When you last saw my gardens, everything was green and beautiful and I told you something bad was coming!

It hit Wednesday. It started out as wet snow

I think Burton’s face sums up how we felt about it.

After a few hours, it looked like this….

And the snow turned to ice pellets – then freezing rain. It continued overnight, and in the morning, we woke up to a crunchy icy wonderland. Happily, we didn’t lose power, which was my main concern when they announced the impending storm the day before.

All my poor little bulbs were buried, with barely a hint in sight

Only a few were above the snow. Happily, they weren’t so advanced that this little freeze will hurt them.

My pussywillows look a little sad with their little hats of ice (but I just love that pop of pink!!!)

There are just rows and rows of icicles on every eave and edge around.

I probably should have brought my solar lanterns in for the winter, but they look pretty with their little crowns of icicles

And everywhere everything is just encased in ice. It would have been prettier if the sun was shining, but though the storm had passed, the skies remained grey.

The weather is warming up again, so all this frostiness won’t last. But I’m sure Mother Nature has another round or two left in store for us

Everybody is kung fu fighting…

Those cats were fast as lightning…

It was a little bit frightening…

But they kept kung fu fighting**

** Not the lyrics, I know…

The other day, I decided to finally try out the long lens I’d gotten in that great camera score.

Unlike the townhouse, most of the squirrels here are still very wary of me. So they seemed like the perfect subject for this stealthy paparazzo and her fancy new lens.

I was not disappointed…

This beautiful grey girl was very excited about the fresh batch of peanuts I’d put in the feeder.

I spent a good half an hour or so snapping pictures of her as she ran back and forth grabbing one peanut at at time…

The lens is even better than I hoped.

I can get decent shots from almost clear across the yard.

Now… to try it on all the wonderful birds that come to the yard!

This last little while, I’ve really needed some mindless knitting, so I (temporarily!) set aside the lace shawl to give that poor neglected Static sock some love.

And I managed to get the first one finished! The Static yarn (from Knit Picks) is just as nice to knit with as their Felici and Stroll (I suspect it’s the same base). And as you can see, it’s dyed, more or less in stripes, but in a crazy, wild mottled pattern. It makes a nice looking sock. This colourway is Seaside.

I have a couple other skeins of it in the stash (Beekeeper and Peppercorn). It looks like Knit Picks is doing the same thing with the Static as they do with the Felici – releasing a pile of colourways each year, and discontinuing the others. The colours up on the site now are all inspired by old… sorry…. retro TV shows.

I’d like to buy some more, but the yarn closet is overflowing, and I don’t knit as much as I used to. I’ll just have to be content with the skeins I do have.

I finished up the frolicking foxes on the weekend. That last, sleepy fox and the few leaves left took no time at all to complete.

Then it was onto the outlining in black. Sometimes all that back-stitching can be a slog, but like everything else on this project, it just flew by.

The leaves, particularly, look a lot better with their outlining. They look like leaves instead of weird blobs. But the foxes faces definitely needed the definition. And I love how the outlining is all broken, and sketchy, really evoking that feeling of floof!

I’m still debating how to properly finish this piece. My original idea was to sew it into a panel on a purse or a bag. But that would require me making a purse or a bag, and they aren’t my favourite things to sew.

I may just get it professionally framed. It’s such an odd shape and size, I probably won’t be able to find a frame to fit it.

So I’ll sit and ponder it for a while… and go looking for a new tiny needle project!

Two weeks have passed since you last saw my Round Robin quilt, and that means two more prompts.

Prompt #3 was hourglass, and like the spool prompt, it had me a little stumped. I don’t have a lot of experience with it. Though there are several ways to make it; I think the “nicest” is as a quarter-square triangle. I’m getting better at them, but they can still be tricky.

Like the spool, I decided to wait for prompt #4.

And boy, was I excited when I found out prompt #4 was geese! I knew just what to do

First, I made up a whole boatload of giant geese

These geese are 8.5″ x4.5″ – the biggest geese I’ve made yet.

Those geese got sewing into sets of four, then each set was sewn facing another set. and boom! Hourglass!

I still needed something for the corners though. So I whipped up some HSTs, and sewed them to some plain squares and boom!

Put them all together, and what do you got???

Another fabulous round on another fabulous quilt!

I’m not the only one excited about the milder weather.

The cats have been outside more than they’ve been inside lately. I think Lemmy’s little muddy adventure was the catalyst to him FINALLY figuring out the cat doors. I haven’t actually seen him do it yet – but he ends up outside without Dave or I opening the door, so the only other option is teleportation.

And when they are out there, there’s a whole lot of this:

and this:

And definitely this:

They are going to be even more upset than me if the weather turns in March.

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!