Coming Along

My mom reminded me that I hadn't blogged this week. I haven't been travelling this time, and I have been sewing, so I really have no excuse. Ah well, here's what I've been up to this week.

I took this pic in awful lighting, so it looks blue and pink, but it's purple and pink. In fact, the shades are almost exactly the shades in an afghan my mother crocheted for me when I was a young girl. These QST's will be the alternate blocks in the I Spy quilt I'm making. I have just over 60 made, but still need to make about 20 more. I hope to get the remaining blocks finished tomorrow, then I'll have to trim off all the dog ears.

I've still been using these super scrappy blocks as my leaders/enders. I have about 160 of these done so far. This is just a quilt that is happening, no plan. I'll make blocks until I run out of pieces, then see how big the quilt will be. I am thinking once these blocks are done, I'll sew them into fours, then decide the rest.

I haven't been working on the medallion quilt, because now I have a bit more time on that one, and it wouldn't make a good leader/ender.

I haven't taken the time to cut the weighted blankets yet either. It seems like I've been really busy, but when it comes time to say what I've been doing, I can't recall.

Cooking has been taking a lot more time than usual. Gluten-free baking has a learning curve, and the first lesson I've learned is to use a scale to weigh ingredients for baking. Even the recipes I've seen that use cups or weights, come out better when you go by weight. Gluten free flours vary so drastically from one to another, that the results seem to be a lot more variable. So far I've made some awesome peanut butter cookies, some lousy bread, and some pretty decent biscuits. I'm going to try the bread again (and weigh the ingredients this time), and tomorrow I think I'm going to tackle pizza dough.

I didn't expect to see any results of any kind for months from the gluten-free diet, but surprisingly, the swelling in my feet and legs that happens every summer has gone down drastically. I find that really amazing, since I've had several long sewing days this week, and all that sitting usually makes the swelling worse. Now I'm pretty curious if I'll get some pain relief somewhere down the line. Chronic pain is why I started the gluten-free diet to begin with. We'll see, and I'll let you know how it goes.