Ok.. it’s time to admit it. I am just NOT good a being frugal.

Yes dear readers… I have failed again in my attempts to have an no spend month. But not on what you might be thinking.

It wasn’t fabric, it wasn’t clothes, it wasn’t even plants!

It was a motherlode of camera equipment.

So here’s how it happened…

I was browsing Facebook Marketplace. Not with the intention to actually buy anything. There are a certain style of canister from the ’70s I’m keeping my eye out for. I have several saved, though like my fish – most aren’t anywhere around here.

And Marketplace’s algorithms must be really weird, because I always get a bunch of random, unrelated things in my search results. One of those things was a digital SLR Canon camera.

Longtime readers will recall that I had and adored one for many, many, many, many years. Until the day I dropped it face-first on the lens, jamming up the focus mechanism. Dave tried to fix it, to no avail. The buttons on the camera were also getting sticky and non-co-operative (I believe they were full of salt from our trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in 2018).

At the time, I didn’t have the money to have it fixed, or buy a new one. Then with the move, and all the house stuff since, the camera was not a priority. My iphone took surprisingly good pictures and we got along just fine.

But back to that camera listing… it was was for a camera, slightly newer than mine, with lens for only a few hundred dollars. Definitely less than what it would cost me to fix mine, should I be so inclined.

It wasn’t anywhere close to here, so I wouldn’t be buying it. But it got me thinking (always the first step to disaster…)… what else was out there.

So I searched for digital SLR cameras in my area. And boy howdy… there are A LOT of them out there for sale!!! My theory is that phone cameras have advanced so much, for your average person who just wants to snap decent shots of family, friends and pets.. it doesn’t make sense to have anything fancier. (Not to mention the ease of which to upload those pictures to various apps and socials).

Again… I was really just browsing. I figured with so much out there, I could definitely wait until March to get one, if I was so inclined.

But then I saw the listing that contained all the things you see above. It included:

• 12 megapixel camera and standard lens
• Telephoto Lens
• Macro Lens
• Prime Lens
• External flash
• Remote trigger
• Tripod
• Bag
• Various lens filtres, and other lens attachments
• Cleaning kit

ALLLLLLL of that for just $600. WTF???? I re-read the listing six times just to be sure he didn’t really mean $1600. Even if I kept my camera body with it’s sticky buttons, I’d need almost $1000 to get all those lenses, not to mention the other goodies.

And even then – I didn’t jump on it. Dave and I had gone out for lunch that day, and I told him what I found. He, of course, told me to get it. He rarely tries to curb my spending, unless it involves getting another cat, or buying a 12ft skeleton for the yard.

Still… I decided to sleep on it.

And I woke up the next morning and promptly messaged the gentleman, hoping no one else had snapped up the amazing deal. They hadn’t and soon we were headed to Sarnia to pick it all up.

I STILL can’t believe my luck.

I haven’t had a tonne of time to play with it yet, but I’ve snapped a few pictures here and there. My iphone does take great pics… but

Just check out the amazing detail – in the whiskers, the fur around the nose… the sheer detail of just how annoyed Burton is at having the camera shoved in his face repeatedly!

I can’t wait to get outside – the telephoto is going to help me get pictures of all the birds and squirrels… and imagine the detail of all the little bugs I’m going to get in my garden with that macro lens!

Forget Frugal February! It’s now FABULOUS FIND FEBRUARY!

In addition to the cats, and newt, we also have a betta. Samantha bought him for Dave a few months ago. (He still doesn’t have a name…. gladly taking suggestions, because I just call him Fish)

Like all of our previous bettas, he lived in the large (about 2 gallons) fish bowl I’ve had since forever. It looked like one of these:

About a month ago, Dave went into the music studio (where Fish lives on his desk), and there was water all over the desk. After a moment of puzzlement, Dave realized it came from the bowl, and soon discovered that the bowl had a large crack in the bottom. The water wasn’t leaking fast, but it was leaking.

We went out that night and got Fish a new, larger, fancier tank. And I decided to repurpose the the bowl for something I’ve wanted to make for a LONG time!!! A terrarium!!!!

