Updates

I would need several days of blogging to catch up on all that I've missed, so I'll just share some of the highlights from our mid-January snowstorm and the sewing I have been working on. I'm sure there will be more left for a randomday post tomorrow.

 About 13 inches of heavy snow in 12 hours tested the bendy-ness of our birch trees.

 We took a walk across the street. In all this year there have been 8 snow days for Tertia and 9 for Quarta. They will have extra days in the summer.

Trying to shake off the birches a bit.

After an hour or so outside it was nice to come inside and sew. I monopolized the family room floor for a day or so. The snow turned to freezing rain and Portland shut down; I just kept sewing.

 Outside the gutters overflowed with freezing rain and the icicles just got longer and longer. The back porch was covered with an inch of very slippery ice... we didn't go out that way.

 I finished the En Provence quilt top and the sun came out just in time for this photo shoot on the old sycamore tree. The front fence would have been too snowy.

This is embarrassing... I have a rather extreme backlog of the 2013-2016 mystery quilts now waiting to be quilted. Plus a few extra...

 Front to back, En Provence, String Star, Allietare. On the frame (for more than three years!), Farmer's Wife. Not pictured, Celtic Solstice and Grand Illusion. This was the picture I took to goad myself on to start machine quilting Farmer's Wife again. It worked! (Pictures of that maybe another time).

I enoyed the mystery quilt this year: it managed to give me the kick start I needed to at least attempt to get back into my neglected quilt corner. My everyday Viking machine is in working order this year, although it just suffered breakage of the "accessory box" and now only functions in free-arm mode. I hopped back into the APQ quilt-along of a low-tone Burgoyne Surrounded, also from about 3 years ago. I've been cutting many strips for my Scrap User's boxes and binge-watching Call the Midwife, and I may very well have yet another finished top if I keep up at this rate. I hope I do, and I hope I manage to get some much-needed house cleaning and organization done as well. And knitting, and spinning. It's really quite amazing what is possible when I'm no longer teaching every day. In a small way, of course... I'm not claiming the house is neat or anything! And there is no denying I need to have some serious purges of excess stuff.

In previous year's I've tried to do various things to keep me accountable to work on UFOs and WIPs. I haven't been blogging enough to make that realistic this year, but I will try to do periodic updates on progress. It's what I originally enjoyed about blogging years ago, and it gives me an incentive to keep on. So here's to keeping on!

More Weather, Some Setbacks, Slower Progress

Sunday was a snow/ice day. Church services were cancelled and we looked up one of my Dad's recent sermons on sermonaudio and had church in the living room. Monday was another 2 hour late start; today was a regular start day but Quarta had 2-hour early release. I had heard there was more snow coming so I did my run to Winco to buy supplies for the Last Noel... which is this Friday!

I browned the 10 pounds of ground beef I bought with some onions and celery and put it in the freezer for sloppy joes. I have all the supplies for punch and hot cider and Quarta and I have been baking cookies. So far there are frosted cut-outs, rosemary-walnut biscotti, chocolate-covered peanut butter balls (they would be buckeyes but they were fully immersed in chocolate), and another batch of fudge to replace what is almost gone now. Today I also made a big batch of granola.

The bad news... Peter's car, which was in an accident on the 1st, is now considered a total loss. I wish it hadn't taken so long to come to that conclusion, but oh well. That means he'll have to come home this weekend, return his rental and get a "new" car... but he might be here for the Last Noel, which would at least be some consolation. He's had a rough start to the year and the weather on his side of the state is at least as bad as here.

 These are some of the first photos I've taken on my new iPhone. Here you can see Allietare in the bottom right corner, and 11 blocks on the design wall. Progress on En Provence is continuing slowly. I can get one or two blocks pieced per day if I clear some serious sewing time, maybe more. I haven't had any serious sewing time today!

I'm liking the  pattern as it develops but I don't have any of the sashing laid out yet to see the overall pattern. I've discovered I prefer it if I trim the patches before joining them, but that takes longer. I'm not in a hurry though. I'm going to go ahead and post the link to the link-up at the Quiltville blog. I'm always amazed at how many people get their entire top finished, and quite a few have it quilted. I like my variety of yellows and purples and hope they make the quilt sparkle.

Now there's reason to hope/fear (pick one) that school will be cancelled tomorrow... over an inch and still coming down thickly. I don't think we've ever had so many snow days since moving here... the poor kids will be in school almost through June. Sure is pretty, and no ice rain so far. So here's the deal: I worked hard today so that, whether tomorrow is a snow day or not, I am determined to sew for about 2 episodes worth of Call the Midwife. I'm hoping it works. Then maybe I'll get to the point where I can start the sashing.

En Provence progress

En Provence Mystery link-up is here.  I stayed up late Monday and finished all the units, and then I took pictures of them yesterday to post but got distracted with Christmas stuff, a brief internet outage, and our family trip to see Rogue One.

So I am all caught up with the mystery quilt and I should spend any spare time I have putting the borders on Allietare. But I am dubious because there is more Christmas work to be done, including all the wrapping. And about 7 more rounds of knitting to finish.

When Grandma came over Sunday she brought the quilt top she finished last week with the fabric she picked out recently. She had the center pieced but needed more fabric for the borders, and I think it's really cute. I tried to get a picture of Daniel, home for Christmas and kindly holding the quilt for the picture, but it came out too blurry.

