Updates

I would need several days of blogging to catch up on all that I've missed, so I'll just share some of the highlights from our mid-January snowstorm and the sewing I have been working on. I'm sure there will be more left for a randomday post tomorrow.

 About 13 inches of heavy snow in 12 hours tested the bendy-ness of our birch trees.

 We took a walk across the street. In all this year there have been 8 snow days for Tertia and 9 for Quarta. They will have extra days in the summer.

Trying to shake off the birches a bit.

After an hour or so outside it was nice to come inside and sew. I monopolized the family room floor for a day or so. The snow turned to freezing rain and Portland shut down; I just kept sewing.

 Outside the gutters overflowed with freezing rain and the icicles just got longer and longer. The back porch was covered with an inch of very slippery ice... we didn't go out that way.

 I finished the En Provence quilt top and the sun came out just in time for this photo shoot on the old sycamore tree. The front fence would have been too snowy.

This is embarrassing... I have a rather extreme backlog of the 2013-2016 mystery quilts now waiting to be quilted. Plus a few extra...

 Front to back, En Provence, String Star, Allietare. On the frame (for more than three years!), Farmer's Wife. Not pictured, Celtic Solstice and Grand Illusion. This was the picture I took to goad myself on to start machine quilting Farmer's Wife again. It worked! (Pictures of that maybe another time).

I enoyed the mystery quilt this year: it managed to give me the kick start I needed to at least attempt to get back into my neglected quilt corner. My everyday Viking machine is in working order this year, although it just suffered breakage of the "accessory box" and now only functions in free-arm mode. I hopped back into the APQ quilt-along of a low-tone Burgoyne Surrounded, also from about 3 years ago. I've been cutting many strips for my Scrap User's boxes and binge-watching Call the Midwife, and I may very well have yet another finished top if I keep up at this rate. I hope I do, and I hope I manage to get some much-needed house cleaning and organization done as well. And knitting, and spinning. It's really quite amazing what is possible when I'm no longer teaching every day. In a small way, of course... I'm not claiming the house is neat or anything! And there is no denying I need to have some serious purges of excess stuff.

In previous year's I've tried to do various things to keep me accountable to work on UFOs and WIPs. I haven't been blogging enough to make that realistic this year, but I will try to do periodic updates on progress. It's what I originally enjoyed about blogging years ago, and it gives me an incentive to keep on. So here's to keeping on!