…and Burton knows just what to do.

It has been a mostly glorious week. Sure,a few days were cloudy, and one even rained, but to have afternoon above 10 degrees C…. fabulous!

This coming week is not expected to be quite as nice, so we took advantage of the sun and warmth and spent as much time outside as possible.

It’s still early to do much in the garden, but I cleared away some winter detritus, and cut down a few old stems, and was rewarded with a little more green poking through.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Top Row L-R: Allium, Yarrow and Leopard’s Bane. Bottom Row: Day Lilies, black Irises, and Chrysanthemums.

The trees still aren’t showing much in the way of signs of life, with the exception of my lilac.

She never disappoints. She is one plant I’m really going to miss when we move. You may recall, she’s a double bloom white with just a hint of pink (White Russian). I’d never seen one like her before, and I’ve never seen one since. Doubtless there are more out there, and I really hope so. She’s too big to dig up and take with me. She was one of the first things I planted here.

One thing that didn’t fare well this winter is my birdbath

I guess I should have brought it in last fall. I thought I had enough clear on it to weather the winter, but apparently not. It’s only on the bottom half, which is odd. But oh well, I can always strip off the remaining bits and repaint the bottom. It’s not like I don’t have a boatload of paint!

Is your world getting sunnier and greener?

I’ve mentioned before the Relic is a REALLY BIG cat, and Rupert is a REALLY SMALL cat. But I think this picture sums it up perfectly

It didn’t take long at all to burn through the snowballed blocks I had cut up for my last Leader/Ender project. There was just 48, just enough for a baby blanket, and they are all ready to be assembled into a top now.

Which means I needed another L&E project. My basket of 4 inch scraps was overflowing so I figured I should do something with them before things got out of hand. My plan was to make four patches for a Jacob’s Ladder quilt, but as I started going through them, I noticed there were quadruples (or more) of quite a few of the prints. So I switched gears and chopped up a pile of black solid squares.

And I’m now happily making a pile of cheerful nine-patches instead.

And I’ve got quite a few scraps to go through so this L&E should last a while!

Here’s where my other projects are at:

• Cluckin’ Eh! – Ready for quilting
• Spinwheels – Nine pinwheels left
• Around the World in 256 Days – Ready for top assembly
• Homecoming quilt – Just got to sew assemble and sew the last round.
• Which way, Baby? – Ready for top assembly.
• L&E quilt – As you see above

Since I last showed you anything on the needles, by knitting has been mostly neglected. I haven’t even put any of my required rows on the mohair stole. I only knit in the evenings, and lately, I just haven’t had the energy.

But, the last few nights, I finally found some juice, and focused all my stitches on the Burger Baby socks.

The Hamburger colourway of Felici makes a great pair of shortie socks. Like the full length pair I made, the pattern is The Socks Are Lava.

The full length pair are being sent off this week. But this pair, I’ll hang onto until the beginning of June when our Miss Rowan turns 13!!! I’ve got a few other things planned for her gift, but it’s nice to be ahead of the game with these.

Saturday was eaten up by errands and there was no time to sew. So you can bet your bottom dollar I was devoting Sunday to my little black machine. I really wanted to complete at least one top on the weekend, and since my lovely chickens have been sew patient, I decided they would be the big winner (but not winner, winner, chicken dinner). They just needed their nesting boxes (sashing) and a border, so it really only took a couple of hours.

That’s sixteen cluckers all snug and happy in their homes. And as you can see, I had a nice chicken-themed fabric for the outside border too.

This was such a fun one to put together. I really love that chicken block, and it was a great use for my “Hen Pals” layer cake. The whole thing finished up at about 68″ square.

As I mentioned before, I bought enough of the chicken wire fabric for the back. And I felt it really needed something red for the binding.

There wasn’t a lot of red in the stash to choose from. But there was just enough of the border fabric leftover from Shave and a Haircut. I think it will bring out the red and golds in the chicken blocks nicely.

So this one is ready for quilting this weekend. Look for an FO post sometime next week!

“Yay Mom! We did it! We put those cluckers in their place!!!”

Last week was a rough week, workwise. My job is deadline driven, but it relies on people to get me information in time to meet said deadlines. Last week, those people were dropping the ball on those deadlines, leaving me to scramble and make sure we got work done on time.

Most weeks aren’t like that, so I can handle the occasional bad one. But by the time it was over, I just wanted a short, simple sewing sewing to help me decompress.

Unfortunately, most of my projects are at the top assembly stage. Nothing short of simple about that. Luckily, I had just one that was still at the block building stage. My colourful pinwheels. And with everything cut and ready to go, it was nice and simple.

With in an hour, I had six more to add to my collection

I laid them out with the others, and it gives me 16 in total so far.

