Busy Morning

Despite snow falling most of the day yesterday, by day's end, we had just a tiny amount of accumulation on the branches of the trees.

Mostly, the day was spent in the sewing room. I needed to finish up my project for Challenge 10.3 of Project Quilting, "Bigger Than a Breadbox." My project is applique, and I top-stitched everything through the batting before adding the back. When the top-stitching was finished, I added the quilt back and then just did some simple quilting using Stitch #712 on my Bernina 750QE (aka Big Bertha).

Recall that this challenge has nothing to do with breadboxes, but everything to do with size. I decided on a project for Valentine's Day, and so I liked these little stitched hearts.

I stitched a row above and below the main elements of the quilt and then added the binding.

And as long as I was working on bindings, I added the rickrack and binding for the Emerald Isle table runner too. I think this one is going to be cute.

It was getting close to sewing day's end by then, but I took time to cut the fabrics for one of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts for this year. These pieces are for the Charm Stars.

When I woke up this morning and looked outside, this is what I saw. Pure magic! Those look like raccoon tracks to me. The raccoon probably tried to get some water out of the kitties' water dish just to the bottom left and outside the image. Unfortunately, the water was frozen, and so the raccoon moved on.

And there we go...that's what I'm talkin' about! You folks in the Midwest will probably get a chuckle about such a measly amount of snow, but it's pretty exciting here in Portland, Oregon.

Later in the morning, we added some other tracks to the mix. These are kitty tracks:

I would have said it's not fit for man nor beast out there, but then I noticed these beast tracks.

If I'm very brave (or very stupid), I might get outside and take some pictures of every little thing today.

The kitties tested the waters early and found them cold.

Smitty, I used to live out there. And I had some kittens too!

That's not so bad, Sadie. I just turn on my lasers to melt the snow as I walk. Nothing to it.

Oh, wow, Smitty. I never even thought of that. You're really smart, Smitty.

Hm...I might have to try that. Maybe I could scare up a snowshoe hare or something.

Smitty! That's not even funny! My lasers didn't work, and I ran my battery down trying!

Ha! I can't believe you fell for that, Sadie.

Well, I'm just gonna get under this quilt and help Mom sew on the binding. She likes it when I help. Things get done so much faster under kitty power.

So while I sat there stitching this particularly wiggly quilt, the clouds were putting on such a pretty show outside. This was the view from where I sat.

And now...the BIG REVEAL!!! Feast your eyes on my submission for Project Quilting 10.3: Bigger Than a Breadbox. My quilt ends up at 18 x 16 inches...well outside the "breadbox" dimensions. I'm calling this quilt "Muskcat Love."

Here's how it looks from the back...pretty much like the front, minus the, um, "stars."

Sometime in the distant past, I printed this free pattern for the Cat Butt Valentine Banner from Orange Bettie. Mine isn't a banner. I just made a little quilt from it. She has some cute stuff on her blog. This morning, I'll be linking up to

With that finished, I stitched the next inchy for the National Embroidery Month sampler.

That completes the top row. The blank space in the middle will be for fabric, and that will go in when the whole piece is finished.

With the roads so treacherous out, it looks like my planned trip to the grocery store is off. And don't you know I'm completely bereft at the idea of staying home and sewing. There is some leftover soup for dinner, but I don't have any crusty bread to serve with it. That gave me an excuse to try this No-Knead Crusty White Bread recipe posted on the King Arthur website recently.

So here's the thing: I got rid of my sourdough starters the other day. The loaves I've baked with them have been kind of disappointing, and I was tired of messing with the starters and keeping them fed. I decided to go back to commercial yeast. This bread dough is kind of interesting in that you can make it up and then refrigerate it for up to 7 days. According to King Arthur Flour, if you leave it for 7 days, it will taste like sourdough. And here's the other thing about it: this dough will make 3-4 loaves. So I mixed it up and then left it to rise at room temperature for two hours.

After an hour, it had already risen this much.

After two hours, it was up to the 4 quart mark, and that was when I put it in the refrigerator. Now, it'll stay there for another two hours. When time is up, I'll grab out a handful of dough and let it rise on the counter top for another hour. It gets a little hazy from there...I'll need to read the recipe again. But it will bake for about 30 minutes later on, and I'm hoping to have a nice loaf of bread to eat with our turkey noodle soup tonight. The remainder of the dough will just stay in the refrigerator and I should be able to bake off 2-3 more loaves during the week. I'll be sure to save enough to bake after the full 7 days to see if it really does taste like sourdough. Fingers crossed.

So today will definitely be a stay-at-home day. I'll be baking bread and moving along with the Charm Stars. If there's time, I'll do the yellow blocks for the Pinwheel Pizazz quilt, the other RSC quilt for 2019. Also, I'd like to at least get a start on finishing the binding for the Emerald Isle table runner.

Mike is working from home today, and I think it's going to be a good day.