Big Snow!

 Hi all -

I hope you are all doing well! We got a big shot of winter this week. It snowed for most of the week last week, ending up with somewhere around two feet of snow up here. It's hard to tell exactly how much we got because the ground was warm and we had a lot of melting, but there's definitely still a lot of snow out there! I was supposed to go to a daytime quilt retreat last Friday and Saturday, but the roads were too bad to go down there. I went down to town this morning to get groceries and although all of the other roads are completely dry after the sunshine we had yesterday, our neighborhood is still terrible. I even just got a notice from UPS that they weren't able to deliver a package to me this morning. Hopefully they can get in here tomorrow! I'm surprised that the county hasn't plowed our roads yet. In the almost 25 years that I've been up here, the county has always kept our roads cleared, often coming up here several times during a storm. This is surprising since we live in a rural neighborhood up in the mountains and most neighborhoods like that don't get this service. So I'm wondering if some bigwig moved out of our neighborhood recently. Hmmmm. It's supposed to be really warm and sunny this week, except for a small storm that might go through here tomorrow, so the roads should clear up pretty quickly on their own now. Glad we've finally gotten to my appointment tomorrow to get my winter tires put on! Looks like I might really need them now!!

This week I started working on my brother-in-law's Christmas quilt. This is a quilt that I started several years ago so I have a head start. I have the main part of the body pieced. I wanted the quilt to be a little taller, so I had also started working on an applique border to put on the top of the quilt. Here's my current progress:

Oak Leaves

That top panel will have a vine with oak leaves in it and will be separated from the main body by a brown narrow border, probably 1" finished but I'll decide that when the top border is ready. I drew the path of the vine on the top panel and prepared the oak leave appliques:

Oak Leaves - Top panel with leaves

Oak Leaves - Top panel close-up

I plan to have the vine go all the way to the edge of the quilt and end in the binding. I decided that the vine itself should be 3/8" and the little stems that go from the vine to the leaves should be 1/4". Unfortunately, I didn't have a 3/8" bias tape maker so I had to order one (that's what they tried to deliver today) so I have to put this aside until that arrives. But I did get the 1/4" bias tape made so that's ready to go. Since I got stuck on the quilt top, I went ahead and made the backing for this quilt:

Oak Leaves - Backing

Hopefully I can make some quick progress on this quilt when I get my Amazon delivery!

The only other thing I've been working on this week is my Olney St. Scarf designed by Betsey Sennott:

Olney St. Scarf

I'm getting pretty close to finishing this project. I took a break from working on the body of the scarf to put on the bottom edge:

Olney St. Scarf - Bottom edge

I did this because the bottom edge closely matches the top edge and I wanted to know when to switch from the body to the top edge. The top edge is a continuation of the body, but the bottom edge was added separately. Because of that, I could leave the main yarn ball attached to the body while I worked on the bottom edge. By weighing the yarn before adding the bottom edge and again once the edge was finished, I now have an approximation of how much yarn is needed for the top edge. So now I can crochet the body of the scarf until I have just a little more yarn that what was needed for the bottom edge and I will know that this is the right place to start the top edge. Then I will have the minimum amount of yarn left over after the project is finished. 

Well, that's it for this week. Grace is getting her first day of freedom since she broke her toenail two weeks ago, so she is a bundle of energy and I need to go outside to play with her!

Nancy