the worst infested.  After OTC remedies failed, we found a lice clinic up in Silverdale, and I (with my long hair) got the full treatment: comb-out, heat treatment, oily serum slathered on my hair.  The malefolk opted to go home and shave their heads and do at-home oily serum treatments.  So right now Wonderful Husband, Squiddle, and Jazzy all look like they've just joined the military.

Then Jazzy got sick yesterday.  The fun started at a quarter to seven when he woke up, feverish and with his eye glued shut by nighttime mucus.  Screaming ensued, and panic, until he worked himself up to a pitch where he actually threw up because he was so upset, which I had previously thought to be only an expression, not something that really happened.  The upset wailing of "I can't see!" recurred through the day, though he was able to see well enough to watch Trollhunters for a few hours with me acting as a comfort object.  Eventually he (who hates naps) burrowed into Mummy and Daddy's bed of his own volition and slept away most of the afternoon.  Fortunately today, other than a stuffed up nose, it all seems to be gone.

I did make a bit of gardening hay while he napped, and pruned back and dried my oregano.  Four hours in the oven, varying between a sort of stank and half smelling like an Italian restaurant, just add garlic.  After stripping the stems and tossing them into the chicken coop, I have three pint jars of uncrushed oregano leaves.  I crumbled a tiny bit into my eggs this morning.  Yum!  I also have seeds starting in containers, since a lot of what I planted in the beds hasn't come up.  I got about ten baby dills, maybe, from a whole packet of scattered seed, and no basil, chard, or monarda seedlings at all.  Sigh.

And, finally, I went out to thrift stores and a used book store today, and only got books.  Two living-abroad memoirs, two Michael Pollan books, a quilting book, and the first Hunger Games book.  And something innate in me shuddered, because I'm reading like an adult.  Quick, I need a hit of speculative fiction!  I'm also amused at the price differences for the same book within a 1-mile triangle: $.50 at St.Vincent de Paul, $2 at Goodwill, $7 at Book 'Em.  Ah well, better supporting local business than Amazon.

Eagle Adventure, and Shopping, Deferred

I've been letting the chickens free-roam in the backyard.  Wonderful Husband and I hammered some 4' t-stakes into the ground in a few places and have hooked rabbit fencing into them to keep the ladies from getting out into the front yard.  Perfect, I thought!

Until yesterday, around 6pm, when I was halfway across the yard, and looked up to find a bald eagle, talons extended, in the air about 4' above my chickens, clearly looking for a chicken dinner.

"HEY!" I bellowed, in my best "What The Heck Do You Think You're Doing?!" mom-voice.

The eagle took note of me, and decided it had better places to be.  (Kind of stupid, but then bald eagles reputedly are.  Seriously, if it came down to a fight between us, I might be bigger but it has a beak, talons, and no moral compass.  The eagle would win, easily.)

Two of my ladies were at the verge of the brush between us and the neighbors; I got out the scratch grains and lured them into their coop and shut them in.  Another was deep in the brush and clucking in distress now that the threat was gone; after a bit she came out and likewise got put in for the night.  The last two hens I was worried about, as they weren't responding at all, but about half an hour later they reappeared from where they'd squeezed between the propane tank and its fencing.  Clever girls!  So, Bald Eagle: 0, Team Flock Mama: 1.

Unrelated to the above, it has been two weeks since Wonderful Husband and I got our second Moderna shots, so we are now fully vaccinated!  But we are also still wearing masks.  We had planned to celebrate by going to Ikea this weekend and looking at outdoor/lawn furniture.  Except that it's Memorial Day this weekend, so nopenopenope.  And starting next week, my sister is back at work after her brain surgery has (mostly) resolved itself.  So my parents will be taking care of Niecelet on weekends.  I am not dropping all three grandkids on my parents, no matter how much they say they can handle it.  Niecelet on her own is a handful; adding my two to the mix devolves rapidly into chaos.  And we can't take the boys with us to Ikea; Jazzy still will not wear a mask.  So I guess lawn furniture gets to wait another year....

Catching Up

No pictures, I'm afraid.  But I've finally got the quilt for my inlaws basted!  Now I just need to quilt it.  And, y'know, steam-mop the basting spray off the floor.

Jazzy has started extended-day preschool two days a week - it's an hour to an hour and a half longer, so I'm packing him a lunch now.  But there was an opening for the rest of this school year (a whole month or so) and his teachers thought he might benefit from it.

