As I mentioned yesterday – I headed off to Mom’s for the weekend. The plan was in the works before the furnace stopped working so I wasn’t just trying to avoid a potentially cold house.

I had two quilts to quilt, but I only managed to get one done (the story of my life lately) and that one is Bee a Star

As you may recall, this one was created from the blocks provided in the second half of the Moda Blockheads 5 sew along. (The first half resulted in this quilt.). Like the first half, I kept this layout simple, this time opting for some cornerstars with fussy cut bees.

Of course this one has all kinds of wonderful bee details throughout the blocks

The backing fabric is a lovely yellow paisley that just matched so perfectly.

I have a small chunk left so no doubt it will show up in some scrap quilts at some point.

This one is destined for the shop, but sadly, not just yet. You may or may not know, but Canada Post is currently on strike. Shipping by courier is exorbitant unless you’re a bigger business that can get a decent volume discount, so we’ve put the shop into vacation mode until the strike is over.

Hopefully, the two sides will come together soon and we can get back in business.

I did not get the second Mercury sock done by the end of November. Not even close.

That’s all I’ve gotten done on the second sock. Last week was a crazy week, and it culminated with our furnace crapping out on us.

We were already in the works (ie had just signed the paperwork) for a new one, but it wasn’t set to be installed for a couple weeks. We are taking advantage of a government program for “greening” up our home, but it means undergoing an energy audit and jumping through a bunch of hoops for approval.

When we called the installation company to let them know we were without heat, they said they could bump up installation, but it would still have to be after the audit.

The audit is tomorrow morning. Thankfully, we’ve got a couple infrared space heaters, and they’ve kept the house quite comfortable throughout the weekend. (Though I took off to Mom’s to do some quilting – more on that tomorrow).

So the furnace will be installed Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. Maybe then life will slow down just a tiny bit.

I’ve got some more action shots from the feeder – this time with the squirrels.

If the blue jays are hard to capture in action – the squirrels are even hard. Those little guys can boogie. They don’t walk anywhere, but instead leap, leap, leap across the yard.

There were a lot of throw away shots for the few decent ones I managed to get.

Getting them travelling to the feeder was quite the challenge.

Once they get there, they slow down a little, but not much.

And once they’ve got a peanut – they don’t stick around long.

Of course, you can’t blame them when this is lurking about. Now Lemmy can’t get to them, but there are plenty of neighbourhood cats that can, so it’s good that they are wary.

They do take a little time to rest when they are safely up on the fence.

I personally love it when they hunch on top of the fence posts. Like little furry gargoyles.

I realized the other day, that I never told you guys about the results of my summer orchid experiment. You may recall, that at the start of the garden season, I said I was going to put my orchid collection out in the Woodland garden for the summer. We have very humid summers here, so I thought they would LOVE it.

Well… they didn’t. The orchid lovers out there will know that orchids can’t take any direct sun. I thought the cover of the maple tree would be enough to keep them safe. But it turns out, that the woodland garden got a lot more sun in the late afternoon than I originally thought.

I thankfully noticed before all of their leaves got burned to a crisp, but not one orchid got out without some serious sunburn on one or more leaves.

So I gathered them all up, and brought them back in the house for a little surgery (i.e. cutting off the burned leaves). Then I put them back out, but this time in the protection of the sun porch. They’d still get all the heat and humidity, but with out the chance of frying in the sun.

My hope was that at least one or two would put up a bloom stem. I have gotten orchids to rebloom, but only sporadically. I have a couple that have never rebloomed.

And while the all recovered from the sun incident, and put out lots of new roots (probably soaking up all that humidity) not one got a bloom stem.

They are all back in for the winter, have been cleaned and given a good feed, and most are in a north facing window (I’ve had the best luck with north and east facing windows when it comes to orchids). Maybe we’ll have some luck this winter.

But that’s not to say I don’t have any orchid blooms at the moment.

The bright yellow one I got on our adventure to Colasanti’s back in August still has a couple flowers on it.

This big beautiful white one I got from Home Depot back in March. Can you believe it’s still in bloom? I didn’t put this one outside over summer because it was just so nice having it in the living room blooming away. The flowers on this one are huge too – about the size of my palm (minus the fingers)

And this one is a new addition. Picked up from Walmart the other night. I feel like I haven’t bought myself a plant in ages. It’s probably only been about a month to be honest, but it feels like forever. And I don’t think I have one quite this colour. (Though it’s entirely possible I do!)

So I’ll enjoy the flowers on these ones for now, and you’ll be the first to know if any more decide to bloom.

The face you make when she’s not sharing her lunch fast enough.

A few weeks ago, I was upstairs, and Dave yelled up to me to get my camera. There was a hawk in the fence.

By the time I got down, the hawk had flown off. But Dave got a picture with his cell phone.

Can you see it? I had a good giggle when he sent it to me. I’m going to have to teach him how to use the zoom feature.

About a week later, I went out front to check on the gardens, and all of a sudden he flew off from the top of the arbour. I barely even caught sight of him.

But then a few days later, I was working away in the office, and guess who appeared in the tree outside my office window.

During the day, I keep the camera in the office with me just incase anyone interesting stops by. It’s usually just the jays and the sparrows. I certainly wasn’t expecting him!

I’m not sure if he’s a Sharp-Shinned or a Cooper’s Hawk. He was on the small side, so I’m leaning towards a Sharpie.

He hung out for a good 10 minutes and then flew off. I haven’t seen him since, but I hope he visits again.

Christmas is creeping ever closer. I plan to get my outdoor decorations up soon, so I devoted my Sunday to finish the painting my on my gnome.

I got the final coats done, and did the outlining with my new paint pens.

I was happy with it. But it still needed a little something.

And that something was…

GLITTER!!! And lots of it!

I glittered up his mitts, the snowflakes on his hat, and even added a touch to his pom pom (and created a little texture there with the paint).

Now he just needs a coat of clear and he’ll be ready for the front porch!

I am happy to announce that I have conquered French knots!!!

Well, not so much conquered as managed to get them to not look like an utter, crappy, loopy mess. They are far from perfect, but I’m far from a perfectionist, so I can live with it. And with that, the first of the 20 embroidered blocks is complete!

It certainly went far quicker than I expected. And learning the stitches is much easier than I expected. Although I did learn I did my stem stitch wrong. Well not so much wrong, just much smaller than it needed to be. Mom pointed it out when I showed her the picture, so I decided to look up a quick tutorial.

And with that new knowledge, Lemmy and I were off and running on block number two.

We got our stem stitch perfected, and added the Lazy Daisy stitch to our repertoire! If we keep this pace up, we’ll probably be managing a block a weekend soon.

The first Mercury sock is done. The pattern has you take the lace down the foot, but I decided to go with a plain foot instead. I’m loving the rusty orange brown of the Alley Cat BFL. It makes me miss dyeing yarn just a little.

The next sock is already on the needles. It’s probably too ambitious, but I’d love to complete the pair by the end of the month.

I’ve been popping out to the bird feeder with the camera whenever I get a free moment.

And that spontaneity has rewarded me!

The finches can be exceptionally hard to get pictures of, as they are very skittish. (The sparrows are used to me and will buzz my head as they make their way to the feeder). As you can see here, I not only have the sparrows – but the goldfinches (in their winter colour) and the red-headed house finches too!

It’s very unsual to see them on the feeder with the sparrows. Sparrows can be the worst bullies and often chase the finches off.

But they were all minding their manners this day! I’m so happy I was there to capture the moment!

Here’s a few random close-ups taken the same day.