My hope was to finish the top this weekend — and I did.  It finishes at 27″ and will be, I suppose, a Valentine’s Day wallhanging.  I had no plan to make a Valentine’s Day quilt but the timing and the colours  make it pretty obvious that that’s what I have done! 

Now I’m thinking about what project I’ll choose as my Olympics project — something to work on while watching the various events.  A few more of the Farmer’s Delight blocks are definitely on the possible list, as is a green and blue Winding Ways project, working on the POTC blocks, beginning a table runner for which I have a design idea — and the list goes on!  Whatever I choose as my Olympics project is one that I am going to try to finish during the Olympics.  

Lester seems much better.  This is a shot we got of him over the weekend.   He has been very alert and playing with kitty toys and seems like himself.  

Putting these Winding Ways blocks together is such fun. They press beautifully, following the pressing directions in the Winding Ways Design Book, and thanks to those pressing directions lie lovely and flat.

The back after pressing and snipping off the dog ears:

And a real close-up of the centre of the back. If you look, you can see that the middle is pressed open. Before doing that, though, I used the tiniest stitches I could manage and actually stitched the seam twice with thread that matched the fabric. It’s pressing like this that makes the block lie really flat, without a bump in the middle. It takes seconds, and makes a huge difference.

I’ve been inundated with work this week, rather unexpectedly, and haven’t really been responding to comments. I have deadlines to meet today, but then am taking a 3-day weekend. I love reading your comments and will respond, if not today, sometime on Friday.

Lester continues to improve. Here he is Wednesday afternoon:

Smudge licking the yogourt off the spoon — but keep scrolling down as there’s a surprise.

We finally got a video of Smudge drinking. If you turn your speakers up, you can hear the water dripping off his fur back into the water bowl. He likes to get his paw into the dry food and throw a few of those around and then he heads to the water bowl and — well, you can see for yourself:

Five blocks to go and I’ll have the nine needed for the little top I’m making with these fabrics. One is in the process of being stitched and the pieces for the other four blocks are ready to stitch.

I am completely ignoring the groundhog reports and hoping for an early spring although, as I type this, it’s snowing rather a lot. In fact, this is the first time I can remember seeing snow actually staying out on the roof garden this winter. Maybe this is our one and only snowstorm and spring will start soon.

Smudge was catching up on his sleep:

Lester is continuing to improve. He has been alert, eating, purring and just being Lester. We took this picture late on Tuesday evening. When I woke up Tuesday morning, he was sharing my pillow with me. That was a great start to the day!

Before the Winding Ways collections became available Friday, I was working on putting together these blocks. I know I’m going to love this quilt when it’s done but, for now, everything is taking a back seat to the Winding Ways blocks. The design possibilities with it are incredible!

This is the back of one of the blocks:


Lester’s improvement throughout Monday was absolutely fabulous. He was back to making happy paw when patted and was purring and giving kisses. It is such a relief to see this improvement — he was alert, eating and generally back to himself. His appetite is back. That was the worst part of it, wondering how on earth we’d get food in him although we were prepared to use the chopsticks as we did after his little stroke a couple of years ago. Here he is resting on Monday afternoon.

Smudge enjoying his evening treat of yogourt.

The red and white print fabric I showed last week just don’t work for the pattern I’m playing with. I think the white has to be all white, rather than patterned. So what did I do? I decided to use pink! I love pink and red together. These are 9″ blocks.

On Friday, the new Inklingo Winding Ways collections were released — in 4.5″, 6″ and 9″ sizes. I knew they were coming and was thrilled as I have always loved the Winding Ways block and have tried to do it before, once with plastic templates which I traced and once with acrylic templates. Neither of those worked out well at all. These ones? These ones are absolute bliss to stitch — nice soft curves that don’t even require any clipping into the seam allowance. They go together in next to no time. There’s a fabulous Winding Ways Design Book available too, which is free right now, with some great stitching and pressing tips and some fabulous design ideas.

I have a design idea for a small table topper that will utilize all 3 sizes of the blocks. They go together so quickly that I think I can get the top done within a week. Everything else seems to be put on hold for this one. This is the back of one of the blocks, It presses like a dream, using the tips in the Design Book.

It was bitterly, bitterly cold here on the weekend. Saturday morning, when we had an 8:00 a.m. appointment at the vet office, it was -19C. Thankfully there was no wind. Otherwise it would have been unbearable.

Lester seemed not well on Friday, was sneezing and seemed to have a runny nose. I called the vet’s office and the only appointment we could get was 8:00 a.m. Saturday. Because of his heart condition, anything that seems to be affecting his breathing makes me nervous. Off we went, saw the vet who said it appears to probably be an upper respiratory infection and we came home with antibiotics. Until Sunday night, after he had had his fourth dose of the antibiotics he didn’t appear to be much better. But, fingers crossed, they seem to be having the desired effect. The good news on Saturday was that his heart murmur couldn’t be heard, so clearly his heart meds are doing their job. He’s clearly not himself and is a bit bedraggled looking, so here’s a picture taken mid-week last week:

Smudge loves to stretch out on the mattress cover when we’ve stripped the bed.