Squiddle, meanwhile, has finally been shown Episode IV in honor of Star Wars day.  His favorite character (so far, we're paused just after the escape from the Death Star) is Darth Vader, because of the music.  I... cannot argue that?  Though I do have to say, rewatching the film for the first time in several years, I'm discovering anew how much Episodes V, VI, I, II, III, and Rogue-1 influence and reinterpret my understanding of the movie.  (Example: Obi-Wan: "This is your father's lightsaber. He wanted you to have it, when you were old enough."  Me: "Obi-Wan, you lying fuck.")

The veggie garden is finally fully planted, in a very intensive square-foot gardening way.  The raspberry and boysenberry beds have chives and parsnips in with them.  The strawberries will be sharing space with bush beans, peas, and, if I can find some starts or seeds, cucumbers.  Another bed is two kinds of beets, two kinds of carrots, two kinds of scallions, and leeks.  The next bed is 4 tomatoes (each a different variety), basil, dill, two kinds of squash, and thyme.  And the last bed is oregano, parsley, more parsnips, Swiss chard, monarda, borage, luffas, and Minnesota Midget melons.

My fruit trees are almost finished flowering.  I've decided that the ones I planted last year, I'm going to pluck the fruit off while tiny and give them one more year to develop root strength.  (The persimmon trees, hurrah, are finally putting out a few leaves and proving they're not dead sticks.)  Time to turn my attention to the blueberry bushes next, I guess.  That plus working out a decent-sized run for the chickens, who are giving us more eggs than we can eat.

And with that, I'm off to bed!

Spring Things

It's a dreary, drizzly day, so I'm working on tidying, dusting, and revamping my desk/sewing area with an eye toward decluttering and ending up with streamlined, increased functionality.

I've also been working on things out in the garden.  I added three more 4'x8' beds!  And promptly turned two of them and one of last year's into permanent berry beds, so I've not actually gained more space for things like carrots and tomatoes.

Two of the new beds got trellises built in them, as they've been planted with boysenberries and raspberries:

There's trellis wires between the posts now, to weave the vines up and through.  And more soil, both sieved from the grass we dug up, but also purchased.  The fun part of building the beds was that the ground not only slants east-west, but also north-south!  So the northwest corner of each bed is only two or three inches above the ground, but in order to have relatively level beds, the southeast corners had to be shored up like this:

The other major thing I've been working on is making 289 5" blocks:

And turning them into a 50th anniversary gift for Wonderful Husband's parents:

It's not done yet - the quilting and binding still need to be finished.  But I think it came out nicely, I'm proud of the work, and, most importantly, they like it!

Cookie Jar

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an empty biscuit (cookie) tin must be in want of sewing supplies.

This pepparkakkor tin is currently filling up with 5" quilt blocks.

(I took this picture a couple days ago.  Now the roof and driveway behind the tin is white.  I haven't measured the back deck yet, but we've likely got somewhere in the 3"-4" range.  And the snow's still falling.)

On January 31, I Made Bread

My post title is a riff on graffiti from the gladiators' barracks of Pompeii.  Where I would like to visit someday.

Meantime!

*rolls up to the quarantine, 8 months late, bearing Starbucks*

Today I made bread!

I've had the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day for a while now.  Yesterday I decided I wanted to actually use it, so I prepped the dough, popped it in the fridge, and then this morning baked the above two loaves, which accompanied dinner at my parents' tonight.  They came out pretty well, like a light slightly sourdough.  I might try baguettes tomorrow morning.  If I stick with this, I think I'll invest in a new baking stone and pizza peel.  Ours got respectively broken and downsized in the interstate move.

Being me, I also baked a blackberry pie to go with:

They always end up looking vampiric when I cut smiley faces for vents.  It's why I usually stick with either the pi symbol or a heart.

Ten for the stack

Writing word count: 453.  Finally hitting some uber-sweet drama that I've been plotting for rather a long time.

Sewing: ten more Garden Party blocks done:

Which brings me up to forty blocks.  But I haven't cut tomorrow's set out yet.

New Project!

Today's writing word count: 533.

Today was a getting stuff done day!  (Even I have those once in a while.)

I cooked, I cleaned, I finally got the baby quilts mailed off to my cousin and my friend.  And I also got started on my next sewing project.

Bonnie Hunter's Garden Party!  It's found in her Addicted To Scraps book.

I had apparently started working on the blocks while we were living in the apartment, because I found fifteen finished ones, and pieces cut for another five, which I stitched up over the weekend.  Today I pulled out the appropriate size strip bin, and cut and sewed another ten blocks, bringing my current total to 30:

Since these blocks finish at 5", it takes rather a lot of them to make a quilt!  (The pattern calls for 100... but I kind of want to enlarge it slightly? 121 if I do.)  I've got my next ten blocks cut and stacked, ready to stitch tomorrow.

