It’s official, gardening season is DONE!

As I mentioned yesterday, we got walloped with snow on Monday. This amount of snow isn’t unusual (it is Canada after all), but getting this much, this early, is.  Usually November is all cold and grey, with a few dustings of snow, but nothing that amounts to anything.  We don’t usually  see any sort of accumulation until mid-December or even January (it’s about a 50/50 chance of having a green Christmas here).

As you can see, there’s still leaves on the lilacs and raspberries. There’s even an iris in bloom under all that snow! (Also, I need to refill the bird feeder!) This dumping has definitely killed off the last blooms that were hanging on.

So, I have to turn my attention to my indoor gardens…

You’ve seen a few of these before. They are the containers left from my favourite candles. I said I wasn’t going to buy any more, but then they came out with that darn Llama (and my favourite vanilla scent). I just had to have her.

After the candle was burned down, I found the prettiest little variegated Jade plant (with touches of pink!) for her. Can you believe I found it at my local grocery store? It came out of the grocery budget (what’s one less box of crackers?) so I don’t feel bad.

Now the company has come out with a Polar Bear candle. Polar Bears are my second favorite-most animal… maybe I’ll see if Dave wants to get it for me for my birthday….

In other indoor gardening news… the East Cactus has fully bloomed. You can see just how different the flowers are, compared to the Christmas Cactus below it. It was such a lucky find all those years ago.

And my pink Christmas Cactus is really going all out. She may have enough steam to flower right up to Christmas – wouldn’t that be nice?

And remember the flowering spider plant I showed you? Well the flowers are gone and in their place…

A pile of spider babies!!!! I usually snip them off, and root them in their own pot (I have several spider plants throughout the house), but I’ve never had so many babies at once! I don’t know what to do with them all.

And before I leave you, have I ever shown you my baby Groot?

I got him last year (or maybe the year before). I’ve tried a few plants in him (a crispy wave fern, a spider baby….) but quickly determined he doesn’t hold water and needed something that was really low-maintenance. I got him this cute little succulent on my shopping trip with Rowan this summer. It’s been just perfect. And doesn’t he look so happy about it?

 

A day in the life of Relic:

“Hey Lady! Open the door and let me out!!!! I NEED TO GO OUT!!!!

“Wait… I changed my mind. It’s not that fun out here…”

Repeat every 10-15 minutes.

Of course… we also got hammered with snow earlier this week, so now it’s even worse….

If you’ve been keeping track, you’ll know that I still had one of my five project boxes left empty. Of course that just won’t do, so I went stash diving again.

And while I already have one cat-themed project on the go, I just couldn’t resist one more.

Mom bought me a pack of 10″ squares in this fabulous collection a while ago. And I had just the purrfect pattern for it to:

Pins and Paws.

The blocks are super easy and go together so quick. I’m going to have this one done in no time!

And I just have to point out one of the pieces in this collection. See all these cute kitties watching an apparently scary movie…

Did you notice that one of them is knitting????

Too cute!

Before starting my skull socks, I took a little time to whip up a little accessorial Christmas gift.

The pattern is  Scrunch me up, and it popped up on Ravelry the other week. As soon as I saw it,  I knew I had to make it. Rowan is a HUGE fan of scrunchies. Mom and I taught her how to sew some on her sewing machine. But, how cool is a knit scrunchie??? Especially one that matches your socks! I had to rework the pattern a bit to get it to stripe the right way. (It’s easy, it’s just a rectangle), and I think I made it too wide, but it works.

I gave it a road test to see how it would look…

Oh this takes me back to my youth when the height of fashion was to have your oversized sweater, super slouchy socks, AND scrunchie all coordinate! Ah, the early ’90s….

Finishing up the Celtic Dreams top opened up another project box, so I just had to fill it.

I went stash diving and came up with two charm packs from different companies (one Moda, one Boundless) that had similar colours (red, purple, and beige) and patterns. For a couple days I played with the squares, and tried to settle on a pattern. Just like yarn, the fabric knows what it wants to be, and if you try to make it something else, it’s just not going to work out right.

First, I planned on a disappearing nine-patch, but the fabric disagreed. It just wouldn’t work out to the right number of each colour to make the pattern really work for me.  Then I thought maybe it would want to be a Jacob’s Ladder, but again… colour placement just wasn’t playing nice.

Finally, the fabric spoke up…I was up early one more with sciatica, snuggled under Marseilles Stars, just waiting for the painkillers to kick in. The pile of fabric was beside me and I kept looking from it to those stars. Soon enough I was sorting them into piles, and then a few hours later…

That’s totally what the fabric needed to be! I have enough to make 20 of these stars, which will make a nice-sized lap quilt. I’m going to do a different layout than Marseilles, but you’ll just have to wait for more details on that.

Because of the rich reds and purples, I’m calling this one “Royal Stars”… and it’s going to be majestic indeed!

Taadaa!!!

Dave’s Christmas skull socks are done! And I love them!

Now I’m off to make myself a matchy-non-matchy pair!

First, I’ve got to apologize again for the quality of photos. Not only is my DSLR down for the count, but so is my iPhone. (It’s supplied by work, so a new one is on the way) I’m down to using my five-year-old cheapo Android phone. It gets the job done, but well…

Anyway, onto the post!

It’s frosty out there, we’ve even had a little snow. But some flowers just cling on!

The Toad Lilies aren’t really a shocker, they are late bloomers and seem to love the cold.

The marigolds are pretty hardy too, but after the snow melted off them the other day, they look a little like they are encased in ice.

There’s no butterflies around any more, but the butterfly bush has still got a few blooms.

Chicago Peace just never quits!

But can you believe these darn irises!?!?

Or these strawberries? I doubt they’ll ripen, but you’ve got to give it an A for effort!

I mentioned earlier that the sashing fabric had finally come in for Dave’s Christmas quilt.

Isn’t it beautiful? But to really do it justice, I had to do some precise fussy cutting, which wasn’t much fun…

…but it was worth the effort. It’s not perfect (there’s a little more background on one side than the other), but I’m far from a perfectionist so it’s just fine in my books.

Once I got all the sashing done, I decided the quilt needed at least one border. Luckily Lens carries most of the fabric line, and is just around the corner.

So  I got a couple yards of the lovely mottled orange and added 6 inches to each side, and 4 inches to top and bottom.

And that gives me a completed top! Since Dave and I don’t share blankets, it didn’t need to be super wide (it just hangs over each side of our Queen-sized bed), but it did need to be long. I think it’s about 90″.  That man of mine is a tall one, and he keeps complaining that none of the quilts I’ve made are long enough.

This should keep him quiet!

It’s good to know, I’m not the only one with a derpy cat…

It doesn’t look like it, it doesn’t feel like it… but I am making progress on the poncho.  I’m diligently putting on at least four rows a day. As a result, I’m (I think) a little past half way on this piece…. and then I have to make another just like it…. sigh….