Dazzling Day

There was a full moon setting when we got up this morning. It was too dark for pictures, but it was positively gorgeous on our snowy landscape. This morning the sun is out, it's crisp and cold, and it's just beautiful. Hard to see in this image, but off in the distance, smack in the middle you can see Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier.

Mike has been out plowing the neighbor's driveway, and he was out several hours yesterday. The main road from our house is plowed and sanded now. We need to head into town this morning, and so it's good to know we won't need to chain up. Here are some more pictures of our snowy landscape.

The next one was taken from the window above our bed.

We seem to have as many birds in the snow as we have in summer, and we're glad to be able to provide seed for them.

The hanging line for our suet feeder got broken in the ice and wind recently. It was buried in snow yesterday. Mike put a new line on it, but it's a rigid wire, and so he had to leave the top off for now. He'll fix it when he gets a chance to make a trip to the hardware store. For now, these Northern Flickers don't mind. They look cold, don't they?

This was taken from the door where Smitty usually goes outside. You can see the snow has drifted about 15 inches deep on the deck there. It's too deep for little cats.

Here's one more picture as the sun was rising. This one from our bedroom window.

So what have I been doing in this cold weather? Well, I quilted this little doll quilt. This one is called "Be My Little Valentine." It was for Kathleen Tracy's January Small Quilt Challenge.

It's quilted with a simple diagonal grid. It gave me chance to practice using my Line Tamer ruler, and that worked great.

Here's how it looks from the back.

In the border, I did a little repeating hearts design.

When I'd taken it that far, we went up to the neighbors' house to drink wine, eat some food, laugh, and relax. That's how it happens in our neighborhood. We're all snowed in, and so someone calls someone else, and someone else calls someone else, and the next thing you know, it's a party!

The wine wasn't very good, and so I only had one glass, which meant I was still able to sew the binding on when we got home just before dinner.

So that's a finish.

When I left you yesterday, I was just about to go mix up the Pane all'Olive bread. Here's how it looked right after I mixed it up.

When we went to bed last night, it looked like this. I left it to rise overnight, and it looked much the same when I got up this morning.

First thing this morning, I shaped it and gave it a second rise in one of my bannetons. It stuck to the banneton pretty badly when I tried dumping it into the Dutch oven to bake. I worried it would come out looking terrible, but no problem. I just let it fall as it would and then used my fingers to get the last bit out of the basket. That just plopped onto the top of the loaf. Then I sprinkled it with bran flakes (as a decoration) and then baked it for about 55 minutes. I was happy to see its rough drop into the Dutch oven hadn't really hurt the looks of it.

Just now I cut it open and we had a taste. Mmmm, mmmm, mmm. Not too salty, and that was what I was most worried about. Even not-a-big-fan-of-olives Mike likes it. (Mikey likes it!)

While I was waiting for the bread to bake, I continued on with my stitching on Block 5 for the Wine Country quilt. It took a couple of days to do that braiding work on the jug, but the rest should go quickly from here.

Today we're going down to sign the papers on our new truck. We're promised a delivery date on the 18th of January. We've been waiting a long time for this having ordered it in September. The last update was that it was "in transit" from Kentucky, and that was a first. We're feeling pretty confident about the arrival date at this point.

Today I'm hoping I'll have some time to practice the quilting design for Stars and Stripes and that I'll be able to get a start on that before the day is out. Also, the next block for the Solstice Challenge is out. My fabrics are picked out, and I'll try to get that one finished too.