The third quilt in this week’s FO parade is probably my favourite.

For obvious reasons!

This is a quilt that I had planned for a very long time. I saved scraps of all my black and white cat prints to make it come true. And I’m super pleased with the results.

It’s not a huge quilt – just 50″ x 68″, but it’s absolutely packed with cats! It’s the perfect lap/couch quilt.

And the back has these cute little guys too

Like the mermaids from yesterday, this one is up for grabs in the shop.

Next up in the quilt parade is the only other baby top I had ready for quilting

The pretty mermaid quilt!

This one was made from a fat quarter bundle I got at Walmart. And while I really love those pretty little mermaids…

I absolutely adore this fish print! I don’t know why – they are just so cute!

And of course the backing! I have a small chunk of this left. As much as I love it on the back, I would love to put it front and centre in something! It’s such a great shade of pink, and I love all the coral.

This one was not spoken for, so it’s in the shop if you know a baby in need…

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend. I finally made it Mom’s and got some quilting done!

First up was the quilt I finished was the one I made for our friends who had their second baby boy last months.

I used a fun zoo-themed charm pack and my favorite Oh My Stars pattern. The charm pack was made/licensed by Crayola, so I added this fun crayon border.

And I back it with this fun animal print.

Now I just have to get it packed up and in the mail!

HAppy Easter – it’s all beautiful spring colour here!

I am happy to say that my gamble of putting the forced bulbs in the porch boxes has paid off.

We’ve had some warm, if rainy weather this past week. And despite some quite cold nights, they survived and are in their full glory.

The hyacinths are a creamy white, and the tulips are just the prettiest shade of pink. The hyacinths smell heavenly as you approach the porch.

Elswhere, the snowdrops are done. It was a small, short show for them, but they will only get better and better each year.

There’s still the odd Winter Aconite blooming, though they are almost done too.

The crocuses are just starting. This is a new one called Monarch Snow Crocus. And I think you can see why. It’s very small. the flowers are about the size of my thumb nail. I thought I had planted more crocuses, but looking back – I did not. That’s something I’ll have to put on the list for planting this fall.

The Glory of the Snow is also starting to bloom. I bought a mix of pink, blue and white, but so far, I’ve only got pink.

As I mentioned before, there’s a tonne of other spring bulbs coming up, and it’s going to be quite the show once things get going. Although, the show in the catio is going to be a little more muted than planned… while there’s lots coming up, a lot of it has been broken by a certain ginger kitten.

“Who??? Me????”

Yeah… you. We should have named him “Wrecking Ball” with the way he flies through the yard chasing bugs, fluff and the other cats.

I was coming home on Wednesday, and I turned onto the road into town. Not far along. I noticed a handful of people standing by the side of the road. And as I got closer, I discovered why – there was a giant snapping turtle!!!

I raced home (about a minute drive), ran in the house and grabbed my camera. I didn’t even say hi to Dave. As I was running out the door again, he asked me what was up. All I said was “Can’t talk. Turtle!!!” and got back in the truck.

And this is why I was sooooo excited!!!

Apparently she had crossed the road and was making her way through the parking lot of the community hall. Right behind the hall is the Sydenham river, so I suspect that’s where she was off to.

She didn’t seem bothered by all the attention. She stayed focused on where she was going, and kept at it one step at a time!

I’m so glad I came by at just the right time to witness part of her journey!

After Hallowe’en, I promptly packed away my skeleton collection and put them in the office closet to away the next year. All but Dr. Bones, my full-size skeleton. He was too big for a bin – even folded up. So, naturally, I plopped him on top of the cat tree in my office, and there he’s sat for the the last several months. (and the cat tree is just behind my left shoulder when I sit at my desk, so let me tell you, that’s been quite the conversation starter in some work meetings!)

I’ve been waiting for Dave to put some ceiling hooks up for several of my hanging plants – I figured we could pop one more in the corner of the office for Dr. Bones. There he could hang out and be out of the way.

Finally, I got fed up with waiting, grabbed the drill and demanded Dave show me what I had to do to put the hooks in. Turns out it was super easy, and with in an hour, I had 8 plants hanging in various rooms, and Dr. Bones was finally at home, out of the way in the corner of the office.

( I can’t wait until we get rid of this ugly wallpaper and re-do this room!)

And of course, that mean the cat tree was free again for the actual cats….

Burton and Lemmy were thrilled to have it accessible again.

They immediately started getting reacquainted with it.

I imagine they are going to lead to some more interesting work meeting discussions!

Ever since we brought the wooden shoe bench home, I’ve had plans to make some sort of cushion/cover for it.

As you know, I’m working with a chicken theme for the kitchen. And I just happened to have a pile of chicken fabrics left over from that chicken quilt I made ages ago.

