A mid-week catch up

 The last week has been pretty quiet.  Mother Nature remembered it is winter and we have a mild snowstorm going on right now.  Big fluffy flakes when I was last outside. 

One day I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies. 

My son assured me they were tasty.   He blew through them pretty fast. 

I started the grand spinning project. Well, I started spinning the four ounces of fiber I wanted to spin this month. 

Fin Wool Top

Purchased: Paradise Fibers

Started spinning: Jan. 8, 2024

I also started up my first set for "Make Bundles for Babies"

I made one of the patterns listed on the website.  My crochet gauge is so loose that the next hat I make I will need to lose one row.  I'm currently working on a matching granny square blanket.

Most of my attention has been on my DayDreams wall quilt. 

One square. ... 

Two square ... 

Three square ... 

Four!

Last night I wrapped up the four squares needed.  Now I need to sew on the sashing.  Then the borders and all the other fun stuff. 

It's going to look so nice.

In other news, I made a trip to the office today and swung by the stores before heading home. 

I stopped in Menard's to see what they had for potting soil for seed starting.  The seeds were out. 

Um ... yeah ... I may have picked a few out. ... 

Tomatoes, some herbs and flowers. 

Lemondrop basil

Hollyhock - Country romance mixed colors

Hollyhock - Fordhook giants miced colors

Tomato - Delicious

Tomato - Sandwich slicer hybrid

Tomato - Cloudy Day Hybrid

Thyme

Sweet Pea - Queen of the Night, mixed colors

Lemon Balm

Canterbury Bells - Cup and saucer mixed colors

Rudbeckia - Black eyed Susan, single mixed colors

Chamomile - German

Delphinium - Pacific Giant, Mixed colors

Sage - Broadleaf

Onion - Walla Walla

Foxglove - Excelsior Mix

Butterfly weed - Asclepias tuberosa

Rosemary 

To be fair, the tomatoes were on my list to restock my supply.  I had those last year and was happy with production.

I'll be starting some of these this weekend. (Finger crossed) Along with some of the others already in my collection. 

*squee!*

Tonite my hubby and I had a project. The other day one of us decided our spice cabinet was in a very poor state, and we both agreed something *had* to be done. 

I wish I had taken a before photo, because the transformation is remarkable. 

We had no idea we had so many spices! This isn't all of them, either. 

The top shelf is my husband's pepper collection. 

We spent a few hours going through our spices, transferring them, combining the duplicates, and marveling at our spice collection.

Monday, monday ...

 Monday ... *sigh* I sometimes wish Monday's didn't have such a reputation. 

First day of an abbreviated publishing cycle.  Pages that I can normally pull together in 15 minutes took forever.  They were seriously fussy. I had to rip pages apart and put copy on different pages to get things to layout okay. 

We had a bit of snow last night and it stuck. It's the dry, pelleted type of snow. Combined with strong winds and it made for this girl not wanting to go outside more than she had to. 

I was mildly productive with a few things today. 

The green wool yarn has been caked up and it ready to go and be made into convertible mittens. 

I'm still working with my sourdough, waiting for it to get nice and bubbly.  I still haven't done any research on how to maybe boost an make the starter nice and perky. 

However, I did use some discard to make crackers. 

Oh my gosh, I'm in LOVE with these things. 

I don't think I can eat too many at a time, though.  It's like potato chips. I used Italian herbs.  I'm going to try something new for the next batch.  

This morning I found the pink yarn I misplaced.  Turns out I put it in a project bag and tucked it away. 

This evening I started the project. 

Right now it makes me think of a big boob. Ha! It's going to be something cute, I promise!

Cookies!

 Continuing with the very un-December-like weather for my area ... look at this beautiful sky and how the sun hit the trees this morning. 

I told my husband this morning (or maybe last night) that with how mild the weather has been for our area, I could have still been growing greens, or something. They could have been protected with some greenhouse plastic.  In past years I've had at least 6 inches of snow in the garden by now. 

I finally got that second green leg warmer unwound. 

I have four skeins of ramen yarn, ready for the bath. 

Seriously, this little project is taking me longer than I thought it would. 

Anywho ... 

Instead of spending most of my "free time" working on anything crafty, I opted to make cookies. 

Cookies for me, using a new recipe. 

I used a low carb/keto recipe as a base to make chocolate chip cookies.  I like them a lot. 

I made regular chocolate chip cookies for my son. 

And I made peanut butter cookies for my husband. 

Treats for everybody! 

Stitchy eye candy for the evening.  A few threads before bed. 

