Buried! (Under fabric, snow, yarn...)

Greetings from snowy (yet again) New York City! Even though I wasn't supposed to work today, I'm still having a snow day, like the rest of the city. We got about 19" here in Manhattan, and with decent temperatures, everyone seems to be having a blast playing outside or hibernating in! I've been doing both! Yesterday, I baked these amazing cookies (this is now the 3rd time I've made them) and may or may not have had one after breakfast ;-)
Firstly, I have to just say that I am so fortunate for all the new friends I've made through my blog, flickr, swaps, and virtual quilting bees. Brooke and I have become good friends, finding that in spite of over 300 miles apart, we have tons in common and get along like we've known each other for years. She always sends the best packages and yesterday she outdid herself: she had been posting sneak peeks of a secret project she was making for a friend, whose identity she kept quiet - and yesterday I discovered I'm the lucky recipient!!! We had talked a while back about doing a side swap for each other - she's clever and crafty and started on this soon after. She made me this AMAZING mini quilt depicting the beauty of summer in Maine (which I'm CRAVING right now) that will live in my bedroom (once I attach some loops for hanging to the back). It's awesome and I'm so honored to call it my own. And something may or may not be in the works for her... ;-) Thank you, sweetie! XOThis morning I decided to try out my Accuquilt Go! Cutter on a big pile from my stash. I didn't really have a specific project in mind OR a specific person so I just decided that I would pull out my stack of fat quarters of Timber and get cutting. The cutter came with one die that included a big square, small square, and 4 half-square triangles. I decided to use this die for each FQ. Let me tell you - math is not really my strong suit (well, that's not true, I'm actually pretty good at math, I just don't really enjoy doing it!) so I didn't really calculate how many squares I'd end up with. Let's just say this is going to be a HUUUUUUGGEEEEE quilt that I'm thinking will end up in my Etsy shop. And let me stress (and no, I'm not getting compensated for this): THE CUTTING WAS SO FAST IT WAS RIDICULOUS! I - like most quilters, I'm sure - don't enjoy the measuring and cutting part of quilting. Not to mention a friend had an incident a while back with a rotary cutter...we won't go there... Anyway, all the FQ are completely cut up and I've already started sewing some pinwheels and 4-square blocks. People, this is going to be one fantastic quilt. I'm just not sure where I'm going to lay it all out in order to figure out the layout! Haha, I'll worry about that once the blocks are all set. If my calculations are correct, there'll be about 300 blocks. Woooooweeeee! What an adventure. And it feels SO good to cut into a huge pile from my stash. :)
I have a million and a half things I'm working on at once and since I spent the morning doing crafty stuff, I'm off to spend a little time on real life stuff. But have no fear, I'll be up to my elbows in fabric and yarn this evening.

And I'll leave you with some awesome pictures of the snow (check out my Flickr stream for more!):
My patio

Riverside Park