When I was at Mom’s last, I stopped by Terra, a super-large nursery chain in her area that has a fabulous selection of house plants, including many that were weird and wonderful.

I got a couple tiny ferns, and Asian Pitcher Plant, and a Venus Fly Trap. Now the Fly Trap is something I’ve tried to grow several times, but I can never keep it moist enough, so I’m thinking the terrarium is the wat to go. The Pitcher plant is also carnivorous, and very cool looking.

My plan was to stop by the dollar store to get a small plastic dinosaur or two to complete my set up. Unfortunately, small dinosaurs are hard to come by at the moment. If I want robot dinos, I’m set… but that just wasn’t the vibe I was looking for.

It wasn’t until I got home and was rummaging around on the porch for my potting stuff that I remembered I bought a small set of gnome decorations for the “woodland garden”. Since I never got around to starting that before winter, they were still in the box.

They were just perfect! As the plants grow, I’ll probably have to take one or two decorations out, but for now, everyone looks nice and happy.

I picked up a couple bottled of distilled water, because I’ve red that carnivorous plants can be quite fussy about the minerals in tap water. Hopefully, this will be the ticket to keeping these guys growing and thriving!

I really feel like I’m seeing double a lot lately….

When they are still and quiet like this, it’s very easy to tell them apart. But when they are streaking by at the speed of light… good luck!

And pretty much every afternoon, I can count on a Ginger Cat Insanefest as they rip from one side of the house to the other and back again. Rupert, despite his age (he’s eight this year, can you believe it???), loves to play chase. And he doesn’t really care if he’s the pursuer, or the pursued. They often flip flop roles throughout the game.

Lemmy has quickly learned that Burton is for wrestling, but Rupert is for running.

We think Lemmy is very close to six months old now, and he’s already just a smidge bigger than Rupert. Rupert, being an adult, is more filled out. But not because he’s fat – Rupert isn’t fat at all – it’s that Lemmy is at that really long, gangly adolescent stage.

And there are lots of other differences too. Lemmy is lighter in colour, and has stripes where Rupert has swirls. And Lemmy had three white chest/belly patches, where the only bit of white on Rupert is on the very tip of his tail.

And of course, the biggest difference is their expressions… Lemmy is all sweetness and light…

Where as Rupert looks like he’s spent his life sucking on lemons…

It’s perpetual catitude with this one. I say he has “sauce-face” because he’s always so saucy.

They are just my little sweet and sour ginger pair!

Since we moved, Dave has almost stopped driving. He’ll drive if he has to, but after 15+ years of daily commuting over a long distance in a very busy metropolitan area, he’s more than content to let me drive.

I don’t mind being the driver, but it does mean I don’t get to do much travel knitting anymore.

But the other day, I took him to a doctor appointment, and had to wait! Perfect time to dust off an old sock project.

Remember these???? I started them back in May of last year! I got past the heel and then they got tucked away. I didn’t forget about them, but I just never got around to picking them up!

Dave’s appointment wasn’t terribly long, so I only got an inch or two done. Hopefully, I can keep these top of mind and it won’t take me another 9 months to knit another inch on them.

I’ve still got one top to quilt at Mom’s (the Little Wishes quilt), so I want to get a couple more tops done and maybe make a trip there before the end of the month.

So grabbed those mermaid blocks I made the other week, and threw them together into a top.

When I made the big star blocks…

I knew I wanted to do a corner star sashing as well. But I wanted to do it with a twist this time. Instead of saw-tooth stars, I turned them into friendship stars!

It was actually a little trickier, despite being a simpler looking block. With saw-tooth, you just snowball each sashing strip. But with the friendship star, I made HSTs, and had to pay VERY close attention to which way they were pointing.

But it was worth it in the end.

If I can get another top ready to quilt, I’ll book a play date at Mom’s!

I cheated a little this weekend, and worked on the shawl instead of cross-stitching. I really wanted to get past the circular part. So I only had Sunday night to stitch… but, as usual I had a couple of “enforcers” to keep me on track and stitching right until bedtime.