I return, bearing pics

Don't mind me while I just vanish for a week or so due to various stressors.  I thought I would be able to just close my CNN tab after the Inauguration, you know?  But nooo....

In any case, I asked Wonderful Husband to hold up a couple project finishes!

First off is the black and white baby quilt:

I still haven't posted it, as I wasn't able to get to the post office before it closed today.  Maybe Monday!  I bound it in the same circles-of-stars fabric that's most of the back:

And then also, of course, there's the Christmas Stars wallhanging:

Which is also bound in its backing fabric:

(And, yes, I also used the backing fabric for the hanging sleeve.  Camouflage!)

So, three finishes in three weeks.  A pace I am not likely to keep up, but it feels good to have a couple long-term UFOs done.

Speaking of which, guess what else I've been working on?

I've finally got all seventeen 4" trees done.  Plus two more, because when I showed them this morning what I was working on, Jazzy wanted me to make him an "orange Christmas tree" and Squiddle wanted me to make him a red one.  Mummy obliged, and their blocks are currently pinned to their bedroom walls.  The empty space at the top is going to be filled with a star.  Guess my next step is combing through my yellow fabrics again, and figuring out which star cookie cutter is the best size to use as an applique template.

Sunday Stuffs

Word count: 803.  I got through two more prompt cards.

I also finished the black-and-white baby quilt, so that makes finish #3 for the year.  And I've pulled apart the stuff stacked in/by my sewing area to try to continue getting everything organized and into a home place?  Plus I unpacked another box in the garage that was mostly patterns.

I think I'm trying to figure out what my next project is going to be.  Wish me luck!

Saturday Summary

Word count: 671.  At this point I have done a complete lap of my plot thread cards, and am thinking I need to find my blanks to put in a couple more that are now coming into play.

I didn't do much sewing today, just getting the binding for the black-and-white baby quilt together, pressed, and ready to stitch.

I (and Wonderful Husband) did, however, end up reconnecting with an old friend who we haven't seen in person for... a decade or so?  Certainly more than eight years, since he's never met either of our boys.  It was lovely having about an hour-and-a-half Zoom call with Kyri, and hopefully we'll stay in closer contact from here on out.

What's black, white, and yellow, and has me feeling run over?

No writing today.  I'm stiff and sore for reasons unknown, and I'm counting last night's double writing for tonight's.

I finally got the Christmas tree stripped and everything holidayish except the outside decorations stored.  I also finally set down a thick layer of straw inside the chicken run.

And I finally got this quilted:

I trimmed the leftover backing and cut it up for binding strips.  But that is for tomorrow.  Tonight is an early night.

Rainbow Mermaid Baby Quilt Reveal

Word count: 819.  I needed to research pre-Industrial Revolution yellow paints, then didn't even end up using a paint name in the scene!  I'll eventually have to have a more painter-ly friend look it over and tell me if the scene is plausible or not.

I finished the Christmas Stars wallhanging today, and tossed it through the washer/drier.  I also found out the name of my CA guildmate's baby, and wrote out and attached the label for his quilt, as well as finding my spools of yellow thread for that project.

And!

I took pictures of the Rainbow Mermaid Baby Quilt prior to folding and rolling it up and tucking it in a box.  (Still need to get a card to go with it, but that's what Dollar Tree is for.)

Front!  I like how the rainbow stripe binding works on this piece.  Though in hindsight, perhaps I should have had that last white border the same depth as the others, or quilted it more intensely.

And the back.  I've had that pink British monuments toile in my stash forever.  (And still have like half a yard left).  But I figured since there was no pink on the front, but there was pink in the binding, and it's for a girl, I could get away with a pink back.  Here's to hoping my cousin likes it!

If it falls in the night, does it make a sound?

Word count: 501.

We got caught up in the atmospheric river hitting Washington and Oregon last night.  Wonderful Husband and I were up late enough that we caught it when the power went out.  I thought it was a large truck rumbling past the front of our house, but then realized the various plugged in things were not throwing off their usual miniscule lights, and Wonderful Husband said it was probably our local transformer going.  Which makes me wonder where it's located, that we could hear that.  We only lost power for about two and a half hours, though, which is much better than my parents and sister experienced, over on the other side of the Sound.

There's small branches strewn all over the lawns today, but no major damage except for this:

A copse of trees between us and the neighbors came down on our side.  I texted them about it, and I think they're in agreement that we need to take the trees out.  (We certainly weren't going to do it without asking them, but it's good that we're in agreement.)

