A Weeding Reprieve

For all the whining I do about the rain here in the Pacific Northwest, sometimes it comes as a great relief. You can make all sorts of excuses for not doing things you should be doing. Just blame it on the rain. Yard work and weeding becomes a thing of the past. Cleaning the house? Nah...people will just track in mud, so what's the point? Grocery shopping? Nah...you could, um...hm...you could get in an accident driving on those wet roads! Are you kidding me? Grocery shopping...far too dangerous. You get the picture, don't you?

The rain didn't stop me yesterday though. I finished up the weeding job I'd started the day before, and then that was the end of weeding for me...at least until next Wednesday, which is supposed to be the next time we'll see the sun. I have just a section left to do in front of the house, but I'm seeing the light at the end of this overgrown tunnel.

So when I came inside yesterday, I baked some bread. I had a yen...it happens. This is a Honey Wheat Harvest Loaf recipe I found on the King Arthur website.

I've linked to the recipe back there, but this isn't a bread I'll be making again. How's that for a ringing endorsement? It's fine, but the loaf ended up kind of dense. It was hard to mix in the raisins and nuts because it's a stiff and dry dough. That meant that most of them ended up on the outside of the loaf where they burned while it was baking. Here's how it looks on the inside...you can see not many raisins made it to the inside.

I chose this recipe because it used a half cup of mashed sweet potato. On our Cooking Light diet, I'm often ending up with little leftovers of this or that, including the sweet potato. It seemed like a good way to use it. The bread is fine...just not great. It doesn't have much flavor, and so I don't have a lot of good things to say about it. This morning I toasted a slice and had it with some butta. Still nothing to write on my blog about...except that I am, so what gives?

And here's something else. Just now I dropped the last bite of dry crust onto the floor beneath my desk. Have you ever noticed how a dropped item vanishes on its way to the floor? So, yeah. The bread is getting on my nerves. Sorry I brought it up at all. I'm not sorry I baked it. It was one of those things I knew I'd regret for the rest of my life if it never crossed the threshold of my oven door. Now that I know, I'm depositing that recipe in the proper receptacle.

While the bread dough was rising, I did the cutting for framing the six green blocks of the Wine Country quilt. Once the cutting was finished, they went together fairly quickly.

That's as far as I can go until I acquire some burgundy fabric to use for framing the other six blocks. Sadie was a great helper. She stayed within the boundaries of her little bed, rather than getting right in the middle of my workspace. Good girl, Sadie.

So, I've mentioned I have a coupon for fabric, but I can't use it until next week. That leaves me with a need for something else to work on. A couple of days ago, I mentioned the challenge for the RV Quilters on Facebook. The challenge is to make a quilt of any size to represent any holiday.

That had me perusing through patterns and books in search of something I might like to make. Do you remember the Happy Village I made from this book?

Here's the Happy Village quilt I made for the Let's Book It Challenge.

That was such a fun project, and so I've been wanting to make another one. When I looked inside the pages of the book, I saw this idea.

(Sorry for the crappy picture...it's hard to avoid reflections on that glossy paper.) Karen Eckmeier, the book's author, calls this a "Christmas Village." And that settled it. It'll be a small quilt, and it'll be fun to do. So that's what I'll be working on today.

Finally, remember the "Migration" block I made last week for the Ugly Blocks Rock Challenge on Facebook?

This morning, I saw the quilt that used my block. This was the 20th quilt made by this group of volunteers. There it is...right there in the top row. What fun!

The group information says they had a goal to make 20 quilts, but folks are still submitting blocks. If they keep making quilts, I'll keep making blocks.

This morning I'm dropping off the Snips & Snails quilt to be shown in the Northwest Quilters Guild quilt show next month. I had planned to attend another event while I'm out, but I've kind of decided against it. The rain, you know. Probably should play it safe and spend the day sewing.