WIP Wednesday

This Veterans Day holiday gave me a day off from work and allowed me to sew on my work in progress.  Last Saturday I arranged all the blocks.  I finished stacking rows 10 and 11 when I realized that I hadn't taken a picture of the lay out.  So these are rows 1-9.

As I began sewing the blocks together this afternoon, I realized that my patchwork sills aren't the best.  The corners of the raspberry triangles weren't lining up exactly.  Good thing I'm not entering this into any competition.  I kept reminding myself that the joy is in playing with color and pattern and having the end product.  When it is on top of my bed, I will be relishing the warmth and overall aesthetic and will not be scrutinizing the matching points.  That said, I did my best to have the pieces line up as best I could.

The pictures today aren't the greatest.  It rained all day and I couldn't take it outside to photograph. And I didn't clean up the day bed for pretty pictures.  I finished the first row in no time.

Then I sewed row number two.  And then joined the two together.

Detail

I spend so much time gazing in between pinning blocks together.  But still, in less than three hours, I had the top four rows finished!

I'm hopeful that I can finish the top and put together the back before the end of the year.  The end of the month is going to get busy with Thanksgiving and then I go to DC for training at FSI for the first week in December.   Before I know it, I'll be writing year end evaluations for my three folks and reviewing all their appraisals for their teams.  I'll try to get those done at work so that I can concentrate on baking and getting ready for the holidays in the evening hours.

Speaking of baking, I tried a new recipe this morning for apple cider doughnuts that I found at King Arthur Flour.  I took some liberties with the recipe -- I had apple cider, not boiled cider or frozen juice concentrate and I used only all purpose flour and not the fiber.  For the glaze, I didn't have a candy thermometer, so I winged it a bit.  And I dipped them in sugar just because.  They weren't as apple cider-y as the doughnuts that I remember from Atkins harking back to my college days.  However, I enjoyed trying something other than our standby Ina Garten favorites.  Next time I might use a bit less cinnamon or use a bit more glaze.  I have enough glaze left over that I might make them for my team meeting on Friday morning.

I didn't get started sewing until the afternoon because in the morning I was surfing around all the cool quilting blogs I have discovered along with drinking tea and eating doughnuts.  There are women in my general geographic area that are doing really inspiring work.  Next year, I might want to join the NH Modern Quilt Guild.  The only issue is they meet in the evening in Nashua. There isn't a quick way to get to Nashua from here and when I'm getting up at 3:15 or 4:15 to go to work...evening activity isn't that easy for me.  Anyway...

My witching hour of 8:00 is fast approaching.  Tomorrow is back to work.

I'm going to see if I can link this up with Freshly Pieced and her WIP Wednesday blog.