Got all my homework done, and got through writing class relatively unscathed.  Other than some of my classmates' confusion at who some of the characters were (which is fair, it's been two years, and my summary was not all-comprehensive), I ended up with only two minor edits to my five pages.

The rainbow mermaid quilt got washed and dried, and I'm about three-quarters done with stitching the hanging sleeves and label onto the back of the Christmas stars wallhanging.

Staying on track

Word count: 481.  Backtracked one card, added on another page from another PoV, and suddenly I could work on that next plot thread card that was giving me difficulty.  And it looks/feels like the next one up will slot neatly into place also.  I'm dumping a whole bunch of separate near-disasters on my characters' heads at once.  Well, if nothing else, I've got the tension and conflict down for these scenes!

I also finished the rainbow mermaid baby quilt.  And got Squiddle to his vision therapy appointment, and doing his exercises this evening.  And cooked dinner.  So overall, a win-win day.

Tomorrow is going to be a Zoom call with one of Jazzy's teachers, editing six entries by my fellow writing students, so roughly thirty pages, and then writing class in the evening.  Oof.  I'm tired already.  Will have to see if I can get my writing done earlier in the day tomorrow....

Stuck

Word count: 512.  Stuck on the next plot thread card.  Don't think there's anything I can do right now to move it along, may skip to the next one.

Have the binding halfway finished on the rainbow mermaid quilt.  Have started hand-stitching the hanging sleeves on the Christmas stars wallhanging.

Bit by Bit

Word count: 416.  Leaving off in the middle of a scene because it's meaty, conflict-filled, and I need to ruminate a few more hours on what bombshells are getting dropped in the middle of it.

I took the boys over to my parents' for a few hours today so they could play with Niecelet, who my parents care for a couple days a week, as my sister does several days of back-to-back 12-hour shifts.  It all went mostly well, until it was time for us to leave and Niecelet threw a small fit because she wanted to go home too.

I also finished the bulk of the quilting on the rainbow mermaid quilt.  I was failing at figuring out what to do for the center section, with the mermaid panel, until Wonderful Husband suggested quilting waves - literally just wavy lines - into it to simulate water currents.  Brilliant man!  So next is trimming it, making the binding, sewing on the binding, and then finishing quilting that outermost white border.

Writing, History (Horrible), and a Bit of Quilting

Word count: 531.

It's been... an eventful few days, historically.  Which have left me too stressed to write.  Let me just say that (a) I am thankful Trump's reign will be over soon, (b) I am thankful that social media platforms have finally gotten off their lazy asses and stopped promulgating his hatefulness because it's become socially too expensive for them, and (c) I hope he gets impeached again and barred from holding future public office.  He is not fit for it.

ETA: I forgot to mention the actual tears of relief/joy I cried when I learned that Georgia's races both went to the Democrats.  A nice parallel to that night I spent crying when Trump won in 2016.  Stacey Abrams and her people are amazing and incredible.

Beyond that, on the quilting front I got all the straight-line stitching done on the rainbow mermaid quilt, as well as the free-motion quilting on the red, orange, and yellow rows.  I'm a quarter of the way through the green, but stopped for the night since I don't like to be running the sewing machine while the boys are trying to sleep.  I'm still debating what to do with the center purple mermaid panel.  Outline some of the motifs?  Do clamshells?

And, there.  I have just submitted my first set of pages to my writing class in... well, ages.  Since before we moved, certainly!  See, this writing resolution is a good thing for me.

Tuesday Report

Ugh.  No word count today.  I did finish the library book I was reading (Hope on the Inside, by Marie Bostwick - quite good, though I'm not sure if it's one I'll be purchasing a copy of) and I also worked through the 35 pages of editing my classmates' writing for class tomorrow night.

I finished stitching the binding down on the wallhanging, and started the straight-line quilting for the rainbow mermaid quilt, though I didn't even get one full round done.

Mostly, though, I was being mama today, and herding children.  To get up, to get dressed, to eat, to get to the school bus, to do their online lessons, to go to their vision appointment, to finish their online lessons...

...and now, rather than staying up writing, I am going to herd myself into going to bed only half an hour late.

'Night, y'all.

Stitch By Stitch

 Word count: 501.

No pictures today, I'm afraid, as all my stitching was sitting on Squiddle's bed and hand-sewing the binding for the wallhanging down.  I'm... somewhere between half and three-quarters done.  Given Squiddle has his first vision therapy appointment tomorrow, I'm guessing I'll finish it in the office during that, maybe?  Still need to do hanging sleeves and a label, though.