And as a result, I got a respectable amount of work done.

All of the stitching on the first fox (with the exception of the outlining) is done, as well as a few of the leaves dancing around him. I did NOT enjoy working with white floss on white fabric. If I’d been thinking, I’d have swapped it out for something else in my stash. But this is what came with the kit, so it is as it is. There’s not a tonne of white – just some on the two other foxes.

This is a long, narrow piece, so the next time you see it, the hoop will (hopefully) be moved a good deal higher.

I was very excited to get through Chart C on Crimson Blossom before the weekend, just as I’d hoped. But then my excitment quickly changed, when I turned the page and saw Chart D.

I would still be working in the round, not back and forth…sigh… nothing to do but get on with it.

At least I had Lemmy to … encourage… me?!?

Eventually, I got through Chart D and I am now ready to work back and forth.

It’s such a pretty bit of lace thats going to get even prettier when it gets all blocked out.

There are two weeks under our belt now with the Stay-at-Home-Round-Robin quilt-along. Week 1’s prompt was spools. I wasn’t sure exactly what do with it, so I decided to see what week 2 would bring before I did any cutting or sewing. Week 2 was stars! My favourite!!!

That got the wheels turning and I sat down to consult with Burton over a plan.

As you can see, I got the paw of approval on the design. I tackled the spools first, since they were the simpler block.

I haven’t made a lot of spools in my quilting career so far. The only other ones I can thinkg of are the ones in my “Sewing on the Back Porch” quilt and they are very different spool block.

Next up, the stars…

You really can’t go wrong with a saw-tooth star. And these fabrics…. they just make it so easy to make stand-out blocks!!!

Once the blocks were done, it was time to put them together with the centre medallion.

The blocks are eight inches, so they bring the quilt out to 32 inches square so far. Of course, there are several more weeks to go.

Burton and Lemmy can’t wait!

February continues what January started – only colder. Everything is white and varying shades of grey. And I continue to dream of spring.

When I bought the arbour, I also bought four little garden beds.

They are nothing fancy – just little 3′ x 3′ flat pack cedar beds. But the price was so good ($79 each) – I couldn’t buy enough wood to make them for that!

When they arrived, Dave decided they’d last longer if they were painted. So for a couple of days, he took over my kitchen island and half the counter, and painted each piece of wood in our signature green.

Despite having to cook around the mess, I can’t complain – they will now match the two tall boxes I got last year.

These beds and the tall boxes will be for veggies. I stocked up on seeds last month.

Nothing fancy. Just a couple types of beans, snap peas, carrots, spinach, cucumbers, and broccoli. I also have some asparagus coming with one of my flower orders – though I understand that takes a couple years to get established.

And I also got this oddity…

It’s a plant native to North America (Also known as Strawberry Blite). Apparently the leaves taste like somewhat like spinach. The berries are edible too – though they say they don’t taste like strawberries. Since I love spinach, I thought it would be fun to try. At the very least, I’m sure the birds will love the berries if I don’t.

I’ll be starting most of the seeds in a few weeks. The first day of spring is only 47 days away!!!

Yesterday, the sun was shining and the wind died down enough that it wasn’t too bad to be outside for a little while. Lemmy was insistent on being on the catio porch (he still hasn’t figured out the cat doors…), so I opened the door to the yard to see if he would like to check out the snow.

He was VERY hesitant about it at first. Eventually he came al the way out, but got spooked by the sound of my boots crunching the snow and hid under the stairs.

When he finally got brave enough to come out, he stuck to the areas with no snow. He kept his feet on dry land but gave the snow several sniffs.

And finally…

He was out and about checking it all out. We stayed out for about 15 minutes before I had to go move my truck so Dave could get his car out. When I came back, Lemmy was back on the porch and done with his adventure.

I don’t think he minded it too much. But he’s really going to love it when all that snow melts! (and learns how to use the cat doors!)

You can see a little video of his adventure on our Facebook page. (With guest appearance from snow veteran, Relic)