If I wasn't so bleary-eyed in the morning I would work on this before work.  My goal will be to get this done before Saturday morning. 

Friday afternoon activities

 I had a little mishap this morning.  I hoped it wasn't going to set the tone for the day. 

My creamer pitcher fell out of the cupboard and landed on my butter dish. 

I've had that butter dish for at least 10 years. Perhaps the universe was telling me it was time to get a new one? 

Then I decided I would make a loaf of bread.  I have a breadmaker I picked up second-hand.  I hit start and I could tell the paddle wasn't moving.  *sigh* I dumped the dough out, knead it by hand and tossed the breakmaker in the garbage.  It will be a while before I decide to get a new one. 

Things could only go up from there, right? 

Well, yeah ... 

This afternoon I decided to make an apple crisp and make a batch of lemon curd. 

I think I missed the boat on the meyer lemons.  I LOVE meyer lemon curd. 

Lemon curd with regular lemons is *almost* just as good. 

Seedling check-in time. 

No peppers yet.  I know, patience.  I have them on a heat mat and it is set to 80 degrees. 

Almost all the broccoli sprouted. The cabbage and cauliflower is about 50 percent germinated. 

Those broccoli babies are so cute!

I lowered the lettuce plants today. 

When I looked at them this morning I noticed some sun scald on a few of the leaves. 

These babies were planted 17 days ago and sprouted about two weeks ago. 

I have two more shelves to fill up.  Well, technically two-and-a-half shelves.  I'm still reading and watching videos about soil blocking. I'm definitely feeling more confident about this seed starting method.

I'm pondering garden plans, still.  Coleous in the planters out front.  A butteryfly garden on the side. ... Morning glories in front of the solar panels. All possibilities are being considered.  Nothing set in stone yet. There is still several feet of snow on the ground. 

This is the first year I seem to be on the ball when it comes to cold stratification. 

I purchased a few new packets of flower seeds that I have struggled with the last several years. 

These are some seeds that I picked up this week.  I'm also going to try growing "fancy" radishes. I've been seeing a LOT about starting leeks and onions at this time of year, so I picked a packet of those up too. 

Poppies, morning glories, four o'clocks and a few other flower seeds are currently sitting in a container out in the garage. I'm going to do a bit more reading before I start these flower seeds.  

The poppies, however, I'd love to be able to start sooner than later.  One of my fondest wishes it to be successful with poppies. 

Two years in the making ....

 Back in 2020 the Fat Quarter Shop announced the Sewcialites quilt along. 

I thought "Hey, this will be great! I can totally keep up with one square a week."

But I was wrong. So very wrong. 

Oh, sure, I started out strong and did well for the first month.  Maybe. 

Then life happened, like it always does. Then I gradually fell behind.  If you are connected to my instagram account, you can track down the squares I shared photos of.  

I worked on squares, here and there, but didn't share most of them on any social media.  When I get that far behind on something, it's overwhelming.  Only that's not the right word.  It's hard to pull the project out and work on it. 

Sometime at the end of last year and the start of this year I decided I *was* going to finish it asap.  

You know what happened?  I didn't finish it asap.  

I dragged my heels. 

I pre-cut fabric for the squares and often messed up the measurements, which led to more frustration and putting the whole thing away. 

Deadlines were set, and promptly blown past. 

You know what I have learned. I do not do well with any kind of -along.  Well, I already knew that, but this really hammered that tidbit of knowledge home. 

Finally.  Eventually, I completed ALL the squares and sewed them together after I settled on a layout. 

I decided I really did not like the original layout suggestion.  I went looking through the groups and found a layout that I liked.  Then I decided to add a border. 

Then, the backing. In hindsight this may not have been the best idea, but I decided I was going to make it scrappy.  Shouldn't be hard, right? 

Well, me being me, I managed to make it hard. Earlier this year I had taken all my big scraps of fabric and cut them down to pre-cut sizes.  For some reason I decided that making the squares 9-inch was the way to go.  Which mean I had to trim down *everything.*

 This was when I first started laying out the squares for the backing. 

I eventually ran out of fabrics I thought would work together.  The backing wasn't big enough.  I broke down and purchased fabrics for the big squares and to make a border along all these squares. 

Finally, the backing is all sewn together.

Time to make the quilt sandwich. 

Thanks to the she shed, I have a space that I can lay everything out and be able to pin it together. No more getting the basting pins in the living room carpet. 

First step, lay down the backing. That is when I learned just how huge my backing is. 

It's fine, though.  Totally fine. 

