No Ice is So Nice

It rained hard all night long and into the early morning hours. It's 44°F and so yesterday's ice is history. That's how our winters usually go...ice or snow one day, gone the next. It's been a weird winter for sure. Warmer weather is very exciting news because it means we can go pick up the camper today. This is the larger one I pictured a few weeks ago. We're bringing it home to its new forever home today. 

Today's outing will include lunch somewhere, and then a trip to our local mega mart to pick up some non-skid shelf liner. That stuff is great in campers. You don't want your dishes sliding all around when you go around corners. And we have a lot of crap to load back into the camper. Stacked in Mike's office for the past ten days is all the stuff from the old camper:

Before somebody feels a need to crack wise about it, I'll just say yes, those are bottles of alcoholic bevvies there in the lower part of the image. We're significantly older than 21, and so it's okay. Who says old people don't know how to have a good time? Also, we've added a coffee maker to the pile. The old camper had so little storage space, there was no room for a coffee maker. We are coffee fiends. When we've used the camper in past trips, we've been forced to use this sort of French press thing that will only make one cup at a time. It's been painful, but we've made the sacrifice up until now. It's entirely possible that the larger camper was required just so that we could pack along a coffee maker. I'll say more about the camper once we get it home. For now, let's just turn to the sewing room, shall we?

In sewing news yesterday, I managed to make a couple of challenge blocks. The first was for this month's Block Lotto, which happens to be the Dutchman's Puzzle. It's one of my favorite traditional blocks. Sharon V. helpfully pointed out to me that a proper Dutchman's Puzzle has a pinwheel in the center. I made one previously where the Flying Geese were flying in the wrong direction, losing the pinwheel. The pinwheel (or windmill) has the affect of putting the Dutch in the Dutchman's Puzzle. 

Also, I'm participating in a group on Facebook called Kathleen Tracy's Small Quilt Lovers. This is a new group to me, although I did complete this little quilt for the January challenge. 

This group does a small quilt challenge each month. In 2017, every other month will be a block for a "mystery quilt." Ordinarily, I don't participate in mysteries because I'm never happy with my fabric choices once the whole thing is put together. For this one, I could see what I was going to make, and that helped me feel more confident about the fabrics. The first block is this little house:

The top row doesn't want to lie flat, but the chimneys are straight. So, this is February's block. The next mystery quilt block will be released in April. In March, we'll go back to making a small quilt from her book.

My next goal in the sewing room will be to sew the Wheel Estate blocks into a flimsy. Here are all eight blocks:

This was my project for the 2016 Rainbow Scrap Challenge. As for the completed quilt, all I have so far is a fabric selected for the quilt back. I'll show that eventually. Also, I have some scraps of fabric left from a previous camper quilt. Otherwise, I have no idea how I'm going to set these blocks. It's another reason I'm glad the camper is coming home today so that I can measure the wall where it's going to hang and make sure I don't make the flimsy too long or too wide.

Lastly, it's time to choose a winner of the needle threader for this month's Bag Lady link-up. This month's winner is:

#1--Lynn!

Congratulations, Lynn. I've sent you an email, so check your inbox! Thanks to all who linked up. If you didn't win, just keep stitching. We'll be giving away a needle threader each and every month this year.

There probably won't be time for sewing today, but there will be lots of other stuff going on keeping us entertained.