Dutchman's Puzzle

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! The northeast corridor got snow on Friday-- about 6" for us--and we're in the midst of another big storm today. I think we got at least 6" last night and today, and it's still snowing. 

The last few weeks have been quite busy with the usual day to day stuff, soap making, puzzle building, and a weekend visit from my granddaughter, who will be seven this year. She likes to work on her little puzzles while Grammie works on the big ones. 

More than anything else, I've been preoccupied with learning all about freeze drying food. The image of empty store shelves during the pandemic has stayed in my head, so hubby and I talked it up and bought a freeze dryer from Harvest Right several weeks ago. Haha, had I known that eggs were going to hit $6+ a dozen, I'd have bought a freeze dryer six months ago.

Since then I've been reading everything I could find and watching YouTube videos on the subject. So far, we've only done one load of bananas and apples; but when the storm is over, we're throwing in a load of mac and cheese and maybe a tray of mushrooms if there's room. My plan is to focus mostly on meals this winter, then fresh produce in the spring and summer. 

I have done some sewing for the Scrappy Rainbow Challenge. The color this month is dark and bright blues. Rather than a rainbow project, my focus was to use up as many of the blues in Barbara's Scrap Bag as I could.

I realized early on that the mix of her prints is so varied that I wasn't going to fit them all into one or two projects, so I worked on a few different blocks. There was quite a lot of that dark navy with the little vine, and I pieced most of that together and am using it as the backing on a small top that used the same fabric as the border.

There are these rectangle bar blocks (I got bored with these pretty quickly); the Eastern Sunrise string blocks; a Scrappy Rectangles block (I got bored with those too); Bonnie Hunter's 2022 Leaders and Enders Triple Treat Challenge; and if I could get a 1-1/2" strip out of a smaller piece of fabric before it went into the string pile, some Bitcoin strips, also a Bonnie Hunter pattern. 

And because I can't make up my mind about much of anything these days, I don't know where any of these projects are going. Except the Triple Treat--that one I'm actively working on. I did come across a pattern called Scrap Happy Rainbow Connection from Amy Smart, which seems to be popular, so I might actually do a rainbow project after all.

Either way, I've whittled Barbara's blues down to this small pile, and I'm working on using up the rest of them, hopefully in one of the above projects.

 

Over the weekend I dug out these Dutchman's Puzzle blocks and assembled them into a small top because I needed some focus. The edges still need to be trimmed up and borders applied. 

This project is another pretty old UFO, and it's one of my 2023 UFO challenges. With just a few exceptions, I used reds, golds, blues, and greens in the blocks and sashings. I like it so much that I may use some of the left over blocks and make a double sized quilt for my guest room. Still signing it off on the challenge list when I get this one finished though!

Some of that dark blue with the little vine from Barbara's scraps went into the sashing on this quilt too.   

Linking to Oh Scrap!

Ringing in the New Year

New Year's is not a big holiday for us, so it came and went without event. Sister-in-law and I spent a few days building two 1000-piece puzzles gifted to me by my daughter-in-law's mother. 

Because there was not a lot of variety in the color, I anticipated they would be more difficult than they actually were. With two of us working at them, we finished each puzzle in just a couple days. 

This past Wednesday at our chapter quilt meeting, someone gifted me a bag of six more puzzles, lol. So I have plenty to keep me busy. 

In the meantime I've been working on this 1000-piece Norman Rockwell puzzle. I failed to notice that the back of the box said "random cut", so there are a lot of very strangely shaped pieces. More challenging for me, but it's going along.

It's fashionable these days for bloggers to review the year prior. In particular, many quilters are assessing what they accomplished the previous year and what they'd like to accomplish in the new year. I can get onboard with that. I listed 9 big quilts and a grouping of 3 minis on my UFO Challenge 2022 tab and managed to complete 4 big quilts and 1 mini. Even though I didn't get them all finished, three of them were years old UFOs, and I felt good about that. 

I do plan to make myself a UFO Challenge list for 2023, and I suppose what didn't get finished in 2022 should be added to this year's list. The problem is there are so many projects I'd like to finish this year that it's hard to choose just 10 or 12. 

One of the things I'd like to do this year is to participate in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2023 hosted on the ScrapHappy blog. I did this a few years ago, and it took me another year or more to finish the quilt. In her write up about this year's challenge, Angela (I think that's her name) mentioned that, instead of a rainbow quilt, you can make some other scrappy or stash busting project, so long as you're trying to focus on the color of the month. That is an approach that appeals to me. The color for this month is bright or dark blue, and I have several blue or blue and white projects I started a while back. I would like to make some headway on those.

Wrapping Up 2022

Hubby, my sister-in-law, and I celebrated our Christmas on Christmas day; and my kids and their kids were here to celebrate with us on the 26th. It was hectic, but we did have a good time. The four-year old who received the Construction Zone quilt was not impressed, lol, and I rather expected that. A four-year old is much more interested in Toys. He might appreciate it later though when the house is cold and he needs a snuggle. His sister did like her Wiggle Time quilt, so I was happy about that. 

I did finish all eight of the bowl cozies for my son and his wife, and those were a hit. Plus I made two for my sister-in-law to take home with her. My other son, who initially declined an offer for bowl cozies, changed his mind and decided maybe he needed some too, lol. So eight for me, eight for him, sixteen more to make. It'll be a little while though, as I am bowl cozie'd out for now.

I hate to leave things unfinished, so to wrap up the Advent Calendar from Missouri Star, there were a few more notions and doodads, if you will. There was also this pattern for another small quilt, which I like and will make at some point. That day's giftie also included a package of laser cut letters and sewing machine for the quilt; and they're fusible too, which will make sewing the quilt a little faster. The Kona rainbow pack from earlier is also meant to be used for this little quilt. 

The other notion I liked towards the end of the month was these acrylic bolts. These are meant for fabric storage, like a mini bolt. Now I would need about 5000 of these to accommodate my stash, so these are not practical for me. 

They are, however, perfect to wrap binding around until I get ready to sew it onto a quilt. There were three in the package, which is plenty; and they come with labels and clips to hold the fabric in place. 

After the holidays, we took a ride up to camp to check on things. It was colder and a little snowier an hour and a half north, and the house was very cold. There was still open water on the lake, but closer to shore the waves crested and froze. 

We haven't had much snow this year at all, so the skiers, snow mobilers, and snowboarders are not happy about that.

On the way home from camp, we swung by Big G's in Winslow for a late lunch. Big G's has more different kinds of sandwiches than any place I've ever seen, and their claim to fame is "generous portions". And they're not kidding. This sandwich was nearly as big as a dinner plate. My sister-in-law and I each ate a quarter of it, and it was plenty for us. Hubby ate the other half. 

On the way out of the deli, I noticed a metal cart with a sign advertising "bread ends", so I asked about it. Big G's bakes all their own breads and pastries on site, and I suppose they don't want to serve a sandwich with a bread end or a slice of bread that isn't consistent in size, so they bag those and sell them. Which is way better than throwing them out.

They were selling bags of actual bread ends (or heels as we call them), but we found one bag that was full of slices close to the end of the loaf that were not uniform in size. Once we got home, we split up the big bag into smaller bags to freeze. Then I weighed all the bags. For $4.25, I got 9 pounds of bread. Yes, pounds. Such a deal. I had half a slice toasted for breakfast this morning, and it was fabulous.