Cupcake Crossing Progress & Birds

I am making progress on Nancy's Cupcake Crossing quilt! I have two of the inner rows sewn.

As you can see, I have one more row of blocks to sew. After that, there is an inner border and a pieced outer border. And that's it! While Nancy had purchased the finishing kit for the top, it didn't come with backing. I found fabric from the same line and purchased that last year, so I'm ready to go on quilting.

I've also started knitting a selvedge rug. I've been cruising right along, but I find knitting selvedge yarn to be pretty hard on the hands. The further along I go, the harder it gets because it is pretty heavy. Last time I made one of these, back in 2020, I cast on 38 stitches. This time I cast on 30 since I felt like I ended up with a pretty big rug last time. I gifted that original one to my mother in law and I noticed that the rug has really stretched out/grown over time. Of course I have no idea how she uses/cares for it, so I'm not sure why it stretched so much. But I thought I'd try a bit smaller anyway.

I've continued to be very busy with work. Here's what I've done since last week.

I made and attached the binding to the front of Haley's quilt. It doesn't show much in the picture, but she had me make the binding from three different fabrics.

Janice's quilt, quilted with Winterfest. We used Glide Ocean for the thread and it looks so good with her background fabric.

Brenda's quilt, quilted with Hidden Valley. This quilting design did not agree with my software. It is highly unlikely that I will stitch out this design again. This took forever. Remember when I said I would have all of Saturday to myself? Yeah, this is what I was (still) working on. It can be really hard to admit defeat with a design, especially one you've paid for. This one was a freebie, but it still doesn't feel good when you can't make it look how you want.

Jae's quilt, quilted with Daisy Bounce. It's hard to see, but I used a light purple thread on the top and neutral on the back.

Hannah's quilt, quilted with Denali. I need to fully bind this quilt. Some of these fabrics are shimmery and it's so pretty.

Ben's quilt (his first!), quilted with Dunes. I fully bound this quilt. Can you see the hammerhead sharks in the upper right of the picture? He paper pieced those. Also, I brought in a photo of this quilt to one of my software programs. It has an alt-text auto feature that I can't figure out how to turn off. It identified those sharks as birds. 🤔 AI is stupid (and really bad for the environment).

Switching gears, I was dragging my feet getting to work last week and was looking through my binoculars at a blue jay that was out in the woods. I moved the binoculars a bit and noticed what at first looked like moving bark on a tree. Then I watched it move and it looked like a nuthatch only a bit smaller and bark-colored. I watched it long enough to notice some identifying characteristics and then went and got my phone to open up my Merlin app. I used the guided ID tool and...ta da...it's a brown creeper. I've never seen one before! How cool! Of course, by the time I did the ID and looked again, it was gone and I haven't seen it again. If you're at all interested in birds, I highly recommend the app! It can identify by sound or through guided observation.
Then yesterday, we finally had some really nice weather. I decided I'd go for a walk before lunch and then get back to work. I stepped out the door and saw a bald eagle flying behind my neighbors' house. It landed in the remaining tree line around the corner. I took a few pictures with my phone and then got caught by a neighbor for a lengthy chat. Sorry for the blur; I was zoomed all the way in with my phone. This is the second time I've seen an eagle in our neighborhood in 13+ years. 
Things ended up going a bit sideways yesterday. My daughter called my husband in a panic because something's wrong with her car. We had to lend her my son's car, which means I am now on school driving duty until we either get hers fixed or find a new vehicle for her. I didn't have the right color of thread for the quilt I planned to do, sent my husband to pick up the color I needed, found out that the store changed its hours by means of a note written on the door. So I unloaded the quilt. Boo. I'm working on a different one today until I can get the thread. I hate that I failed to notice the thread wasn't right until after I'd loaded the large quilt. Meanwhile, the car thing has potentially changed our weekend plans. And my son found out he had an interview at the last moment, which is a cool thing, but added another layer of frantic to our evening. 

So that's my week. It's just always something, isn't it? I was hoping to just share quilts and birds this week and next, but now it's anyone's guess. 
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