Yellow Fever

Nothing like a good snow day to kick you in high gear for a day of sewing. I spent most of the day in the sewing room yesterday making blocks for my two Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts for 2019. The day before, I'd cut the pieces for the Charm Stars blocks. First this one:

And then this one:

Here are the blocks I have for this so far:

After that, I made four yellow blocks for the Paintbox Pizzazz quilt.

And these are all the blocks I have so far.

On Saturday, I'll link up to

Also, I did the sixth Tiny Tuesday block. This one is set in a diagonal setting.

Smitty helped with that.

Here are all the Tiny Tuesday blocks I have so far.

The only other sewing-related thing I did yesterday was to get the binding clips in place so I could hand-sew the binding for Emerald Isle.

Smitty prefers the part of sewing with rotary cutters and rulers. He likes to live dangerously, you know. And so he opted for a nap on the quilts-to-be-quilted pile for this part of the sewing day.

All the while I was sewing, yeast was working away in some bread dough. When I left you yesterday, I'd just put it in the refrigerator. After two hours, it looked like this.

This dough can be left in the refrigerator for up to 7 days, but I wanted a loaf for dinner last night. The recipe told me to grab a handful and then shape it into a ball. Well...mine was too floppy for any kind of shaping, and so mine sat on the countertop looking like this. In fairness, the recipe told me I didn't need to be too fussy about the shaping. Sounded good to me.

While that was baking, I took some time to hang the Muskcat Love quilt in the Mewseum. An excellent addition, no?

This wall of the Mewseum is filling up nicely, but there's still space available. More cat quilts, please!

It was a sad little loaf of bread that came from the oven, but hey! It was very tasty.

The crust had a nice little crunch. Inside, it was like sandwich bread...nice and soft. We ate about half of it last night and then had a couple of slices toasted for breakfast. It made very nice toast.

As I mentioned yesterday, this dough will make 3-4 loaves, and so I'll wait a few days before I make another loaf...probably on Friday. Then next Monday (after 7 days), I'll use the last of it. According to King Arthur Flour, it should taste like sourdough after 7 days. I'm intensely curious about this. Also, I'm curious to see if the dough will behave differently if it's given more time in the refrigerator. You can expect me to report back about this, of course.

Our snow was mostly melted by afternoon, but there are still a few patches. They'll probably be around for a while because we're expecting temperatures below freezing all week. The mountains were pretty this morning.

Smitty thinks the mountains are best viewed from inside the house.

Sadie doesn't even care about the mountains. Mornings are for cocooning in her book.

This morning's slow-stitching included the 6th of the inchies. I am loving this project. It's so much fun to stitch these little bits each morning.

Also, I finished hand-stitching the binding for the Emerald Isle table runner. Now I'm anxious for Valentine's Day to be over so I can put this on the table.

Here's how it looks from the back.

With camera in hand, I took this picture I've been wanting to show you for a while. It's my little binding kit. I keep this in a small bin so it's always ready to go. Inside it has a Quiltbox that contains my binding clips. The little triangular pouch holds my thimble and needle threader. It works great as a little "pincushion" for my needles and the flower-head pins I use to pin the corners of the quilts.

My thimble is the same one I bought when I took Home Economics in the 8th grade...let's see...sometime during the 13th Century. Inside, you can still find the little piece of masking tape with my name on it. It's the only thimble I've ever found that actually fits my finger. I wish I could find another like it.

Also, these little cat scissors.

Except for the thimble, of course, all of these items were won in various giveaways. I can't remember whose giveaway went with what, but if it was yours...thank you. I love this stuff.

So today I really need to do something a little more like work. Since I put off my grocery shopping yesterday, I'll start there. When I get home, I need to do a few housekeeping chores. If there's time for sewing, I'll get busy on my OMG for February, which is to sew together blocks for the Rainbow Jubilee quilt. When I first laid this out for its picture, I wasn't sure I liked how the blocks were arranged. With some time having passed, I like it better now. The rows are a good mix of warm and cool colors, and so I'm thinking I'll leave it as is.

My ultimate goal is to have this finished for Matthew's April birthday. However, Matthew is leaving to spend some time in Guatemala for the next few months. He won't be home until May. He's a young man desperately in need of an adventure right now, and I think he's found a good one spending some time with friends in Guatemala.