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.

I’m not sure why I’ve been procrastinating working on these Strips and Strings log cabin blocks but the mess has been sitting out for a month and a half?! Finishing the blocks and assembling the top was the only thing on the list of December goals that did not get done so it moved to January’s list and I worked on them some today. This coming week when the painters are working upstairs, I hope to finish these and get some binding done.

I also got my 30 minute walk in – it was gorgeous – sunny and 38 degrees which was cold but not too bad.

Now I’m going to sit and knit a while!

Yesterday was a sick day … I’d gotten my 2nd Shingles shot on Wednesday afternoon and while I wasn’t feeling terrible, I didn’t feel great either so I rested and read and didn’t do much else. I woke up this morning feeling fine and got to work preparing for the painters who are coming Monday to paint the upstairs. We’ve got a lot of clearing away to prep and we’ll be moving downstairs while they’re working so I made a good start today and we’ll continue working this weekend.

I didn’t sew at all but I finished up kitting 3 more projects for my grab and sew bin for a total of 11. Hopefully it will make it easy to get started on new projects especially when I’m too tired to think about what I want to work on. I also knit a while on my blue scarf. I’ve got a few knit and crochet projects on my list for the month and I need to make some progress on them.

And since I don’t have anything sewing related, I’ll show you how pathetic Finn looked tonight while we were playing Upwords. He gets a “toothbrush” treat when we eat our dinner and he thought we were making him wait too long for it! When he couldn’t convince Keith to get up and give it to him, he laid down right by his chair and waited.

This time of year I can go days without capturing anything other than squirrels or the tail end of an animal darting by the cameras but we had lots of visitors this morning!

This was one of those days I just didn’t feel like working … after my walk, I read for a while and knit for a while before convincing myself to just piece a small batting and load a top … telling myself I didn’t have to quilt it today. Of course, once it was loaded I went ahead and quilted it.

It’s a group top sent to me for quilting and donating. At 38 inches square it’s baby size but not really babyish. However, the backing that was sent with it is a cute kiddie print. I quilted some hearts and I think it will work fine.