(log) cabin fever

One of my New Year's resolutions is to start incorporating fun traditions that were conceived earlier, but have fallen by the wayside amidst our constant upheaval over the past 4 years.  I love the idea of celebrating the little things, so I've devised a fairly lengthy list of ways to do that, and tamed it with meticulous scheduling in my day planner.  Here's the first one:  welcoming the weekend with homemade Danish every Saturday morning.  I've made sweet bread before, but not for a long time.  The bread recipe came from Smitten Kitchen, and I modified the Sally's Baking Addiction Iced Raspberry Danish filling recipe to use blackberries (taste preference), a bit more cornstarch (texture preference), and a sweet cream cheese layer.  Made late Friday night and photographed hurriedly with my cell phone (which explains the dough color difference), it came together fairly easily.

The resulting bread was lightly sweetened and very soft, with a to-die-for fruit filling reminiscent of my favorite pie.  I sliced it up and froze the servings.  One braid is enough for a month's worth of Saturday morning treats!

As Todd and I clinked glasses and savored our slices the next morning, I knew that I was on to something.  I can't wait for the rest of our traditions to roll around!

I've been outside quite a bit this week.  We've been having atypical weather for January - temperatures in the 40s/50s and sunny.

It's still frosty in the morning shade, but quite warm by midday.

Everything in my garden is starting to come up - eek!  And it's going to continue this week, with rain and temperatures into the 60s.

Normally I'd be a bit grumpy - I LOVE winter - but these temperatures are definitely good for our outdoor cats.

I love seeing birds like European Starlings in the sunshine, too.  In the shade, they're fairly unremarkable:

But they light up in the sun!

I've been working on several projects indoors, including a new quilt.  I didn't intend to start this particular quilt with this particular fabric.  I just made a test square and kept going.  The pattern is Scrappy Granny from Quilty Love:

I like blues and reds in quilts, but decided to go with something a little more muted (and use up fabric that I already had!), so I tried some squares with Victoria by Moda (photo by Missouri Star Quilt Company).

I put together about 15 squares, or half the quilt, before going back to check the original pattern.  Whoops!  It's constructed incorrectly.  Here are my squares, just sewn in a row:

And here is the proper way to sew them - on the diagonal, and trimmed into a square.  ARGH!!!

If I add strips of white around my squares, I can still salvage the quilt, but I'm a bit grumpy about it.  I just bought a Log Cabin ruler and am dying to get started on this scrappy quilt.  Isn't it cheerful?

(photo by Felicia's World)

I have several other ideas in the works, so it's a bit of a slog to work on something that is not going to end up looking like I'd hoped.  I may end up turning it into a summer 'couch throw' or even a wall hanging instead of a larger quilt and take it as a lesson learned.  Just like all of my elementary school report cards said, "Jaime does not listen or follow directions well."  Sigh - don't I know it! 

I've been distracting myself from my quilting fail with a little knitting and, of course, puzzles.  They're so fun that everyone wants to get in on the act.

Have a great week!