Dark and Wet

Good morning, my friends. It was a dark day yesterday. That usually means something truly terrible happened. In this case, it was just a dark sky from thick cloud cover. And it rained, and rained, and rained. If one can believe the forecast, we'll get some relief from this atmospheric river system we've been in. Ordinarily, I see the rain as good weather for sewing. So many days of darkness has me longing to get outside for a bit. Mike suggested we go out for Korean food last night, and I'd already been thinking the same thing. We needed a change of scenery, and the Korean food was a bonus.

Happily, Sadie kept me warm while I did my slow stitching yesterday morning.

This took a little longer than I usually spend in the mornings, but it was worth it to finish off this pretty little piece. I'm really enjoying this project.

It just needed borders to finish it off.

Here are the blocks I have so far for this project.

Smitty was my helper cat yesterday. He was surprised I'm not making a cat quilt because, honestly, why would I do anything else?

Instead, I turned my attention to some birds we saw on our Alaska trip. These are the final two blocks for the Shop Hop 4.0 project. I chose this eagle fabric at the quilt shop I visited in Soldotna. This was such a weird shop. If you find yourself in Soldotna, then only visit this shop if you want to be harassed by the store employee.

The next block was for Bear's Paw Quilts in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. I liked this store a lot. The women working there couldn't have been friendlier. I selected this fabric for the loons we'd seen and heard while spending the night in Lone Butte, B.C.

And there you have it. All the blocks are finished. Now, I'll move them to the quilt-tops-to-finish pile. There's one project in line ahead of it.

That seemed like enough sewing for one day, but I finished up by selecting fabrics for the next Kittens in Cups block. I'm running out of ideas for the cats.

Here are all the kittens I have so far.

Today I'm going to bake a skillet cake. I like baking in a cast iron skillet, and so this skillet pumpkin cake caught my eye. It's supposed to be done in a full-sized skillet, but I'm using my 8-inch skillet to make it a cake for two (times two). It means scaling the recipe to 1/3. Those measurements don't always scale well, and so I'm hopeful I've done the math correctly. (I'm better at baking math than I am at quilting math.) Also, it uses only a small portion of a can of pumpkin puree, and there will be enough left over for some pumpkin cookies. You might have noticed I cut back on my baking the past month or so, and so I'm itching to get back to it. With Christmas coming, I'm looking forward to making some Christmas goodies. The skillet pumpkin cake will fit right in with my mission to make it a sweet season.

Just now I'll get started on stitching the next section for the Raggedy & Friends project. This will stitch up fast, and so I'll do it before starting on My Embroidery Garden.

But first, some breakfast. The day is looking a little brighter today. I'm not sure if there's rain in today's forecast, but it's let up for now. I'll get out and fill the bird feeders, and I'll probably cut back the last dahlia today. When all that is finished, I'll get back to my sewing. Hopefully the kitten in a cup will be more cooperative than its brothers and sisters have been. The blocks are very cute, but I'll admit to being more than glad to be finishing the last one next month.