Priorities

 Occasionally I lose my way...a few days ago I thought it would be fun to make a quilt from gray plaids and call it Portland Sky. I had cut about 50 squares until I realized that I was well on my way to making a sad, dull, waste of time. Instead I finished layering the seahorse quilt and have finally begun quilting it. 

And here is the exact opposite of sad, dull and a waste of time. Also not plaid.

Inspiration for Project Quilting

 Life has its dilemmas. Here I accidentally woke Buddy up when I took his picture because he was so cute while he was sleeping. I also took a photo of my inspiration for this week's Project Quilting challenge: make a quilt featuring the sky without including more than 10% sky blue. So I am going to make a quilt that features the Portland, OR sky...and here it is...

This was taken today...with the daytime temperature in the 40s and no frozen precipitation. I have already pulled the fabric for the quilt and now its time to start cutting...

Log Cabin Quilt Top

 Putting this quilt top together is all I have to show for the recent ice storm. Ice storms are fickle and our neighborhood did not have enough rain and low temperatures at the same time to accrue much ice. We also didn't have a power outage. Nor did we have photo worthy winter wonderland views.  So please accept this photo of the quilt top as your consolation prize.

As a reminder, this is a photo from an estate sale ad and was the inspiration for my version.

Ice Storm Prep

Our area has a ice storm warning that admittedly makes me a tad anxious. My neighborhood is prone to power outages and a few years back all the trees in my back yard decided to hug the house. And there are lots of predictions and suggestions for how best to prepare. Oddly, I have not seen anyone prepare as thoroughly as Molly. Here she is sticking one leg out of her heated bed to gradually become acclimated to suboptimal sleeping temperatures.

Hummingbirds with Hexies

When I lived in Virginia I fed ruby-throated hummingbirds or what I would call normal hummingbirds that migrate so you don't have to feed them all year or worry about them during cold snaps. Here in Oregon, our cold snaps are few and the Anna hummingbirds are slackers that hang around all year. Plus they don't share.

These are the ruby-throated hummingbirds from Virginia. So yesterday we had weather dip into the teens. This of course freezes the sugar solution. I tried a heater attachment, stronger concentrations but settled on a strategy of just changing the feeder a lot. The male hummingbird settled on a strategy of working very hard to keep the female from feeding. Molly offered to take care of the situation for me, but I declined her offer.

Between swapping hummingbird feeders, I made more animal hexies. Each side of the hexie is one inch. And I am pulling these from my stash (that includes a lot of novelty prints). The cat in the second row from the bottom (sticking its head out of a red zero) is millennial/year 2K fabric from Nancy Crow.

Before I edited this post, I was calling the ruby-throated hummingbird "rufous" for no apparent reason until a very gentle correction in the comments.

Hexies

After a day of running around in circles, it's nice to settle down to prepare some hexies and end the evening feeling like I have accomplished something...keeping Molly from eating thread and Buddy from stealing sharp objects.

Change of Scenery

 I finally got the seahorses ironed and on the table for layering. I did have to take clamps from the design wall and clamp the seahorses to the table. Apparently draping fabric and batting over a table attracts a nefarious cat to hide under the table while an equally nefarious cat attacks from the outside. This is not conducive for lump-free layering.

Meanwhile, in yesterday's comments Wanda from Exuberant Color suggested I swap the red and purple corners of the log cabin quilt. Of course, typically I would do whatever Wanda says. Unfortunately the block switch of red and purple does not work with this configuration because the red block's outer edge is black while the outer edge of the purple block is white. If reversed, they would line up with similarly configured blocks. This happens because the quilt is 8 blocks across and 7 blocks down (like the original). 

Molly rates the above paragraph with five Zs!