Here we are in February. I’ve mentioned before the February is the hardest month for me. It may be the shortest month, but it tends to be a very grey month. The skies are grey, and if we have snow, it’s usually at the grey, gross, slushy stage. It’s too early to start seeds, and there’s no prospect of anything happening in the garden.

It’s a month that just tends to drag on for me.

So, I rely on my indoor blooms.

Another bloom on the Passion Flower. I’m so pleased this one is doing so well in the house this winter. I have a very hard time overwintering tender plants like these. It’s so hard to give them enough light and humidity.

I’ve actually had this little Kalanchoe since before Christmas. It was in a little deer-shaped planter. I’ve put the planter away with the other Christmas decor, but I put the plant on the kitchen window. And as you can see, it’s very happy. I’ll probably give it a bigger pot in the spring and put it on the sun porch for the summer.

And in orchid world…

My light pink orchid (which was bought before Christmas at Walmart) had put out a couple bloom off shoots from the original bloom spike. I know they can do this, but I’ve never seen it happen when there are still flowers on the first spike

The only time I’ve seen it happen is like here…

When your blooms are finished, you can follow the stem down. If there are nodes that are a little open, cut just above them, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get a new spike at the node. This one is on the bright yellow orchid that I bought in last summer.

I think orchids may be my emotional support plants!

I tend to make a big deal about Burton being the main character in the sewing room. And while he’s definitely involved – I think Lemmy may actually beat him for hours “on the job”

This scratcher is in the sewing studio, just to the right of my sewing machine (Burton’s bassinet is to the left of the machine). And if I’m at the machine, you can pretty much guarantee that Lemmy is in the scratcher.

In fact, with the exception of bed time, Lemmy is almost always within petting distance of me. If I’m in the gardens, he’s keeping an eye on me from the catio. If I’m cooking, he’s hanging out in the kitchen to see if I’ll share any scraps. if I’m painting, he’s usually on chair beside me. If I’m working he’s almost always in the office cat tree beside my desk. If I’m knitting or stitching in my chair, he’s either in my lap or on one of his cardboard scratchers on the floor in the living room.

But when bed time rolls around… he’s with Dave. He sleeps between Dave’s feet pretty much every night. He comes to me for a little scratch, but as soon as I stop petting him – he’s back to Dave’s feet.

Such a funny ginger shadow.

The weekend once again saw some work on my paint by number.

Bit by bit, I got the little hummingbird all filled in.

This included mixing up a colour to make up for the one paint pot that was all dried up. I’m pretty pleased with my efforts.

And I’m happy to tell you that I found my easel! I stumbled across it when tidying up the sewing studio last weekend! To be honest, it was in plain sight… but we’re not going to comment on that.

On a recent trip to Home Depot, I picked up a 1/4 inch hardboard project panel, which serves as a perfect support to tape my canvas too.

Now Lemmy and I have to tackle all those big pink flowers! We’ve got a big job ahead of us!

I was planning on trying to finish the slanted four patch quilt on the weekend… but I just wasn’t up to sewing long rows this weekend.

Instead I decided to focus on something new. A few weeks ago, we learned that one of our Post Office ladies will be retiring at the end of April. I think that calls for a quilt!

I dug in into the deep stash and came up with a line I’ve had forever. It’s called Go Tell the Bees… and it’s appropriate, because 1) This area is known for honey production and the town mascot is Alvin the Bee, and 2) she’s not really a post office lady – she actually works for the township office, and part of her duties involve dealing with parcels that don’t fit in our post office boxes. (Basically, the township office doubles as a retail postal outlet).

I knew I wanted something somewhat traditional, but I only had two charm packs (they were bought way back when I didn’t have a lot of quilting experience), so what I could actually do with them was pretty limited.

Burton and I spent a good morning on the design bed playing around with combinations. Finally we settled on floating stars.

You all know how I love star blocks! And the floating star is one of the easiest! It’s basically a nine patch with a little extra snowballing.

But.. to do stars, I’d need something for the star legs. I went stash diving again.

I came up with this lovely light rusty orange. It matched perfectly with some dark tones in the prints of the charm pack. (There’s something to be said for having a very large stash!). It was also a wonderful contrast to the dark purple squares I planned to use as the centre of each block.

To make the floating star, you take four of your charm squares, and start snowballing. First one corner.

Then the second

Instant star legs! And the best part of making floating stars – it’s impossible to lose your points!

After that, it’s just a matter of assembling your nine patch

It took the rest of the afternoon, but by dinner time, we had 12 beautiful floating star blocks.

Now, of course, I’m going to get a little fancy with the layout – but that’s for another day. One where I’m up to sewing long seams.