So colourful. They were just the thing to lighten my mood.

It’s that time of year again. That time when mother nature does crazy stuff just to mess with us.

Case in point:

• Tuesday… Minus 9 degrees C, with bloody freezing wind making it feel like minus 15!
• Wednesday… Balmy 11 degrees C, with beautiful sun and snow melting everywhere.
• Thursday… SCREW YOU GARDENERS!!!! It’s back to freezing again, oh and here’s some more flurries!!!

Sigh… but ’tis the season. I know better than to get excited. We don’t see real spring until at least mid-April here. We don’t see actual blooms on flowers until the very end of April, (unless you’re a lucky gardener who can get snow drops to bloom… I’m am not said gardener).

But still, you know only that beautiful Wednesday, I was out poking around in the gardens to see what I could see. Mostly I could see that I have a literal crap tonne of peanut shells to clean up (thanks Squirrelington’s!). But, there was a little green here and there.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Clockwise from top left: Daffodil, Oriental Poppies, Iris, Sedum, and Tulips.

It’s not much, and as I said, we still have weeks to go until the real fun begins. But right now, this promise of things to come is enough!

Bonus pic…

I’m not the only one excited about the promise of spring!

We’ve reached the last week of the Round Robin 7, and the prompt for the final week was pinwheels! I love making pinwheels, so I was thrilled. I was a little less thrilled when I had to decide how to combine them with the log cabins from the week before.

After a little pondering, the idea came to me. After some quick, not overly-precise calculations, I figured I had enough material left to make 8″ cabins and pinwheels and combine the two into another full border, all the way around. This would make my quilt about 82″ square, but I like making big quilts.

I got to work on the log cabins first.

Up until now, I’ve only made cabins with 2.5 inch strips. But to get a nice variety of fabrics in an 8″ block, I needed to go smaller. These ones are 1.5 inch (with a 2.5″ centre door). I made 20 in total.

Then I got to making pinwheels, in two sizes.

Eight inch and six inch. Then I assembled those pinwheels into four units.

One for each side.

And it’s there that I had to stop. My not-so-precise calculations didn’t factor in my background fabric. I had enough to finish my blocks, but not quite enough to finish the borders. It’s not a problem though – I have lots more, it’s just on a bolt that lives at Mom’s. I’ll pop up there this weekend and grab a couple more yards.

In the meantime, the quilt is too big to layout and let you see the whole thing… but this should give you an idea of where I’m heading with these blocks.

That gap between the pinwheels and cabins will be filled with plain cream fabric. And the border will repeat all the way around with pinwheels in the centre and cabins hugging the corners.

And once that’s done, this baby will be ready to quilt! Hurrah!

You all know how exciting Squirrelington’s can be… well the other day, things got a lot more exciting!

The weather was warmer (About 7C/44F), so Relic was thrilled to be outside. The sun was shining, the snow was melting… and he decided a good place to enjoy this promise of Spring was on top of the garden cart… which is, of course, the main dining area of Squirrelington’s.

I didn’t think much of it… the squirrels would just have to wait until his cat nap was over to enjoy a snack. It’s not like he was going to eat all the peanuts on them.

Well… one brave (or foolhardy) squirrel decided the wait to get in was just too long. And he decided to take a chance…

And Relic just sat there while the squirrel grabbed a peanut and left. In truth, that doesn’t surprise me. Relic has shown zero interest in chasing the squirrels. I think he knows they are too darn fast. The only thing Relic likes to chase are butterflies and baby buns. He doesn’t even bat an eye at the adult bunnies.

But that squirrel…. well let’s just say that squirrel has some serious kahonies! And he didn’t just do it once! He came back multiple times.

I’m too cheap to pay the extra $100 a year to add video to the blog… but you can check them out on the Bearbottom Facebook page. (You don’t need to have Facebook to see it – it’s public!)

There’s never a dull moment around here!

What’s up???

Chicken butt!!!

But seriously… another afternoon of sewing saw me finish up all my little hen blocks.

I just love these ladies! All those chicken-themed fabric in a chicken block… it just hits all my buttons! With them all done, I was about ready to sew the sashing when I decided they needed a little something more. Those poor girls were sitting on the cold hard ground… they needed nests!

I found some nice straw-coloured fabric in the stash, and added a nest strip, as well as another wire strip to square things up, and now my girls are nice and cozy. If I was thinking of it before. I would have made it so the “nests” came up around their sides…

But I can live with this. On another afternoon, I’ll sash them all together, which will create their “nesting boxes” add a border and then I’ll have a completed top!

Though I think I have to spend this afternoon giving someone some love… I think he’s feeling a little neglected!