I may have mentioned that I haven’t been able to do as much sewing as I would like. I don’t like to sew at night, so I do a fair bit of it during the day, around my day job (which is project- and team-based, so I often have an hour of work to do, then an hour of waiting for someone to do their part, then another hour of work…) I mostly piece blocks during the week, as they are easy to slip in between work sessions.

Sewing all those blocks together takes more time, so I save that for my weekends. It usually takes all (if not more) of one afternoon to sew blocks into a top.

But work has been crazy busy, so there’s been little to no time for piecing. And my weekends have been unusually packed too… so no top assembly either. That is until this past weekend.

The blocks for my brother’s birthday quilt have been waiting since the end of September… it rarely takes me this long to get a top together. Obviously, Saturday I couldn’t do it because Mom and I were delivering all our quilts (I still can’t believe that happened!). But Sunday morning, I got up and got started on assembling them first thing:

And it was a good thing I started early – about 15 minutes after I shut the iron and sewing machine off, we lost power (crazy windstorm). It didn’t come back on until 4:30 Monday morning (14 hours without power).

But back to that quilt – isn’t it lovely? It’s all flannel… and let me just say, I’ve learned a thing or two about sewing with flannel. It definitely has more stretch than regular quilting cotton. I don’t think I’ll do a lot of intricate piecing with flannel again. And the dark colour really picks up every little bit of lint and fuzz. But it is oh so soft.

I love the secondary pattern the blocks created when they came together (you can see here, my piecing is a little wonky because of that extra stretch).

The plaid I used for the border will also be the backing. And I have just enough of the navy I used for the sashing to do the binding too. This one wrapped up like a perfect, flannelly present!

With any luck, I can get this quilted on the weekend and get another present marked off the list!

Well… Green Sleeve anyway…

The first sleeve is done, and now I’ve picked up stitches for the second one. Can I finish it by the end of this week? That’s the goal, but we’ll have to see how it goes.

There was more 1-1 twisted ribbing on the cuff, but it wasn’t as bad as the body – this was all in the round. I don’t mine knitting through the back of the loop, but purling through the back? Now that takes some serious skill. I will have to do more ptbl on the bands, but I won’t be there for a while yet.

I’ll worry about it when I get there!

Thank you for all your lovely comments about the sale of all my quilts. I am busy working on more quilts for the shop, but in the meantime, there still a chance to get your hands on one of my creations.

Natalie at Bee Meadow Farm has launched the raffle for “Twas the Night Before Kit-mas”!!!

For those who don’t have/use Facebook, here’s the details:

This Christmas Cat quilt is 52″ square (lap size) and:
😻 100% cotton prints on top.
😻 100% cotton flannel on the back.
😻 Batting is 80/20 Cotton/Polyester.
😻 Quilt is machine washable and dryable.
I am paying for shipping to anywhere in Canada OR the U.S., so this is open to our Canadian AND American friends!
DRAW will be held Sunday, November 29!
Tickets are 1 for $2, or 3 for $5, or 8 for $10 or 18 for $20, and anything over $20 is $1 per ticket.
When you pay for your tickets, Natalie will send you your ticket numbers (tickets are virtual – She will record your numbers with your name on an Excel spreadsheet.) On the day of the raffle, the winning ticket number will be chosen by a random number generator, and the winner will be notified by email or PM the day of the draw.
😻E-transfers can be sent to: info@beemeadowfarm.com
😻If you are buying tickets from the U.S., please contact Natalie for Paypal info!
Please make sure you include your email address in a message with the EFT – sometimes the e-transfers come from a bank email address that she can’t reply to.
All proceeds to the foster felines of Bee Meadow Farm!

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Earlier this year, our first quilt raffled raised almost $3,000 for the foster kitties, and it would be a wonderful Christmas present if we could do that again.

COVID shut down the farm’s biggest fundraiser (the annual open house) and like everywhere else, has made it more difficult to make up the shortfall.

Natalie has a few special needs fosters that have run up a pretty big vet bill:

Like Harley and Mama. Mama is almost 12, and her son Harley is almost 11. Harley has a tumour (adenocarcinoma) in his ear that is unfortunately terminal (although slow-growing) and Mama has high blood pressure ( treated with a small daily pill .)

It take a special kind of person to take in special needs cats, so I love to support Natalie and her farm anyway I can.

And if you’re looking for other ways to help them out, they also have an Amazon wishlist!

So…. a crazy thing has happened, and part of me still can’t believe it.

As you know, I recently opened Bearbottom Quilts in an effort to sell some of my beautiful creations.

Well, not long after I opened the shop, I got an email from someone who was interested in buying all the quilts I had in stock (yes, ALL!!!!), to sell at a winter market in the coming months.

