Snowmen Rule the Day

Good morning, my friends. The day was much more energetic yesterday. I was feeling back to my normal self, "normal" being a relative term. I don't know about you, but none of my relatives are normal. We were having some leftover Brunswick Stew from the freezer for our dinner, and so I started my day by baking some bread to go on the side. This is Cast Iron Beer-Batter Cheese Bread.

Ironically, I was looking for ways to use up some gruyere cheese when I came across this recipe. I've made it before. I'd already figured out how to use the gruyere, but I had to buy more to make the bread. It's all good though. I used all the gruyere I had on hand, and so gruyere won't darken our door again. Unless I buy more. Which I will. Eventually.  It's another recipe from America's Test Kitchens. I've linked to it above the image, but you probably can't open it without a subscription. If you have trouble, email me, and I'll be happy to send it to you.

While the bread was baking, I was busy getting my housekeeping chores done. After lunch, I could head into the sewing room to work on the Merry, Merry Snowmen. When I left it last week, it looked like this:

The buttons were laid out for that picture, just for show. There were 13 buttons in all. Continuing on, my first step was to do the top-stitching around the applique edges, and then I used the triple stitch on my sewing machine to machine-embroider some of the lines. When I'd done all I could on the sewing machine, it looked like this:

While we watched the news last night, I hand-stitched the rest of the embroidery and sewed on the buttons. It seemed as if it took forever, but it was finished by day's end.

Here are the two blocks I have for this quilt so far. When it's finished, there will be nine blocks.

We have grocery shopping to do today, and I believe I have one short chore on my housekeeping to-do list. After that, I'll get back to my sewing. 

Next up on my WIP's list will be to make four more blocks for the Scrappy Plus quilt.

Since making the last four, I think I've undergone an attitude adjustment on this project. Each block takes quite some time to lay out and sew together. All the pieces are cut, but getting the values placed correctly is challenging. Today, I'll breathe deeply and utter some ohmmmmm's to stay calm.

Yes, that'll be me. A few days ago, even the green would have been fitting.

Okay, and maybe I'll start right now. Grocery shopping, you know. So keep calm and sew on, my friends. The day is young, even if we aren't.