As for many of you, this winter has been exceptionally mild. It’s not unusual for us to get a burst of above freezing temps for a few days, or even a week in February, but it doesn’t last.
Except for this year.
Other than the first week, day-time temps have consistently been above freezing, even making it into double digits a couple of times. And its expected to remain that way right until the end of the month.
Of course, that means my gardens are getting very excited.
There is just green everywhere you look! And not just bulbs, but most of the perennials are greening up too.
I’m trying not to get too excited. Normally, I wouldn’t see flowers of any sort until the middle to end of April. I did plant some early bloomers (crocus, snowdrops, and winter aconite) but still – in a normal world, I wouldn’t be seeing them bloom until early April at the earliest.
I certainly wouldn’t be seeing hyacinths budding up in mid-February!!!!!
Andy pussywillow “blooming” this early – definitely unusual
So far, it’s only the pink one. But the black one isn’t far behind – and the regular one, and weeping pussywillow out front are budding up. As are the lilacs and my Burning Bush.
It’s got me really worried that this mild February means something really nasty is coming for us in March!
We had a little “adventure” with the wee ginger mister last week.
One wet, rainy afternoon, I was off to the vet with Burton and Relic (nothing serious, just vaccinations). When I came back, Lemmy didn’t come out to greet us. Lemmy ALWAYS comes out to greet me when I get home from wherever.
Dave had been napping on the couch, so he wasn’t sure where Lemmy was. I went upstairs to check… no Lemmy. I came back downstairs and checked every nook and cranny – no Lemmy.
I called him. Lemmy ALWAYS comes when he’s called – still no Lemmy.
As I said before, Lemmy hasn’t figured out the cat doors yet. But he has a habit of running out onto the sun porch as soon as we open the door to go in or out. Frequently, we leave him out there so he can watch the birds, etc from the porch. And maybe… just maybe he might figure out how the cat door works… but not yet.
So… I checked the sunporch – no Lemmy. I moved to go out to the catio yard…. and there he was – wet and sitting on the steps!!!
Had he FINALLY figured out how to use the cat doors??? But if so… why was he sitting out in the rain, looking pathetic?
I brought him and discovered the wet wasn’t the worst of it…
It was raining pretty heavy, and with that and the melted snow, there were a couple muddy spots in the yard. And it looks like he found them all!
I put aside the question of “Did he use the cat door or didn’t he?” for a while so I could run him a bath.
It was his second ever bath, and he did not like it anymore than the first.
Although he did seem to enjoy the drying off part much better this time around.
With him cleaned, and mostly dry, it was time to go back to the question of how he got out. Since the incident, he hasn’t used the cat doors at all.
Dave doesn’t remember letting him onto the porch while I was gone, and I don’t think he was out there before I left, but neither of us can say for sure. And the door that leads from the porch to the catio yard doesn’t latch. It was windy that day, and once while Dave was out there, there was a gust strong enough to open it enough that he could have run out. And when it closed again, he couldn’t figure out how to get back in.
That’s our best theory – it’s that or he did figure it out and is so traumatized, he refuses to repeat the feat. Though he’s still running out onto the porch under our feet.
I really want to get working on my red and cream quilt for myself, but I ‘ve got a couple projects floating around that I want to get out of the way first. They aren’t projects that have actually been officially started, mostly just the fabrics have been gathered into a pile and I have a vague or not-so-vague idea of what I want to do with them.
One such is a black and white cat quilt.
Ages ago, when I made Les Chats Fantastique, I had a pile of 10″ squares leftover from the layer cake. They were all black and white cat-themed fabric and I knew they would be great in a monochrome quilt.
On it’s own, there wasn’t enough squares for a decent size lap quilt, so over time, as I’ve made other cat-themed quilts, I’ve set aside appropriate leftovers.
And the other day, I found myself with an unexpectedly slow day at work, so I decided to get started.
I’ve learned, that when I get these bursts of energy and productivity, it’s best to ride them out as long as possible. Normally, I would stop sewing around 4 or 5 pm… but this time I just kept going. And not long after 6…
I had a respectable-sized (46″ x 64″) lap quilt top!
The block is the Pins and Paws pattern. It’s super easy to put together a whole clowder of kitties! And there are so many fun kitty fabrics in it.
Naturally, it’s Burton-approved!
