NaNo...QuiltMo?

Maybe it's the Halloween candy hangover, but flipping the calendar from October to November always has a weight to it that gets to me like no other month.  The weather down here in the South is finally beginning to feel like fall, and it is a lot harder to live in denial about the looming holiday season, what with it being right there on the same page and all.

Don't get me wrong, I adore the holidays - the shopping, the baking, the parties and decorating - but it can be hard to find time to fit it all in.  Which is why all across the nation thousands of people are... setting insanely lofty goals for themselves, haha.

You might be familiar with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) a challenge to write a 50,000-word novel in one month.  My friends, a writer I am not. Pass.  There is also NaKniSweMo (National Knit a Sweater Month), wherein - you guessed it! - you knit an entire sweater during the month.  This kind of challenge is much more my speed, but I didn't have a sweaters' worth of yarn or a pattern chosen to participate this year.

I do, however, have some fabric for a quilt that I'd like to have done by December.  So I'm striking out on my own this year for NaNoQuiltMo (I'm declaring the No to stand for November).

I'm doing another disappearing 9-patch, but with the more traditional layout this time.  I've since added some pink and green fabric to use for the small squares, to give the top more interest and tie into the backing fabric better.  My goal for this weekend was to get all of the 5" squares cut out, which I just managed:

I'm definitely glad to see the additional color in there.  The goal for this week is to sew them all into the 9-patch blocks, ready to be "disappeared".  We'll see how it's going this time next week!

So.. what crazy goals is everyone else working on this month?