Snow Day

"Snow day" -- didn't you love those words when you were a kid? As if the sky itself gave you a whole day free. I still feel that way. What will be called something like "the big blizzard of December '09" came in about midnight last night. I had just put down a book and was thinking about it when I heard a whistling wind and looked out. I slept maybe a hour and awoke to a shiny whiteness -- the security lights outside were magnified by the snow so I got up and watched it a while then, being wide awake, went back to my book for quite a while, looked out occasionally as the bush outside my window accumulated big blossoms of snow. It's still coming down, my windows are iced over outside.

The snow day euphoria has hit me. I'm playing. That's what it feels like. I need to make two small quilts for swaps, sender's choice. So I've gone to the Mariner's Compass Stars book by Carol Doak which I've been wanting to use since I bought it about a year ago. Of the 24 patterns I finally chose two and copied them. Then came the fun of pulling out my stash of fabrics with metallics -- when I bought the book I said to myself "this will be for the metallics." Choosing fabrics for each was an excuse to feel like King Midas in an illustration from a child's book -- he sat at a table making piles of the gold coins that were all around him probably chuckling "heh-heh-heh." I went through each piece -- and there are a lot, some are just remnants of previous projects, but many are FQs or half yards or more.

I've made one star already [full disclosure, I started this yesterday when I knew there was going to be a snow day]. I love Carol's patterns, I love deciding on different color combinations than she uses, I love watching the points come out cleanly, I love the visual illusion of layered triangles. I love paper piecing! I also love her paper for paper piecing, it's strong for sewing and tears away very nicely. Pictures will be taken of finished quilts -- all quilted and backed and labeled. We're never too old for fun or for a snow day.