I was hoping to get this one finished – and I probably could have but for one thing. French knots are really hard on the hands. And you can see.. the one is ALL ABOUT THE FRENCH KNOTS.

I may take me two more weekends to finish – just to give my hands a bit of rest.

Sock knitting has been on the hold for the last week. A friend in Ottawa has a daughter who will be starting kindergarten in the fall. I’ve been meaning to make her a kitty cat hat forever… and finding out that she’s almost kindergarten age… well I was running out of time!

Dave and I stopped at a Michaels and i let him pick the yarn. It’s Loops and Threads “Soft Classic” in Lotus Blossom.

The pattern, of course, my Seamless Kitty Cat hat pattern.

I made the biggest size, and I’m actually worried it’s going to be a little too big. But she can always grow into it!

And now, I better get back to those socks.

Since about November, Dave and I have been thrifting on the regular. Sarnia offers us a nice little circuit of thrifts shops we can hit weekly as we run our “city” errands (hitting Home Depot, Walmart, and the other bigger stores we don’t have closer to home).

It starts at the ReStore, then to Value Village, then to the Mission Thrift Store, and ending at Talize. It’s a nice way of getting a little exercise in the cold weather… you really have to walk every inch of the stores to find the treasures!

And then of course, there’s the actual treasures! This month we’ve discovered…

It’s missing it’s lid and other accessories – but I don’t actually make fondue so that doesn’t matter! It matches my other pieces, and that’s enough for me. I’m thinking I may just pop a plant in her, and put her on one of the kitchen shelves.

We don’t do a tonne of entertaining – mostly just around Christmas. But over the last couple of years, I’ve come to understand the need for pretty snack dishes. These three pieces match the glaze on some other little dishes I bought early last year. They will be perfect for laying out some dips, crackers, pickles, etc.

Naturally, I’m always on the look out for garden things in the thrift stores.

And faerie garden things are even better. The above twig pieces are a bigger scale than my other faerie garden stuff, so I’m not quite sure where I’ll put them, but I’m sure I’ll find a spot!

This one is more on scale with the pieces I already have. I think the gnome village is going to have to expand this year.

And did you know thrift stores can be a great place to get fabric?

The first piece is 7.5 full yards! Perfect for a quilt backing. The next two pics are both flannel. The centre are two full yard pieces. I’m going to get another yard of something coordinating, and make a fun three-yard Christmas quilt. And the last is just over a yard – perfect for the back of a baby quilt. And I have no shortage of puppy fabric!

This next piece is just over a yard. I think there’s enough that I can use the bottom banner for a valance on the second kitchen window. We just have a blind on it now, and I think it would be a nice compliment to the ones over the window by the sink.

I have lots of chicken fabric in the stash that I can use with the leftover red pieces.

And last… no thrifting trip would be complete without something for the kids…

A cute little treat jar – certainly much nicer than having those little pouches hanging about the kitchen!

I know.

I said I did not need to buy ANY more yarn. That I wasn’t going to buy ANY more yarn.

But then Araignee just happened to mention that Knit Picks brought back Felici! For those that don’t know – Felici is probably my most favorite sock yarn. It’s soft, it wears well and it’s got big fat stripes! And I’d pretty much used up all the Felici I had in my stash.

And then Knit Picks went and DISCONTINUED IT!!! They brought in a new one called Felicini, with skinny stripes. I read a lot of poor reviews for it, but I can’t comment on it one way or another because I never tried it. It just didn’t float my boat.

But then I hear Felici is back! Well you know I just had to go take a look…

And it’s never JUST a look…

I absolutely HAD to get Sanderson (Top Right and Middle Right) (If you know, you know). And I had to get enough for a pair for me and a pair for a special person. And then Cactus Flower (Bottom Right) was just too perfect for me. Silent Film (Top Left) is perfect for Dave – I haven’t made him socks in quite a while.

None of the other colours really spoke to me… but I still needed to spend enough to get free shipping. So a skein of Stroll in Basecamp (Bottom Left) and a skein of Hawthorne in Blackbird (Bottom Middle) came along for the ride. These will probably become socks for Dave and I… but who knows!

Now… I have to resist the urge to cast on that Felici right now! I have other projects to finish!

Almost every day, Burton and I do the same thing…

Around 4 pm, he comes up to my office, and is all sweetness and purring… trying to convince me that he has not been fed in AGES. That he is starving… withering away to just bones… with very little time left.

And pretty much every day, I go down to discover that in fact he HAS been fed…. usually only 10 minutes before.

It was a very productive weekend – on top of sewing, stitching and knitting, I even had time to put a little paint down…

As odd as it may seem, I actually enjoy working on the smaller spaces of the paint-by-number better than the big spaces. They don’t go any faster, but seeing them become something is quite satisfying.