Iced In...Again

Good morning, my friends. For all the promise of yesterday morning, more cold air moved in yesterday, and freezing rain fell for hours. It's a crystalline world outside right now. We don't expect this to melt off any time soon, putting our carpet installation in jeopardy again. Just this morning we were considering calling to postpone a few more days. Fortunately, it doesn't seem they're overrun with business in January (ya' think?), and so it shouldn't be too long.

Here's what it looks like outside right now:

This next image shows an "ice fall" on the walls of the catio.

This is one of our Japanese maple trees just outside the dining room window.

Looking in the opposite direction, these are the Japanese maples near the hot tub.

This next one is what remains of last summer's cherry tomato.

The birds have been flocking to our feeders. A few days ago, Mike noticed one of the feeders was empty, but there was bird seed all over the ground. We wondered if the black oil sunflower seed was too frozen for them to crack open with their beaks.

Mike has been a good bird dad, keeping the feeders filled. The birds are really depending on it. Keeping the feeders filled is ordinarily my exclusive domain, but I think he'd rather do it himself than have me go out, fall down, and break another bone. It works for me. He's been wearing his Yaktrax, and they give him good traction.

I spent my morning finishing up this section of the Girls' Getaway piece. I was dreading that cast-on stitch flower.

But I stitched it without tears. Meg Hawkey has an excellent video tutorial on her website showing how this stitch is done. I watched the video, even though I knew how to stitch it without looking. Mainly, I just wanted to hear her voice for moral support.  Lookie there. 

It was late morning and nearing lunch time by then, but I got in my Bow-flex workout anyway. What else did I have to do? Well, this binding. I took everything downstairs to the warmest part of the house where I could turn on our fireplace and put my feet up. The rest of the afternoon was spent stitching the binding until it was finished. Yay!

Then, I laid it out for a picture before throwing it in the washing machine.

When it came out of the dryer, it was nicely ragged. I think it will look even raggier with subsequent washings.

I took another picture of it. It shrank a little bit too. It finishes up at 60 x 60 inches.

Sadie gave it her categorical appurroval.

Finishing this quilt was my goal for January's

I'll link up there when the party starts next week.

Okay, so that brings us up to date. Today I'll get busy making up my piece for International Embroidery month. After that, I'll get busy making the pattern for the newest "When Quilters Gather" block. I'm still not fully recovered from the sting of the last one. This one will be easier, I think.

I haven't yet decided whether this quilt will have nine blocks or twelve. The current block will be the eighth. I'll have to see how I feel about it after I make the ninth block. 

Lately, I'm focused on flannel. Having finished off the French Roses quilt, I'm wanting to make another quilt from flannel. In my early quilting days, I made a couple of quilts that Mike and I use in the morning. This one I call "My Stars and Garters,"

and this one I call "Salt Water Taffy." You'll often see Sadie wrapped up in this one.

When I made them, I didn't know how badly the flannel would fray, and so I used just a quarter-inch seam allowance when I pieced them together. With years of usage and repeated washings, they've frayed apart badly. Both have been patched multiple times, but they just keep coming apart at the seams. Sigh.

So I bring this up because I'm going to replace both of them. I used whole flannel yardage as a back on Salt Water Taffy. I'm considering taking it all apart and conserving the back to be used in another quilt. My Stars and Garters has a pieced back, but I still think I could conserve large enough pieces from the back to use in another quilt. I'm only in the thinking stages with this, but I'd like to make another flannel quilt like the rag quilt I made last year. This one turned out so cute, and so I'd like to come up with some different fabrics to make a pattern with the colors.

Before any of that can happen, however, I need a slot to open up on my list of WIPs. There's no hurry, and I like keeping my list of WIPs to just five. It's a comfortable enough number that I don't lose my bearings as I work on other things.

Okay, so I hope y'all are doing better weather-wise. To hear the weatherman, however, it seems we here in the west (particularly the Pacific Northwest) got this storm first, and it's heading east to bother other folks now. If so, don't blame me. I'm just the messenger of the messenger. Be careful out there, my friends. We all want to come through winter with our bones intact.