On one of my last MSQ orders, I got 4 yards of this cute kitty print for the back. It’s not flannel, but otherwise it’s purrfect! And the whole thing will be bound up with more of the white paw print.
Now I just have to book a quilting weekend with Mom!
Progress is being made on the Crimson Blossom shawl, albiet much slower than my foxes from yesterday
I’ve completed two repeats on the first side. It requires a total of five repeats (so three more to go) then a final edge chart. Then I have to repeat the whole thing on the second side.
So still a ways to go… but stitching away on that lace is a wonderful way to finish out each day.
My two project enforcers were firmly in place Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening…
So I made excellent progress on my frolicking foxes
I finished the second fox, all the leaves that surrounded the first two foxes, and made a solid start on the third, and last fox. This project is going far quicker than I thought it would. I’m going to have to start thinking about what my next stitching project will be.
With February here, and Valentine’s day literally around the corner (tomorrow!!!!), it was time to update Burton’s chaise decor.
I pulled out some fabric leftover from the Mod Cat Sampler and made some simple heart blocks. Like the Mod Cat Sampler, I echoed the black and white checkerboard background. Added a quick border and some paw-print binding, and bing, bang, boom, Burton has a Valentine’s quilt!
Uh… Lemmy…. I said BURTON has a Valentine’s quilt.
Don’t tell me I’m going to have to get a SECOND chaise and make a SECOND set of quilts for you, Lemmy!
Lemmy’s Modus Operandi: Scream until you get what you want.
Eventually, he did get distracted, and gave up the throne to the rightful ruler…
Ok.. it’s time to admit it. I am just NOT good a being frugal.
Yes dear readers… I have failed again in my attempts to have an no spend month. But not on what you might be thinking.
It wasn’t fabric, it wasn’t clothes, it wasn’t even plants!
It was a motherlode of camera equipment.
So here’s how it happened…
I was browsing Facebook Marketplace. Not with the intention to actually buy anything. There are a certain style of canister from the ’70s I’m keeping my eye out for. I have several saved, though like my fish – most aren’t anywhere around here.
And Marketplace’s algorithms must be really weird, because I always get a bunch of random, unrelated things in my search results. One of those things was a digital SLR Canon camera.
Longtime readers will recall that I had and adored one for many, many, many, many years. Until the day I dropped it face-first on the lens, jamming up the focus mechanism. Dave tried to fix it, to no avail. The buttons on the camera were also getting sticky and non-co-operative (I believe they were full of salt from our trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in 2018).
At the time, I didn’t have the money to have it fixed, or buy a new one. Then with the move, and all the house stuff since, the camera was not a priority. My iphone took surprisingly good pictures and we got along just fine.
But back to that camera listing… it was was for a camera, slightly newer than mine, with lens for only a few hundred dollars. Definitely less than what it would cost me to fix mine, should I be so inclined.
It wasn’t anywhere close to here, so I wouldn’t be buying it. But it got me thinking (always the first step to disaster…)… what else was out there.
So I searched for digital SLR cameras in my area. And boy howdy… there are A LOT of them out there for sale!!! My theory is that phone cameras have advanced so much, for your average person who just wants to snap decent shots of family, friends and pets.. it doesn’t make sense to have anything fancier. (Not to mention the ease of which to upload those pictures to various apps and socials).
Again… I was really just browsing. I figured with so much out there, I could definitely wait until March to get one, if I was so inclined.
But then I saw the listing that contained all the things you see above. It included:
12 megapixel camera and standard lens
Telephoto Lens
Macro Lens
Prime Lens
External flash
Remote trigger
Tripod
Bag
Various lens filtres, and other lens attachments
Cleaning kit
ALLLLLLL of that for just $600. WTF???? I re-read the listing six times just to be sure he didn’t really mean $1600. Even if I kept my camera body with it’s sticky buttons, I’d need almost $1000 to get all those lenses, not to mention the other goodies.
And even then – I didn’t jump on it. Dave and I had gone out for lunch that day, and I told him what I found. He, of course, told me to get it. He rarely tries to curb my spending, unless it involves getting another cat, or buying a 12ft skeleton for the yard.
Still… I decided to sleep on it.
And I woke up the next morning and promptly messaged the gentleman, hoping no one else had snapped up the amazing deal. They hadn’t and soon we were headed to Sarnia to pick it all up.
I STILL can’t believe my luck.
