I have a new yoga bag, too!

I have a yoga bag just like yours, Linda! Emily made me this one for Christmas. I think she used the same pattern, a free one on Amy Butler's website. It's great - you can't tell from the picture, but it has pockets for my water bottle and keys and changepurse, and other things I take to the gym, so it's the only bag I need when I go for yoga or some other exercise class.

Here's what I've been up to during this long cold winter. The artsy quilt is from a class I took. I don't think it's particularly attractive, but it was so much fun. I machine quilted it like crazy, with metallic thread.

And here's a yoga bag that I made for Linda. It's made from corduroy that Susan and I bought at Mood Fabrics in New York City. Do any of you watch Project Runway? We're big fams, and that's where they go fabric shopping on the show.

Linda and Susan and I have been trying to make some clothes for them, and to help with that I decided to make a dress form of Linda's body by wrapping her in duct tape. It was a hoot, as you can see from the picture.

Happy St. Paddy's Day

Mom gave me Dan's famous soda bread recipe to share with friends at a St. Paddy's day brunch this morning. Deirdre had bangers, rashers, black sausage, eggs, brown bread, and boiled tomatoes too. The bread turned out great even though I used cumin seeds instead of caraway seeds, but the surprising spiciness combined well with the currants. I might have to make another batch this weekend.

Quilt Squares

I appliqued my last square on Friday night. After buying my fancy designer fabric from purlsoho, I had a hard time finding coordinating fabrics, but I think I did okay. I hope they look okay with everyone else's squares. I'll post a picture of the finished product when I get one.

Just in Time

Just in time for the warm weather of Spring (high of 70 here today--sorry, Ohio), I finished my knit hat.

I decided not to buy any new yarn this year because I've been living with an anything-you-buy-you-will-have-
to-move-to-Baltimore mindset. As you can see, I didn't have enough blue to make a whole hat, so I added some tan yarn at one end.

Unless we have a cold snap, this hat will have its outside debut next winter.

Snowed in - in Cleveland

This past weekend, it started snowing on Friday around noon, and didn't stop until late Saturday night. We ended up with about 2 feet of accumulated snow, and no way to get out of our driveway all day Saturday. So I stayed in my pajamas almost all day, read a book, did a crossword puzzle, and made this purse out of an old golf sweater of John's.

Why I'm not a quilt designer

This is one of the squares that I dreamed up for the sampler quilt for Monika. I went to the fabric store with a few scribbles of design ideas and a crude map of how I could put this thing together. It was harder than it should have been.

Notice that it's not square? I don't know how that happened. It was square on the diagram.

It is also way too big. Luckily, it only has to be 10"x10" so I could trim off the edges and make it better.

Why did I work on this one first? I should have warmed up with a log cabin or something!

Good Mail

I got a package from purlsoho yesterday with some of the fabric I'm going to use in my quilt squares. I love them already and I haven't even made anything out of them yet.