The Long Winter

Did you ever read the Little House on the Prairie books?  I did.  Several times.  I read them to Sarah, and we even took a summer vacation to DeSmet, SD to see the location where several of the books took place.  I remember being so bored with the book, The Long Winter.  All they did was sit around the cook stove every day, eat the bread they made from Almanzo's wheat, and made straw logs to keep the fire going, all the while waiting for winter to end so that the trains could get through to bring food and fuel.  I was reminded of that after our 16" snow last weekend and seeing this on the Walmart shelves.........

No cheese, milk, butter, eggs, bread, etc..............for almost a week.  I sent the Hubs to the little grocery store in Slater (which was fully stocked, so don't know how Walmart could claim the weather was the reason for the food shortage) to get the groceries I needed.  

I did work on my blocks for our Quilt of Valor.  Half will have red on the outside with a blue pinwheel, and the other half will be the reverse.  There is also a piano key border of red, white, and blue fabrics.  I had 7 blocks to make, and have 6 finished.........one of my "kits" was missing some of the needed pieces, so I will have to get those to get my 7th finished.

I also finished piecing my Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt - Good Fortune.  I only made about a quarter of the blocks, so mine will be a wall hanging.  The last pieced border gave me some difficulty, but I finally got it to fit.  I plan to quilt it myself.

Right before Christmas, I purchased a used longarm quilting machine.  It is a Handi Quilter Avante with a lot of stitches already on it.  The frame was in excellent condition, and I figured that a machine with that many stitches knew what it was doing!  It took me awhile to figure out the tension, but after doing some practicing, I started working on a baby quilt.  I'm good at L's and E's, and some loops to fill in different areas.  I'm almost half way finished with the quilting on it.  

You can see that I had someone thinking that it made a great cave to hide under.  Fortunately, Jason 2.0 has moved back to college.  Cici has checked it out, but I think she is a little frightened by the size of it.  

I hope to get my first "real" project finished soon.
Christi

p.s.  Don't forget the abbreviations DD and DH stand for Darling Daughter and Dear Husband.  DD doesn't want too much information shared on social media, so we came up with abbreviations instead of using their names (unless I forget sometimes).