I wandered downstairs this morning and puttered around a bit putting things away and straightening up from the last couple projects and debated whether to start a new top … but the snow and windows were calling me so I layered a small doll quilt and sat myself down to hand quilt (using crochet cotton and the big stitch method).

Finn is NOT a fan of snow … so it’s a good thing he wasn’t with us during our Minnesota years!

As I stitched, I watched several deer stroll by but only caught one on camera.

This afternoon Keith and I played some Upwords … again, sitting in front of the windows watching the snow come down. I’ve really missed snow since we left Minneapolis 7 and a half years ago. Now that we’re here in North Georgia permanently, I’m hoping we continue to get some now and then.

It’s been a while since I’ve been out on my favorite trail – lots of reasons and excuses but today I did two miles along the creek. I love being among the trees even in the winter.

I didn’t get down to the sewing room today but I did knit while watching the Lightning play. After my walk, I spent more time cleaning and reorganizing the upstairs and we moved back up! So happy to have the painting done and to have the house put back together!

I’d laugh at how everything shuts down in the south with just a little snow but I know that these winding mountain roads are no joke with snow and ice so we’re preparing to hunker down at home this weekend. Keith is at the grocery store right now stocking up.

This HeartStrings group top sent to me by Sue to quilt and donate is finished. I’ve got one more group top here to quilt and 3 of Mom’s and I’ll get started on quilting them next week.

The painters finished up late this afternoon and I’m thrilled to have them gone! We won’t move back upstairs for a couple days – we’ve got a lot of cleaning, rehanging pictures, and moving furniture back into place to do and that will give the paint smell time to disappear too.

My Babylock Jane spent several weeks in the shop and Chris brought it back to me on Christmas Eve but I’m just now getting her set back up. She is my favorite machine to piece on and I did a quick set of Happy Blocks today. Now I have two sets of blocks to assemble, these and the Strips and Strings Log Cabin blocks I finished making yesterday.

I’m glad we have the downstairs where we can stay comfortably this week!!

After deciding a few years ago that I was going to put a whiteboard above my cutting table I finally did it. And by me … I mean Keith! I typically use sticky notes as I’m cutting to track the sizes I need, the number of blocks, etc but the whiteboard will work much better especially when I’m playing in my scraps. When I’ve got them out on the cutting table I like to cut for more than one quilt so being able to easily see what sizes I need to cut will be great.

I was up early this morning waiting for the painters and had errands to run this afternoon but I did get a few more blocks made. I’ll sew some more later but I’m going to sit with Finn a while. He’s being very good but it makes him nervous to hear all the activity going on upstairs.