At first, I was a little reluctant. 1) It seemed way too good to be true. 2) I just opened the shop and did I really want to sell everything out… it would make it hard to gain a following while I was replenishing the stock.

But, we corresponded back and forth for a bit, and the offer became more real. So now, the shop look likes this…

Sad and empty! But I’m pretty darn happy. As you read this, Mom and I are probably on our way to deliver the quilts (it’s in a town about an hour and a half from us). My quilt ladder is empty, and I have a pile of space back in the studio!

Of course, as soon as I get back from delivering them, I’ll be making more quilts! Got to get that store stocked again!

It’s November, and as usual, it means a fair few cold, rainy days (and occasionally even cold enough for snow).

You’d think, being a stray cat for the first half of his life, that Relic would be more than content to stay in a nice, warm house on those cold, dreary days. But no.

He’d rather go out…

and lay in a ditch, looking sad and pretending still has no home.

I go out in the rain, and call to him, inviting him back into the warmth. But he ignores me. He sits in the ditch until I go back in.

And as soon as I’ve got the door locked, and walk away…

After casting off the body of Bogatell, I decided to take a wee break from it and knock another gift off the Christmas gift.

Another hat, of course:

This is the Snowtracks cap, a simple aran-weight cabled hat, with a Celtic feel.

Like the Moose hat I finished last week, this one only took a couple evenings. And it has such a nice result. And that’s one less present I have to worry about!

Many of you said knits always go fast when you’ve got stripes, and you’re right!

Despite being fingering weight, this little cardi body just flew off the needles.

It helps that it’s the small size (Rowan is only 12), and that it is cropped. But those stripes definitely helped too. You always want to get through a colour before setting it down.

The twisted ribbing on the bottom was a bit of a slog, but I got through it. And it was well worth it. My tension on 1-1 ribbing is always terribly sloppy. When I do twisted ribbing, it just seems to tidy it up.

Next up, I have the sleeves. And a hood. This one is far from done, but I’m happy with the progress so far. I’m aiming to have it off the needles by the end of November. That will leave me three weeks to make a matching one (different colours) for her sister.

First, thank you for your kind words about Peno. Life without her is going to take some getting used to, but we will manage. I’ve still got the three amigos to keep me company and they are very good at that!

Every Wednesday (or a day or two after), Burton and I have added another block to our Blockhead quilt.

We now have 12 blocks and as you can see, he’s very excited about this! Like our Christmas quilt, we plan on doing chain blocks in between all these. We’ll probably carry on with the Blockheads for at least five more weeks, before making our chain blocks, and sewing this all together. Itshould give is a nice-sized lap quilt!

I am very sad to announce that our dear sweet Peno is gone. She’d started looking really rough over the last month. On Saturday, she was acting a little off. By Sunday morning, she’d slipped away peacefully in her sleep.

Peno came into my life in 2007, when I first moved out on my own. The first thing I did was go out and adopt a couple of cats. One was Tux. The other was Peno… and I basically adopted her sight unseen. The rescue they came from was closing down. The lady who ran it had found homes for most of her charges, except for a handful of “hard-to-adopt” cats. Tux was one (he had some aggression issues). I knew I wanted two cats, and I already had Tux picked out (well, he picked me). I asked her if there was another cat she knew would be really hard to place.

That was Peno – she was a semi-feral who had been brought to the rescue when she was six months old. Her siblings warmed up to people quickly, and were all adopted out. But Peno never lost her fear, and as a result, spent her first three years at the rescue. Finally, a family decided to take her, but brought her back a couple weeks later, because she wouldn’t stop hiding.

After hearing that, I knew she needed to come home with me. I told the rescue, even if she never came out of shell, she’d always have a safe, warm home with me.

And for the first month, I didn’t see her at all. She spent most of her time under my bed. Eventually, with a little patience, and a lot of treats, she started to come out. Within six months, she was constantly demanding our attention.

She still hid when company came (Mom nicknamed her phantom cat), but otherwise, she was a perfectly happy, well-adjusted cat. And she absolutely adored Dave.

The only thing she loved more than Dave was a good box…

The smaller the better.

She was patient with every new kitten/cat I brought home. Of all of them, I think she liked Rupert the best.

It took a several years for her to get comfortable with going outside, but eventually she got up the courage. She spent many days in the garden with us, munching on grass and soaking up the sun, before going back inside on her own, and having a nap.

We knew the end was coming. In the last year, she had lost her hearing, had occasional balance problems, and lost a lot of weight. I took this picture two days before she died. She was pretty much just bones and fur.

But until the last day, she never lost the spark that made her our purrfect little Princess Peno. She will be very much missed.