I haven't blogged since last week... and we had a 2-day school-closing snowstorm, rare for this area. I feel for poor Smudge, but he is certainly well-fed, so don't let his pathetic meowing fool you. I suspect he makes rounds in the neighborhood and picks up extra food that way.

North and South, on our street.

And Smudge again, telling me I should give him more food.

(Probably) Our Last Snow Day Pictures

It's probably the last big snow we'll have for a few years, so I took some more pictures yesterday.  Church was cancelled on Sunday, school cancelled again today.  I'm hopeful as a teacher that we'll be able to get caught up somehow, but it will be challenging.  But that's a worry for tomorrow.

 The freezing rain started Saturday night and coated everything.

 Underneath a top coat of ice there was soft, wet snow.

 I love how every twig and leaf shimmered under a coat of ice.

 and how the snow clings to the branches and the moss.

 The roads are mostly thawed now where the traffic is heaviest, but on the side streets you can still get hung up in slush. It's not so much that the roads are unsafe to drive, but the infrastructure and local services can't handle a large number of cars on the streets.  And of course, (speaking as a Midwesterner), the people here don't know how to drive in the snow.

 Daffodils and tulips, just biding their time.

 Poor coyote.  He probably wishes he was back in Arizona.

We get ice dams in the gutters that can cause leaking into the basement if they're not cleared out.

Steve just can't keep away from a snow shoveling job.

Snow Day and Casting On

 It's an atypical winter when we have a snowstorm like this.  Yesterday there were just a few spitting snowflakes when I left for school; by the time I got to Ridgefield there was white on the ground and the 8th graders were wired.  School districts called early release and people kept popping in to pick up their kids all morning long.

I left after my final class at 12:10 and took Secundus and a 4th grade girl home with me.  Quarta had to stay home sick and missed all the excitement.  What is normally a 20-minute commute was more than an hour of very slow-moving traffic, avoiding the highway which was blocked because of a bad accident.  We were really glad to get home safely.  It's unbelievably pretty outside.  What makes it unusual is that it has stayed far enough below freezing for the snow to still be powder and the streets are all snow-covered.

 And of course, they don't put anything on the streets to melt the snow or give traction, and there isn't a fleet of snowplows to clear the main streets.  Sometimes I miss the Midwest.  But it's even colder there.  We had a snow day today and there was some sledding and lots of snow shoveling (Steve is a bit obsessive about shoveling, but it's a useful obsession) and the girls carved a cave out of the snow pile.  I'll save those pictures for tomorrow.  However, you should realize that underneath all those inches of snow, there are daffodils growing.

 I decided to swatch in a completely different colorway, and I really like this one (the one on the right -- chocolate mint, it looks like).  Not like the refugee from the '70s that is on the left.  All the yarns are from thrifted unravelled sweaters, except for the white, which is my homespun.

So I cast on with Lucy Neatby's crocheted provisional cast-on.  321 stitches, including 4 steek stitches, at the base of the yoke, on size 5 needles.  I'm going to knit upwards through the yoke and make that  my goal for during the Olympics.  Then I will pick up the provisional cast-on and knit downwards for the body and sleeves.  I think this will work.  It should be fun trying, anyway.

When it Snows in the Northwest

 ... it's never too far from rain.  Schools are cancelled, kids rush out to play... in the slush.  Grown-ups have to work.  News professionals adopt their serious, civic-minded voices as they urge extreme caution for anyone who needs to go out (on clear or only slightly wet roads).  By mid-afternoon, most teenagers wind up at the mall, and the snow has usually changed to rain.  This week, drenching rain, enough to flood the basement with rising groundwater.  Not a terrible flood, thanks to some of the repairs we made last year, but a definite nuisance.

The girls managed to make a snowgirl before it was washed away.  I didn't have the heart to tell them what a real, Northeast Ohio winter was like when I was growing up.  This will probably be it for their snow memories this year.  Sigh.  Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

I am immensely pleased with this picture.  As soon as she saw it snowing Monday, Tertia donned her jacket and raced outside to taste the snowflakes.  It's such a gift, having a child's heart always.  This came home to me this week, as we had to sign a permission slip for her to watch the PG-13 movie "The Outsiders" with her Lit class after reading the book.  She's really growing up, becoming a young lady, in so many ways.  We were worried the movie might be too intense for her, but she said she watched the whole thing: "I was a brave princess."  A brave princess who knows one must rush outside to taste the snowflakes when they first start falling.

Sturm und Drang

This is the shawl known as Damson, made in lovely MadelineTosh Merino Light in the "thunderstorm" colorway.  The yarn and pattern were a gift in a Christmas exchange among my knitting circle.  The knitting of it was more frustrating than a simple pattern like that really had the right to be.  I cast on New Year's Day but ripped back at least 3 times before really getting started at the end of January... and then there was the little adventure of running out of yarn for the last 5 rows.  I had to substitute some of my homespun in a similar value but with a thick-and-thin texture, so the border edging is not going to lie perfectly flat.

But then, I got rid of my perfectionism years ago or I would no longer be doing handwork at all.

Snow day today.  Yes, that's just 2 or 3 inches of snow and the roads were fine, but that's how things go here.  It makes a  nice background for my photo shoot.

Despite what you might think would be optimal conditions for knitting, I have done none yesterday or today.  Quilting either.  Yesterday I blocked the shawl and did some cooking: Mexican lasagna for dinner last night with plum cobbler for dessert.  Tonight it will be Gumbo Zeb from the freezer, with hot sausage.