My fingers started cramping up during the sewing, though, so I went out into the garage in search of my binding clips.  Found them in only the second box I tried!  But that prompted some further deboxing and fabric consolidation this evening, while the rice for dinner was soaking.  I got four boxes sorted and flattened, as well as three others that had been hanging around out there, empty.  But I counted all the totes of fabric I have, and... way too many.  Fifteen.  No buying fabric this year!  Only basting spray.

The One That Got Away

Word count: 692.

I didn't get much sewing done today, because it ended up being a non-rainy afternoon, so I did some gardening.  I got the tulips my neighbor gave me a couple months ago finally planted in the rhubarb bed, and I took the strawberry runners I've been rooting and planted them, turning last year's tomato bed into next year's strawberry bed.

I did, however, get the label written out and attached for the rainbow mermaid quilt!

So now that's ready for quilting.

But today's story, however, is about what happened a week ago today!  I had gone up to Port Orchard, to find more of the green fabric for the rainbow mermaid quilt at JoAnn Fabrics.  And since I was there and it's very close by, I popped into Goodwill.  Where there was this:

A Singer 27, in a seven-drawer cabinet.  I checked the drawers and they were empty - no sign of the missing front slide plate or bobbin shuttle.  A moderate amount of wear on the table and on the decals.  But both the machine and the treadle moved freely, and more importantly, when I checked its serial number, it dated to 1894.  A 126-year-old sewing machine.

It was $100.  Not out of budget.  But did I have space for it?  Where would it go?  I walked away and debated and agonized on it for three days.  I arranged to meet up and go thrifting with my mother and sister on Tuesday, and told myself if it was still there, I would get it.

They got to the store first, and were going to place a hold on it for me.  But as they walked in, a sales ticket was being written up for the machine.

Beaten by ten minutes.

So, the one that got away. *points up at post title*

I'm a little wistful about it, but not crushed.  If it was meant to be, someone else wouldn't've been ten minutes faster.  (Still, sewing on something that old would have been awesome!)

And I'm thinking about where I could put the treadle I do have, so I could finish converting the Singer 201 in it to treadle-ability, and sew on that.

WIPs

Today's word count: 605.

When I got up this morning, during the quiet hour and a half before anyone else rose, I worked more on quilting the wallhanging.

I was having some bobbin tension issues, so eventually I tried to tighten the bobbin case screw, only to find that the (gun) screwdriver kit I have for sewing machine maintenance did not have anything tiny enough for the bobbin screw!  So I rummaged through Wonderful Husband's office, since I knew there's a glasses repair kit in there somewhere.  However, as he's been doing a massive clean and tidy in there this week, I couldn't find it.  But I did find a box cutter, which I made work.

I got all four of the fancy feather wreaths with corner swirlies done, and straight-line quilting in the borders.  Ran out the first thread spool of the year, and changed to a new needle at the same time, since I could hear that the one on the machine was dulling.

And I got the wallhanging trimmed, and the binding sewn on.  I must say, my usual method of machine-stitching the binding on both sides goes faster, but I suppose I wanted a finer finish on this?  In any case, I only stitched one length of thread down because it occurred to me that it might be a good project to do while sitting in Squiddle's room and silently keeping him on target for schoolwork this week.

And I got two more blocks for the Vintage Valentine done.  Since there was a bit of red binding left over from the wallhanging, I tossed it into the mix.  I think it works well on that upper block.

Next, I reset my machine and start in on the baby quilts!

Pink? Pink? Well, what's wrong with pink?

Writing, day 1: 565 words.

I didn't stay up until midnight on New Year's.  I do remember waking up briefly when Wonderful Husband came to bed at 12:03, but, really, I chose sleep and chipping away at my exhaustion over listening to another hour of people shooting off fireworks.

When I got up, I fed the cat, let the chickens out, and got the Christmas wallhanging basted.  I then spent a fair amount of the morning doing cleaning - getting the kitchen back in shape, and sorting and returning to the boxes in the garage all the fabrics I've allowed to build up in my sewing space while working pedal-to-the-metal on Christmas quilts.  I folded and stowed the ironing board, since I won't need it for a bit, and set up a small ironing space atop one of my sewing desks instead.  There is ever so much more space now!

January's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is pink!  So I've decided to use up some tiny scraps that I got from Quilters By The Bay's last in-person sewing session:

I'm using them to make Temecula Quilt Company's Vintage Valentine!  I got the first two tiny blocks done this afternoon:

I also pulled out my stainless steel kitchen bowls and found three that worked for outer, middle, and inner markings for feather wreaths on the Christmas wallhanging.  So that got marked and I've got one quilted so far... we'll see if I do any others tonight.