I spent almost two hours pinning my quilt sandwich and the next day realized I had all kinds of pins and tucks going on. 

*Insert heavy sighs* Lots of heavy sighs. 

Funny how quick you can unpin a quilt sandwich. ... 

I pondered how to keep this from happening.  Then I remembered someone, somewhere, saying they use painters tape to keep everything down and prevent shifting. 

That is what I did.  I taped everything down. 

Success!

A few days later I finally started quilting it. Nothing fancy. Just some straight line quilting. Cause, after all this time, I wanted this quilt D-O-N-E, done!

Why yes, that *is* a new sewing machine. My husband found my dream machine and at a great price, and ordered it for my birthday a few months ago. Quilting this quilt was a *dream* thanks to all that throat space!

*ahem* 

Straight line quilting about an inch and a half apart.  The lines are straight-ish. 

Did I mention it was a dream to quilt on this machine? 

Once it was all done, I trimmed off the excess and discovered the backing wasn't as straight as I had hoped.  No biggie to me, though.  I think it looks kind of neat. 

So ... I suppose you are wondering what it looks like all complete. 

It looks awesome! 

To da!

The back

I'm happy with how it turned out, overall.  I'm *thrilled* that it's finally complete.  Probably in time for the next sewcialite quilt along to be announced. You know what I won't be doing? Sewcialite 2. 

It's fun to sew blocks I probably wouldn't attempt or feel are above my skill set, but I just can't keep up on these longer -alongs. 

Course, if I'm not seeing anything on social media, I won't feel like I'm falling behind on anything. 

In any case, I have quite a few projects in the queue I'd like to make and I never fall short on projects. No one will notice I'm not participating. 

In other news, or daily chit chat, I met the work deadline, with little time to spare.  At the last minute my internet decided to crap out on me. It was taking ages for emails to send and files to load.

The day started with a red sky which immediately turned into grey clouds.  It rained a soft rain for a good chunk of the day.  I decided today was the day to make a copy cat Starbucks lemon loaf.  The recipe called for mini loafs. That was too fussy, I decided, so it's being made in a regular bread pan. 

The evening will probably be a quiet one. When weather is like this, I don't have much enthusiasm to do anything. I keep telling myself the rain is very much needed for the garden. 

Spring

 This weekend was beautiful, weather-wise. The sun was out for most of the weekend.  A little bit of wind on Sunday.  The wind helped to get the snow melting. 

I opened up the greenhouse this weekend.  It's amusing to say that since I can't put anything out there yet.  I had to take a hammer to some ice and break it up so I could open the flap door and go in.  

I did spend a few minutes in there each day, thinking about how excited I was to get it last April. 

I bought all those fabric pots last year, and hardly used any.  I have plans for them this year. And all those water jugs that I had water in, to try and use as a passive solar heater.  I don't think they did a bit of good.  It's too cold up here. 

I looked around for damage of any kind. It looks like someone tried to nibble their way in, before the snow got deep. 

Depending on which thermometer you looked at, it was either close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 

or somewhere around 80. 

I made a quick walk around the house. 

The angel is getting uncovered. 

The one big "puddle" has returned.  It will be here until the frost goes out. 

And a gorgeous view of the garden area. 

Speaking of the garden - what's this?

If my eyes aren't deceiving me, I do believe I have some itty bitty baby plants. I spotted them this afternoon.

I tried to get a close up shot.  Hard to focus that close.

They may be as close to instant gratification for seed starting as it gets. Wow! 

Speaking of seeds, I remembered to take a photo of my outside project. 

Nothing fancy. Just a few small starter pots in a small planter.

I'm wondering if I should stick this over into the greenhouse, but then I'm worried the seeds will get too hot, sprout early, then die over night. 

Sometime last year I came across a YouTuber who was making videos showing off these solar water fountains she was making. My husband said he told me about solar fountains.  I vaguely remember him telling me about them.  My memory really stinks sometimes.

Anyhow, I was watching more of her videos, and decided to order myself a solar fountain pump.  I gave it a try this weekend and it really does work! I had tried it with a bucket and the hose.  Nothing fancy.  Sunday we went to Men@ards and picked up a inexpensive bird bath. 

I gave it a try this morning, with a spout cap. It's lovely, and the sound of the water was so soothing to hear. It' will be a while before I can set up my water fountain. This will be a nice substitute until I can get my big fountain set up.  Then I can set this up, and maybe another one or two, over in the garden area. 

Fun, right? 

One other thing I did this afternoon, before dinner, was to make an upside down pineapple cake. I use a recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction. Yum!