Sourdough success???

I've been quilting away at my April goal this week, which is to have my neutral quilt ready for showing at my trunk show in May.

Just a bit of time in the mornings with my coffee and I've seen a lot of progress...

This is my first try at big-stitch quilting. I'm using a few different shades of perle cotton. I'm really enjoying it and it's especially easy with my Thimblelady thimble and no hoop...

I picked up my usual thimble one morning by mistake and realised that it would much more difficult to quilt this in this manner without the proper thimble.

As of this morning I would say this little quilt is two-thirds quilted, not bad!

On to my baking adventure...

Last month I tried to get a sourdough starter started and after a week actually baked a loaf of bread. It was an absolute disaster!

I'm determined to have a success at this process. I found a site online where you can order a bit of dried "starter", you can see it HERE. My order took about two weeks to get here since it was coming from the States.

Here is a beautiful sourdough bread we bought at the market the other day from The Good Bread Company...

....so chewy and yummy!

.....and after two days of "feeding" here is my starter, bubbling away...

I know it looks kind of gross, but I think that means it's working!

On Saturday, I figured it's time to actually try making a loaf. It's actually a longer process than the times I would make bread on a regular basis years ago. This actually had to sit for 12 hours.

My loaf is now rising for a bit before cooking. I have to say, so far it looks like I'll need a bit more practice :(

I had hoped to have a bit more time at my sewing machine this week, but that was not to be. 

I did manage to get the first block done for this month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This month's colour is orange with a bit of black. I am going along with the Column-along for this project and here is a picture so far...

The block for January is the blue one ( I obviously need to do a few more ). February is the pink and brown. March was the purple butterflies. This month's block is super easy so I expect one more sewing session will complete the needed blocks.

I have a cousin back in Canada for a bit from his island home of Mauritius. He held a gallery showing of his paintings last week and we attended. There was a good turn-out of people to admire his work and I can say I'm now the proud owner of this, titled "Humanity". 

It's beautiful and I'm hoping I can come to a decision on where it will hang soon, but for now at least it's up. I was hoping to have one of Dan's paintings as I also have the first painting ever done by my grandfather. Danny was also happy to keep one of his paintings in the family.

Well, it's another busy day in store around here so I'd better sign off for now. 

I am linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching and with SoScrappy for Scrap Happy Saturday.

Have a wonderful Spring day!!!