Two Days, One Block

Good morning, my friends. It's almost as if Thanksgiving didn't happen. We're on to Christmas now. Mike and I had dinner out last night, and we were surprised at how many people had their Christmas lights up already. 

There were a few tasks to do yesterday morning, including filling the bird feeders. While I was out, I remembered I'd never told you about this recent purchase. I saw this on Facebook. Generally, I don't make purchases from ads I've seen on Facebook, but this caught my eye. It's a little hard to see it now that it's placed outside.

Here's another picture I took when we still had it inside.

It's a device for measuring snowfall. It's buried up to the top of its little pointy end there, and we'll be able to look outside and see how many inches we get. As I told my Facebook friends, I suppose this will pretty much guarantee we get no snow this winter. We once ruined summer for the entire state of Oregon by replacing our air-conditioner and installing an automatic sprinkler system in the same year. It turned out to be among the wettest summers on record (1983), and we never used either one. 

If you follow this sort of thing, then you might know we're in a El Nino period, which supposedly means a drier and warmer winter. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we've been in a period of sunshine, blue skies, and very cold temperatures for the past week or so. Sometimes in the transition between very cold to warmer and wetter, we get some snowfall. Indeed, I read predictions this morning. So...one never knows in this part of the world. It'll be what it'll be. But if it snows, we're ready. If a thing can be measured, we will measure it. (I should probably have that printed on a coffee mug or a t-shirt or something.)

So, it was early afternoon when I made my way back to the sewing room. The "When Quilters Gather" block was this far:

Smitty was shocked...yes shocked, I tell you... to realize I hadn't already finished it. 

Oh well. He decided to help out anyway. We were able to get the top half completed.

When we had it that far, he decided he'd done enough sewing for one day. He summoned Sadie to take over.

Sadie and I finished it off. This one is called "This is an Interesting Fabric."

Here are the six blocks I have for this quilt so far.

I'll need more enlargements before I can continue on. I've already selected three more blocks from the book, and I'll get the enlargements when I'm in town on Tuesday.

The only other sewing I did yesterday was to spend a little extra time on the Bumble Sampler. This is turning out to be a fun one to stitch. I like the variety of stitches, and I like that Valdani floss.

I decided to move my hoop to the right, and I'll be able to finish stitching the top of the piece.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, a guy is coming to take a look at our window today. It's one of those split windows that slides open from the right. It's the stationary left side of the window that has the broken seal. We're hopeful they can replace just the half with the broken seal, rather than the entire window and frame. I don't know enough about windows to make a guess, but we'll find out today.

Also on today's agenda, I want to debone our turkey carcass. I'll make some turkey noodle soup for tonight's dinner and then freeze the rest in measured portions. It will all get eaten one way or another. In the sewing room, I'll continue on with my list of WIPs. Next up will be to make two more blocks for the Shop Hop quilt. Here are all the blocks I have so far.

I have book spines already completed for all the quilt shops I've visited so far. Making the blocks shouldn't take too long. After that, I'll probably make the next of the Barn Sampler blocks. Here are the blocks I have for that quilt so far:

So there's always plenty to do. There's no housework on today's agenda, unless you count "window guy." Aside from him and the turkey, it's going to be an NBS day (nothing but sewing).