Snow Sewing

Good morning, my friends. Good grief. Are you tired of snow pictures yet? Well, buckle up, because misery loves company.

We were supposed to have left on a camping trip to Cape Lookout yesterday. When we read the tea leaves last week, we decided to reschedule for next week. Now I'm starting to wonder if we'll be able to get out of here then. It's right at 32 degrees this morning, and still snowing. The kitties and I have not been outside the house in nearly a week...except for one jaunt into town on Saturday. Mike has been out only to fill the bird feeders. (He's the only one with appropriate footwear for knee-deep snow.) The kitties have each ventured out for less than one minute. They're both pretty bored.

Smitty is helping me write this morning's post.

By "helping," I mean "hindering."

We stitched the final two squares of inchies yesterday. On the left is fly stitch. On the right is stem stitch.

With all the squares stitched, we'll be filling in the rest of the design for the next day or two. I've already peeked at today's "assignment." It is to stitch time in a bottle there on the right side.

All the snow has ignited my inner baker. I had an overabundance of frozen blueberries and buttermilk, and so I looked for a recipe that used both. I ended up baking this Buttermilk Blueberry Bread.

Look how pretty that is when we cut into it. It's very tasty too. Usually after lunch, we each have a little cup of espresso. Ordinarily this is accompanied by a piece of chocolate. When I bake something like this, a slice of bread replaces the chocolate.

Okay, but enough fooling around. It was time to get busy on the leaves again. There wasn't much room for anything, and it was complicated further because the two parts of the leaf were separated by the long skinny leaf in the middle. When I moved from one part to the other, I left long jump stitches to avoid having to cut thread every time. For the first one, I just echoed the shape of each part of the leaf.

For this next one I tried a miniaturized version of McTavishing, but it didn't work out very well. I ended up filling in the gaps with some pebbling.

For this next one, just a straight-line grid. I kind of like the looks of this.

And for the fourth one, another grid of wavy lines.

I might have done more, but I'm liking this four-leaves-per-session schedule. Also, I really wanted to get back to the New Mexico Kitchen quilt. Sadie was excited to work on this quilt too. Taco chips, you know. And cheese.

So, I picked up with the fourth block.

The second row was sewn together in pretty short order.

When I sewed it to the first row, it looked like this. Everything is square, but it's hard to hold the camera level when I'm holding it at arm's length.

Okay, and then row three:

I wanted to sew rows 3 and 4 together before sewing them to the top half of the quilt. Laying it out with the rest, it looked like this.

Finally, row four was finished. It went together pretty quick.

And then I was ready to sew all the blocks together. Ta-da!

It still needs borders, but I probably won't make any more progress today. Today, I'll be working on Tiny House #7, which usually takes up the whole of my sewing day. Also, I want to finish off four more leaves. 

Today is laundry day, and it's also my day to walk. I guess the treadmill it is. I may never be able to walk outside again, but I'm not yet ready to declare Snowmageddon. Fingers crossed we get some warming soon.

Okay, my friends. Time for me to stitch time in a bottle. I see nothing but sewing and laundry in my future. I suppose it could be a lot worse. We're warm and dry, and we have food to see us through. Don't call out the national guard just yet.