WIP Wednesday: a little progress on many projects

We had a beautiful sunrise today.  Heavy frost made the ground look almost like it had snowed, but I had to dash my daughter's hopes for a snow day.

Some of the same colors are in my Farmer's Wife quilt, block #81, Snowball (and I didn't even plan it that way).

I also did block #82, Spider Legs.  This one was a pain: drew it on graph paper and paper-pieced it, and it's still on the small side.  I purposely chose colors that do NOT remind me of spiders.

I'm still working on the Orca Bay mystery: about halfway done with making the units that will be used in the border.  If I wanted I could start piecing the body, but I like to do the steps in order.  I'm hoping to get several hours at a time this weekend to piece: for the last few weeks I've just grabbed 10 or 20 minutes here and there, in the cracks and crevices of the day.

I've made a little progress on my UFO project of the month, preparing half of the applique pieces for the 1996 Piecemaker's calendar quilt.  This is the quilt I began when I was pregnant with Secundus, and figured that if he was a girl, it might be done by the time "she" was in a big girl bed.  Tertia and Quarta came along, and moved to big girl beds, and the quilt is still not done.  It's time to git 'er done.  I have all the stems for the floral setting blocks, all the leaves, and maybe 10% of the flower petals and flower centers.  It's fiddly work, lots of standing at the ironing board with a paintbrush and spray starch, but it's been progressing, and that's something.  I'd like to get all the pieces prepared now that I've started, and that would leave the actual applique for another month's challenge.

I have my finished crumb-along quilt top in at school, where I'm almost finished collecting signatures from all the students and staff.  I still have Kindergarten and 2nd grade to collect, and a few absentees from other grades.  Yesterday, two 1st graders asked me how to spell their last names.  I told them to just use the last initial.  I hope to have all the signatures collected so I can begin quilting soon, maybe even this weekend, but I'll need to piece a back first!

I did some spinning last night and plied a bobbin full of this Blue-Faced Leicester that I dyed and spun last summer.  I'll have two skeins of light fingering/ heavy laceweight, but still need to skein the bobbin I spun last night, wash both skeins and count the yardage.  I should have enough for one of the shawls I'm planning on knitting this year.

My two shawls are progressing nicely, even though I don't have new pictures.  I'm in the last section of the Age of Brass and Steam, past the part involved in the yarn barf incident.  I'm planning on making it a 5 section shawl instead of a 3-section kerchief.  Might even finish it this weekend.

Okay, one thing did get finished last week: this photomosaic Charlie Brown puzzle we picked up at Goodwill.  None of the 1000 pieces missing: it's a keeper!

Once again I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced, where you can see lots of other progress from lots of other bloggers.