Randomday with Wreck-it Ralph

Long holiday weekends are great!  We'll be leaving as a family to go see Wreck-it Ralph this afternoon... and maybe catch dinner out afterwards rather than coming home for more turkey.  That way we'll have just enough turkey to make enchiladas for dinner tomorrow.  We were supposed to go to Grandma's for Sunday dinner, but they are in germ-control lockdown over there so the dining room is not open.  So maybe we can sneak Grandma over to have dinner with us.  Kidding about the sneaking... they don't keep Grandma in lockdown.  I'd like to see anyone try!

Yesterday was more of a Purple Friday for me, as I dug into my Anita's Arrowheads quilt block piecing.  I haven't worked on these since the summer, but I want to clear my workspace for other holiday quilt projects, and that means dealing with the purple and multicolored fabrics that have been covering up my cutting area for months.  I figured out how many I still need to make and have been making them.  I started sewing together the blocks into rows and this is about halfway done.  There are now fewer than 20 remaining blocks to piece, and they are going fast.  All the pre-cutting and starching is done.

I did hit one store to buy white thread for quilting my Jack's Chain quilt.  I stood in line at Hancock Fabrics and everything.  Then I set it down on my workspace, and you guessed it, it got jumbled to the center stratum of stuff and I lost it.  I looked for it for half an hour last night before I finally found it.  I wound bobbins with it this morning, but it's been all purple all day today too.  And I don't even like purple that much.  It's a good cause, though, using up purple from my stash.  It may end up as a Cedar Tree auction quilt.  But purple is Quarta's favorite color.

I finished my 11th shawl of 2012, Citron, yesterday.  And I cast on for my 12th, Wingspan, today.

On Thanksgiving day I saw an interesting bird of prey of some kind, perched in the sycamore tree in back, holding a small bird in one claw.  I think but am not sure that the small bird was already dead.  I think the bigger bird was either a Northern Harrier or Northern Goshawk.

Source: bird-of-the-day.blogspot.se via Katherine on Pinterest

The very tall evergreens in the school grounds across the street have been surrounded with orange hazard fencing, and it looks like several of them lost branches in the recent storm.  At least one stand looks like roots are protruding and they will probably have to come down  for safety reasons; maybe all of them.  It will totally change the way the neighborhood birds interact if so.  The seagulls and the ravens use the highest trees and houses surrounding the park to stake out when it is safe to take over the field at the school; it's like the Crips and the Bloods.  Every once in a while neither of those groups is there, and the regular robins and songbirds are out pecking at the dirt.  Sometimes the disgruntled birds end up in our cedar trees, which are next tallest to the ones at the park.  It's all quite the soap opera.