After I finished up the red blocks on Sunday, Burton and I put our heads together, and in a surprisingly short amount of time…

We’d created a lovely little top! The chicken block is the same one I used for the chicken quilt. The chicks were a bit of a challenge. I looked a couple inspiration pic on the internet, and managed to draft up something that worked. I am definitely getting much better at that!

The background fabric is the same chicken wire fabric I used in the original chicken quilt. And it’s hard to see, but the border is all little chicky footprints. Mom was doing an order at Collecting Threads, and that was on sale so I asked her to order me a yard or two (I got it in an off-white too!)

It still needs to be quilted, but I think it’s going to look amazing as a bench topper!

With some help from Burton

I turned the heel on the Seascape sock just before bed last night.

And I finally feel like I’m making some progress on knitting. I have just two appointments left this month, and Dave has one. There will be follow-up appointments in the months to come, but hopefully the pace will slow a bit.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to frog the silver shawl – I’m not feeling the love for it anymore and having it sitting there part done makes me feel overwhelmed. I do have to get back to Dad’s Christmas sweater, and I’m going to try to commit to working on it after work each evening.

Thanks for all the comments about our basement drama. It is definitely part and parcel of having and old house, and we’ll get it handled.

No surprisingly, there wasn’t a tonne of time for stitching this weekend.

I did manage to finish off that M though, forever putting a rest to Dave’s fart jokes. You can see just the barest bit of black started under the Fresh. That will spell out “Butt Nuggets” which I’m sure will only give Dave some new fodder… but I guess after the basement, it will be good if he can still find something to laugh about.

Before I get into the good stuff… I just want to say… I WANT A WEEKEND DO-OVER!!!

It was setting up to be a pretty good, if busy weekend. Friday’s weather was horrible with a near-constant heavy downpour. Still, after work, we’d picked up Dory from the body shop and left Dave’s Buick there for some much needed work. We ran some errands, got home late and crashed to the sound of a pretty intense thunderstorm.

But Saturday, we awoke to sunshine. I got outside around 10 am, thinking of doing some garden cleaning, and almost as soon as I got out there, the skies started to cloud. I think I got about 20 minutes before it started to rain again.

No biggie… I could always go sew. I packed up my tools and headed in. Dave met me at the door and I knew it was bad. He said five words no woman wants to hear.

“There’s water in the basement.”

We discovered not long after we took possession of the house that the foundation wasn’t quite as solid as we’d first thought. About a month after we’d officially moved in, we got one of those “100-year storms”, and we discovered several leaks in the walls. Dave had the wet basement guys in and they quoted us several thousand dollars for a fix. Which we didn’t have at the time.

Dave did some research, and he came up with a solution he could do and would cost less than 1/4 of what the basement guys wanted (not that their price was high for the work they suggested). We decided it was worth a shot. If it didn’t work, we could always save up for the basement guys and would only be out a few hundred dollars and some hard work.

So Dave went to work. And we watched and waited. Every time it rained, Dave went down to check. No leaks. I fully expected a small leak here or there during the following spring thaw (having previously lived in a house with a leaky basement, I know who notoriously hard they are to plug). But we had nothing. We were high and dry. Spring, summer, fall, winter 2022… and then this year came and it was all good.

Until this weekend. But it wasn’t coming from the walls. Dave’s repairs were holding. No… the water (as it does) had moved along to find another weak spot…. this time the floors! Several spots. The floors can’t be repaired the same way the walls were. So… the basement guys are coming back for another quote sometime this week.

And if that wasn’t enough…. while Dave was down there, counting all the leaks in the floor, he hit his head off the light (it’s a very low ceiling – I’m 5’7″ and I can only stand up in certain spots).. and the fixture shorted out… followed by the switch that controls it.

Thankfully, Sam’s husband Michael helped up troubleshoot it via text, and Dave had enough electrical knowledge to repair it. It did involve a trip to the hardware store but it was fixed in a couple hours. (And while we were out, we got a good idea of just how much rain we’d gotten, and were still getting at the time)

This is the best pic I could find online. But every stream, river, creek has majorly overflowed its banks. We drove by several houses with almost their whole yards under water.

Like the 100-year storm we got back in summer 2021, this one dumped a hell of a lot of rain in a very short period of time. So we know our basement will hold up against all but the most intense, prolonged rains… but we still need a better solution.

So Sunday, while Dave hauled everything up from the basement in prep for the basement guys… I went and sewed. (He needed time to stew by himself.)

I worked on a couple projects, one of which was adding two more blocks to the red quilt.

Working with those pretty fabrics certainly lifted my mood!

And now that I have four done, you can get and idea of how I’m going to lay them out, alternating lights and darks. There are 16 blocks in total (each at 16″), so I have 12 left to do.

But I’m in no real hurry to finish this one. It’s nice to take my time and just bask in those beautiful prints.