Whitniffic Whatnots

All my husband wants for Christmas is stuff for brewing beer. Since I know he doesn't read my blog (lol), I figured I could share with you all what I'm scheming. I've been scouring Craigslist and Ebay for cheap useful things, and I've acquired a pretty good collection already. Aside from the random yellow junk I bought before to make him a lamp (NOT home brew related, by the way), I bought a neat antique scale, a vintage bench-top bottle capper, an old grain mill, and a rough-looking solid wood desk. What on Earth, you ask, might I be doing with all this stuff? Let me show you... First, I'll start with the grain mill. I bought this from a gentleman who is selling off all his home brewing stuff. I talked to him on the phone and he seemed very nice, and his wife was also very sweet when I picked up my purchase from their home. I'm not entirely sure why he's throwing in the brewing towel, but I'm glad he's selling his stuff for a good deal!

I'm so excited about how this disappearing nine patch quilt turned out! You may recall I started this one a while back... and I finally had an open weekend to visit my mother-in-law's sit-down long arm! I had a really productive Friday evening and got a whole bunch of stuff prepped and ready to finish, including sandwiching this pretty little quilt. Figuring out HOW to quilt it was a bit of a challenge... there really isn't a focal point to the quilt with it being all repeating blocks, so all-over pattern was the way to go, but I still wanted to use the lines of the blocks as a guide. I tried to hint on butterflies a little bit, so I used wingy, petal shapes in the larger squares. I went for a denser wishbone filler for the colorful narrower areas, and it kind of makes me think of how butterflies fly around all loopy-swoopy. Doodle a dozen, quilt once! I was kind of really nervous at first. I've only used this machine once before (to quilt my blue-

Well, the final month has arrived, and I am almost done with my 10-month Mystery Puzzle Quilt journey! Feel free to hop back in time to my first post about this... I've really enjoyed the process of doing this Block of the Month thing. Each month, around the 5th or so, I received a cute pink package in the mail containing pre-cut fabric pieces and instructions to assemble a few blocks. I had chosen my color way (i.e. picked one that included lime green, duh) in February for the Cotton Cuts Spring Mystery Puzzle Quilt without knowing what the finished product would look like. I guess that's the "mystery" part. That scared me a bit! I'm pretty particular about my quilting style. I tend to lean towards more modern designs... and for $17.50 a month for the small quilt, this was kind of a risk for me. If you think about it, that's $175 over the course of the 10 months. Yikes! I've never spent that much on a  quilt top in my life! Well... I suppose now