Here it Comes

 Here comes winter! We have had many very frosty mornings here on Whidbey Island, and I am excited to think that snow is not far away. I've lived in snowy places for about 17 tears -- Ithaca, New York when I was in law school, and the Concord, New Hampshire area for about 14 years after that. And I never tired of it. Google tells me that my area of the island only gets a few inches a year but I remain hopeful. You can be sure that I will enjoy every snowflake that falls. 

Meanwhile, big things are coming. Yes, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, too, but I am talking something more exciting than that. My longarm quilting machine is being set up tomorrow! I had it disassembled about a year ago in preparation for selling my house and moving, and I have sorely missed it. 

If you promise not to tell anyone, I will show you the very messy state of my sewing room. (I have put away about half of that mess, and today's project is to deal with the rest.) But those long poles are the poles for my quilting frame, padded and wrapped in a creative combination of pool noodles, batting, and garbage bags. I really wanted to make sure they weren't dinged or dented in the move. I have unwrapped about half of that pile and will do the other in a bit. 

It has been a bit tricky estimating the space that the longarm will take. Before I bought my machine and frame, a Bernina dealer gave me a big plastic mat that rolls out and shows you exactly how much floor space is needed. It is inevitably  a bigger space than I think. So, having rolled out the mat a bunch of times, I'm sure that the frame will fit, sort of along that right-hand wall, but I may need to get rid of the loveseat and table down there under the window. I'll see how things go. The dogs sure do love hanging out on the love seat while I am sewing, so they can keep an eye on me and on goings-on in front of the house.

In my excitement about the longarm's arrival, I have been sewing a very easy quilt top that looks quite complex. Look, it's really all half-square triangles (the navy and white squares) and whole patterned squares. Super fast, actually. The pattern is called Skip to My Lou by Busy Hands Quilts. I got it all sewn together yesterday, so it may be the first "real" quilt that goes on the longarm after I do a bit of practice. 

I am also contemplating making a cover for the longarm machine. Up until now, I have simply draped a vintage table cloth over it.

Someone on the Bernina Longarm group posted one she'd made and I've been studying it. Looks doable, I think. I have a bag of miscellaneous orphan blocks and component parts so I'm thinking I will try to put them together and make something similar.

 These chilly nights have proven excellent for retreating to bed early with my book. I just finished "The Christie Affair" by Nina de Gramont, and it was just as excellent as Nancy Pearl said it would be. Nancy Pearl's interview with the author was an interesting complement to the novel. 

I'm going to go make breakfast now. My current breakfast delight is my version of "toad in the hole." Basically, you butter a slice of bread, cut a hole in it, put it in a hot pan, and then crack an egg into the hole. I flip it over at the last minute to make sure the egg white is fully cooked but I'm not sure if that is an official step or not. I can highly recommend this as a breakfast to enjoy while reading a novel set in England.