Snow storm sewing time

Yesterday's ice storm turned into a blizzard over night, with lots of wet snow sticking to everything on top of a thick layer of ice.  That meant I wasn't going anywhere today, and freed up some time to sew.  The temptation to begin a new project was very strong.  But I looked at the UFO projects hanging around and decided to work on the Halloween One Block Wonder that was on my UFO list for February - with no progress. 

All of the hexie halves for this project are now sewn and ready to lay out with the panel.  I chose a Halloween fabric panel for this OBW that has a larger scale design, so I cut the strips slightly larger than the pattern book recommends.  These were cut 4.5" so the hexies are large.  And some of them have very interesting looks to them.  A bowl of lettuce and an orange slice come to mind with these two.  And some are a bit too monochromatic, but I think they will blend together nicely with the panel.  

The new blocks are in the stack on the left and the blocks made during the class I took are in the stack on the right.  The panel is folded up on top.  And this clears off a nice bit of horizontal surface in my sewing room for now.  Each pair of hexies is lying on a paper plate so they should be easy to lay out and rearrange on the floor, which is my next step.  I think this could end up being a very large quilt.  

As for the weather, it began here Tuesday evening with rain that continued most of the day on Wednesday.  By supper time it began to freeze.  Those little icicles formed all along the edges of our deck railings.  You can even see the layer of ice on top of the railing.  It was pretty, but we know this was also happening on tree branches and power lines.  Our lights flickered a few times during the day but did stay on.  We were luckier than a lot of people in this part of South Dakota who did lose power.  

And this was what we awoke to see this morning.  We now have about 12" of fresh wet snow, which is half of what they predicted we could get before this ends tomorrow.  But it's taking its toll on our trees.  Our house sits on a lot that is just over an acre and has 60 trees on it.  One of the biggest ones is an ash just outside our family room windows. And one huge branch was hanging so low this morning that it was nearly touching the windows. So my husband went out and knocked a lot of snow and ice off that branch.  But it hasn't lifted back up by much so we're concerned that the branch will come down with this wind, or need to be cut later.  He also plans to go out now and blow the snow from the driveway before the second half of this storm hits us this afternoon.