Happy Valentine's Day!

 Happy Valentine's to all. 

My husband and I celebrated with a meal at home.  He cooked filet mignon and I made a salad to go with it.  Homemade ice cream for dessert. 

My man can cook a great steak. 

In my Facebook memories for this day a photo of us from one of our first Valentine's Day dinners popped up.  

I know we went to a supper club that is well-known for it's prime rib. 

My mother-in-law took the photo and told us to have a good time. 

We were such wee babes.  

Here we are, 27 years later. 

We first met when I was working at Wendy's. I'd say it was love at first sight.  Though it probably didn't seem like it, at first. We exchanged phone numbers and talked on the phone for hours almost every night before we went out on first date. Our first date was memorable.  The engine on the old Monte Carlo caught on fire and we had to pull over, by Pattison Park, and pop the hood and throw sand on the block to extinguish the fire.  Yes, we did continue with the date and went to a pizza joint in a town I don't remember.  

He said when he drove me back home I jumped out of the car so fast he thought he'd never see me again.  I remember being so excited that I couldn't wait to get on the phone and call one of my girlfriends to tell her how the date went. 

Happy Valentine's to my soulmate, and that we have many, many more. 

I can say soulmate because we've been together *forever.*

In other news ... I've been feeling a bit low the last several days so I haven't been writing or posting the #fiberuarychallenge posts over on Instagram. The recent weather kinda blows and I think the barometric pressure is sapping my energy.  Then last night I didn't get a good nights rest. 

And since I can't sit still unless I'm sick in bed, I've been working on my quilt blocks. 

The next set of my Dancing Stars quilt blocks

 The next block in my Sandpiper quilt

I also started my Emotional Support Chicken.

Project Name: Emotional Support Chicken
Started: Feb. 13, 2024

Finished: 

Designer/Source: Knitting Tree LA

Yarn: Scrap yarns in my stash and Red Heart

Colors: Brown and Saffrom

Needle Size: US #7, 4.5 mm

Made For: myself. 

I also finished my Harvest Cardigan.  I'm saving it for the next podcast I record.  You will just have to wait to see it. 

Spinning fiber also happened.  Not as much as I would have liked. I'm falling behind! 

Oh! I did have some fun mail today.  I ordered a floor lamp for my spot in the living room. I think it's going to work out. It's nice and bright and it is positioned such that it's not blinding anyone else in the room. The price is also very reasonable.  Less than $40. 

Earlier today I went to town, to pick up mail at the office and take care of one thing.  I swung up to Harbor Freight and picked up a generator. 

Guess you could say it's a Valentine's Day gift for the man of the house. 

Bird watching and a quilt update

 The last several weeks I've been feeding the birds. 

It started out with chicadees, some finches and nuthatches. 

It's now blue jays, squirrels and one lone starling. 

I watched this starling integrate itself into the group of blue jays that comes to my feeder each day.  It was off on it's own and slowly moving towards the group.  The next time I saw it, it was sitting in the middle of the bird seed pile, surrounded by all the blue jays. It's made itself at home. 

The birds and the squirrels show up every morning and tussel around, taking turns at the suet cakes and the plate I put the bird seed in. 

I don't know what this guy was waiting for. 

I do like watching these guys flit around.  

I've been paying extra attention to my quilt project the last couple of weeks, right? 

Last night I finished the quilting. 

I decided to save the binding for tonite. 

Then I started sewing the binding on ... 

And discovered I don't have enough binding. 

NOOOOOOOOO! 

I have no idea how I messed up this royally.  

The binding fabric was purchased at walmart.  I think they still have some at the store. 

*sigh*  I was *so* close! 

My goal is to get this wrapped up by the end of the weekend. If walmart doesn't have the fabric, I will have to rip what I sewed on, and use a different fabric. 

Tag soup

 My hunting season ended, not with a triumphant win at the end, but with a quiet acceptance when hunting hours ended on this past Saturday. 

I had never heard of this phrase, "tag soup," until I joined a couple facebook hunting groups last year. 

Basically, it means you weren't able to use any or all of your tags for your hunting season. 

On Saturday my husband and I were in our respective blinds, waiting for *something* to come by. We didn't see even a squirrel.  It was snowing a little bit.  The deer may have been bedded down. 

I took a selfie while I was in the blind, while feeling pretty confident that a dream buck would cross into my line of sight and provide me with the perfect shot.  It had to happen! 

I was bundled up in my warmest hat, hand warmers in a hand muff, mittens, extra mittens, a heated jacked and a hot water bottle tucked into my coat.  I was sitting warm while I waited for the minor miracle I was praying for. 

Then hunting hours ended and I sat there kind of like "Wow, this is not how I expected the day to end." 

I sent a quick, last message to my husband, letting him know I was heading back, and then I left my blind for the last time of the season.  We had already decided if we didn't see anything on Saturday we weren't going to go out on Sunday. 

It was a slow walk back to the house. I kept stopping because I wanted to pause and listen to the woods.  I stopped a few times to take photos. 

My footprints to the blind and the ones I just made as I was walking back to the house. 

One of my very first seasons hunting I didn't fill my buck tag. I don't even remember how long ago that was.  Gosh, I was SO green that first season.  Until this year I've managed to fill all the tags I purchased for the season.

I was able to fill my antlerless tag earlier in the season, so it wasn't a total bust, but I kind of hurts to buy a tag and then not fill it.  

This is the first season I've gone out the entire season. It was a good year for it, weather-wise.  I'm a wimp when it comes to cold. I won't complain about it much, but I don't like it.  

Sunday we went to our blinds and packed up what we didn't want to leave out there, and took down my husband's blind, which seemed surreal in a way. 

After we took down the portable blind.  Like a crop circle. Snow circle?

Filling up the ATV trailer.  

We also shut down the game cams and took the SD cards. Later in the day my husband sat down with the card from my camera.  

Look who showed up after midnight. 

Getting into the swing of things ...

 And trying to set myself up for success.  Set myself up for reaching goals, I mean. 

Yesterday I started working on the DayDreams wall quilt I'm making for my bedroom. 

I started my day off with Pat Sloan keeping me company. 

Sewing the pieces together. 

The first phase of my quilt making. 

Looking good so far. 

Probably the easiest piece of the whole thing. 

First square

All sewn together. 

Close to being able to sew this square together. 

I was a good girl and went a grabbed a bag of spinning fiber. 

Wool fumes is a real thing. ... I opened that bag it the smell just brought me back to when I was first learning to spin. 

I weighed it to ensure I had at least 4 ounce to spin this month. 

It's so pretty! 

In other news, I set up my indoor greenhouse and gathered almost everything I need for seed starting. 

And I made a quick little video showing the garden. 

Last little bit for this one ... 

My son ordered my Christmas gifts and they arrived yesterday.  When he asked me what he wanted for Christmas I said stuff for the garden.  

He found me some cute things online and ordered them. 

And a planter.  

I need to think of what to plant in there.  It will need to be a low growing plant.  Succulents, moss? 

Very last thing: I created a blog entry that will list the books I read this year.  A personal goal for this year is that I wanted to read and listen to books again.  The last few years have been very dry and I think my brain is starting to atrophy.  I set it up so there is a direct link to this entry just below the blog header. I did the same with my Goals for 2024 post.  

Until next time!