Put A Bird On It

If you're here for the January linky party, click right here.

So, are you enjoying the party?  Sorry I didn't make any hors d'oerves.  I was busy getting the cat off the roof.  (And if that makes no sense to you whatsoever, you'll have to read Smitty's post from earlier today.)

So it's been a busy day today, and I haven't had a chance to get around to see all of your NewFO's, but I will be stopping by each and every one of your blogs to see what's up.

Speaking of hors d'oerves, I started my Curves diet on Monday.  So far, the food has been fine, although last night's entree kind of left me cold...even though it was a hot dish.  The other dinners have been fine.  Breakfasts and snacks have been great, and the Skinny Cow frozen desserts are surprisingly delicious.  I'm not feeling deprived at all, although I do wake up ravenous in the morning.  I've also worked out twice now, and it has actually been fun.  For one thing, Curves is limited to women, and all of the women I've been working out with have been my age or older.  As I've mentioned to some of you, there are also no spandex-clad babes in sight, the presence of which can be hugely demotivating. 

This morning I timed myself and figured out that it takes me one hour and ten minutes to drive to Curves, do the circuit and the stretching, then drive home.  This is a time frame I can live with.  So, I'm feeling very positive about my prospects for success on this program.  I think it will be something I can stick with until I reach my goal of losing 27 pounds.  And, to that end, I was 2 1/2 pounds lighter this morning when I stepped on the scale.  I'm not naive enough to think that I will continue to lose weight at that pace, but it's certainly a great motivator to see the numbers on the scale heading in the right direction.  And before I leave this topic, I was interested to read this article in this morning's New York Times about Myths of Weight Loss.  If you don't want to read the whole thing, you can skip to the bottom to read some of the myths, ideas not yet proven true or false, and facts supported by good evidence.  Very interesting.

So what else have I been doing?  Yesterday, I worked on two different projects.  This is my scrappy flannel Salt Water Taffy quilt.  It's the project in my current group that I least want to work on.  I added another two rows to it, which meant five pieced blocks.

I still have five more rows to go on this one, and then I'm planning to hand or machine tie it.  I have machine tied quilts before using the little eyelet buttonhole stitch.  That works pretty well.  I expect to be working on this one for another couple of months before it's finished.  I considered starting to sew the blocks together, but then decided to wait.  I keep adding more colors to it, and I want to be able to move them around when all the blocks are made.  It looks a little ho-hum light this, but I have made this quilt before, and I was surprised at how much I liked it when it was finished.  Flannel is so soft and cozy.

Then I made the next two blocks for the Debbie Mumm Anniversary Sampler.

Yesterday, I made the two largest log cabin blocks.  You see them kind of in the middle of the quilt in the row with the apples.

When I work on this one again, I'll be making the apple blocks.

Then today, I put the red birds on my White Trees quilt.  But first, I had to deal with a little item.  Do you see where my pen is pointing in the image below?

It's a little cut in the fabric that I didn't notice until I had already made this block.  Apparently it was there when I bought the fabric.  It was annoying to discover it, to say the least.  Still, it was easily fixed.  I put a bird on it!  

This is Portland after all!  In Portland, you can put a bird on it and call it art!  Check out this video from Portlandia:

Hahaha.  Hohohoh. Heeheehee!  My kind of humor.  (Ahem.  Composing myself now.)

So with that little item fixed, I added the other two birds.  

Oh, and did you wonder if I sewed any of those white tone on tones so that the wrong side of the fabric was up?  Why, yes!  Yes, I did!  Because I don't think a quilt is actually finished until you've made every conceivable mistake possible.  (Conceivable?  Possible?  Is it redundant to use both in the same sentence?)

So tomorrow I'll do the top-stitching on the birds, and then I'll be ready to start sewing the blocks together.  This one is getting close to the end.  

Also tomorrow I'm having breakfast with my son Erik, and after that, getting in one more Curves workout for the week.

How did your Thursday go?