Happy Thanksgiving!

Good morning, my friends, and ...

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to some good food today. With Erik and Mae doing the cooking, it's bound to be delicious. They are both excellent and creative cooks. I'll be supplying the sweet potatoes and two kinds of cranberries. They're doing the rest. And, of course, I'm just looking forward to seeing them. We haven't seen them in more than a month. They are avid football fans, especially rooting for Oregon State, and so fall is a busy time for them.

As a little thank you for their efforts today, I spent a good part of my day baking some cinnamon swirl bread. I was using some instant yeast that had been in my freezer for at least a year or two. It was fine, but it still made me nervous. This bread has two rises, and so it took most of the day. When it came from the oven...ta-da!

While I was waiting for the bread dough to rise, I went to work taking the first stitches on the 7th block for Grandpa's Bridges.

Later in the day, I finished off the machine and hand-stitching for the third block of the Merry, Merry Snowmen. I was able to do all of the stitching by hand with the exception of the snowman faces, the bird, and the buttons.

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

When that was finished, I went to work trying to find that fabric that went on a walkabout. I took every fabric out of my fabric bins looking for anything that might have gotten shoved to the bottom, or in between, or in betwixt, or anything! I didn't find it. It's baffling, I tell you! Where could it possibly be? 

Eventually, Smitty showed up to help. He looked high. I looked low.

He looked right. I looked left.

Completely mystified, we decided to give up. If it's still in the sewing room (and where else could it possibly be?), it'll turn up eventually. So we stopped looking.

Approximately a half hour later, I was looking for one of my smallest embroidery hoops. I opened a drawer I'd opened at least four times in my search for the fabric and f*ck a duck. There it was, hiding in plain sight. 

I can only think I was plagued by some sort of new disease I'm calling "fabric blindness." For my fabric-organizing efforts, however, I came across some beautiful fabrics and I found myself wanting to use some of them. I think the next time there's an opening on my list of WIPs, I'm going to choose one of them and find a pattern that will go with it. If you're like me, you choose your pattern first, and then decide on fabrics. I'm going to call this new way of doing things "Fabric First." If I can give myself a "Short" project for embroidery, I think my list of WIPs could benefit from a "Fabric First" choice.

There isn't much on my to-do list today except to eat a lot of good food. We probably won't head over to Erik and Mae's house until mid-afternoon, and so I'll have some time for sewing this morning. For my next trick, I'll make four more blocks for the Scrappy Plus quilt. I need just eight more blocks for this, and so I'll have them all finished after my next go-round.

Thanksgiving Day seems a good time to express my gratitude to all of you. This blog has been my saving grace for going on 15 years. Many of you have been with me for the long haul, and I appreciate that more than you can know. We've laughed together, we've cried, we've vented our frustrations and shared our successes. Through it all it has been my great pleasure to chat with y'all each morning. On this Thanksgiving Day, I want all of you to know how very thankful I am for you. Happy Turkey Day to all who celebrate. And a very happy day to the rest of you too!