I haven’t had a tonne of time to play with it yet, but I’ve snapped a few pictures here and there. My iphone does take great pics… but
Just check out the amazing detail – in the whiskers, the fur around the nose… the sheer detail of just how annoyed Burton is at having the camera shoved in his face repeatedly!
I can’t wait to get outside – the telephoto is going to help me get pictures of all the birds and squirrels… and imagine the detail of all the little bugs I’m going to get in my garden with that macro lens!
Forget Frugal February! It’s now FABULOUS FIND FEBRUARY!
In addition to the cats, and newt, we also have a betta. Samantha bought him for Dave a few months ago. (He still doesn’t have a name…. gladly taking suggestions, because I just call him Fish)
Like all of our previous bettas, he lived in the large (about 2 gallons) fish bowl I’ve had since forever. It looked like one of these:
About a month ago, Dave went into the music studio (where Fish lives on his desk), and there was water all over the desk. After a moment of puzzlement, Dave realized it came from the bowl, and soon discovered that the bowl had a large crack in the bottom. The water wasn’t leaking fast, but it was leaking.
We went out that night and got Fish a new, larger, fancier tank. And I decided to repurpose the the bowl for something I’ve wanted to make for a LONG time!!! A terrarium!!!!
When I was at Mom’s last, I stopped by Terra, a super-large nursery chain in her area that has a fabulous selection of house plants, including many that were weird and wonderful.
I got a couple tiny ferns, and Asian Pitcher Plant, and a Venus Fly Trap. Now the Fly Trap is something I’ve tried to grow several times, but I can never keep it moist enough, so I’m thinking the terrarium is the wat to go. The Pitcher plant is also carnivorous, and very cool looking.
My plan was to stop by the dollar store to get a small plastic dinosaur or two to complete my set up. Unfortunately, small dinosaurs are hard to come by at the moment. If I want robot dinos, I’m set… but that just wasn’t the vibe I was looking for.
It wasn’t until I got home and was rummaging around on the porch for my potting stuff that I remembered I bought a small set of gnome decorations for the “woodland garden”. Since I never got around to starting that before winter, they were still in the box.
They were just perfect! As the plants grow, I’ll probably have to take one or two decorations out, but for now, everyone looks nice and happy.
I picked up a couple bottled of distilled water, because I’ve red that carnivorous plants can be quite fussy about the minerals in tap water. Hopefully, this will be the ticket to keeping these guys growing and thriving!
I really feel like I’m seeing double a lot lately….
When they are still and quiet like this, it’s very easy to tell them apart. But when they are streaking by at the speed of light… good luck!
And pretty much every afternoon, I can count on a Ginger Cat Insanefest as they rip from one side of the house to the other and back again. Rupert, despite his age (he’s eight this year, can you believe it???), loves to play chase. And he doesn’t really care if he’s the pursuer, or the pursued. They often flip flop roles throughout the game.
Lemmy has quickly learned that Burton is for wrestling, but Rupert is for running.
We think Lemmy is very close to six months old now, and he’s already just a smidge bigger than Rupert. Rupert, being an adult, is more filled out. But not because he’s fat – Rupert isn’t fat at all – it’s that Lemmy is at that really long, gangly adolescent stage.
And there are lots of other differences too. Lemmy is lighter in colour, and has stripes where Rupert has swirls. And Lemmy had three white chest/belly patches, where the only bit of white on Rupert is on the very tip of his tail.
And of course, the biggest difference is their expressions… Lemmy is all sweetness and light…
Where as Rupert looks like he’s spent his life sucking on lemons…
It’s perpetual catitude with this one. I say he has “sauce-face” because he’s always so saucy.
They are just my little sweet and sour ginger pair!
Since we moved, Dave has almost stopped driving. He’ll drive if he has to, but after 15+ years of daily commuting over a long distance in a very busy metropolitan area, he’s more than content to let me drive.
I don’t mind being the driver, but it does mean I don’t get to do much travel knitting anymore.
But the other day, I took him to a doctor appointment, and had to wait! Perfect time to dust off an old sock project.
Remember these???? I started them back in May of last year! I got past the heel and then they got tucked away. I didn’t forget about them, but I just never got around to picking them up!
Dave’s appointment wasn’t terribly long, so I only got an inch or two done. Hopefully, I can keep these top of mind and it won’t take me another 9 months to knit another inch on them.
Wandering Cat Studio 