It’s been a busy week!

We’ve earned our rest!

I’ve still got a couple larger quilt tops on the go, but this past weekend I needed a quick hit. Something new. Something fast. Something fun.

Burton and I pulled something I’ve had on the “to make” list for quite a while. This fun penguin panel with some coordinating fat eights.

The panel was large – a full yard – so it wasn’t going to take much to make a decent sized baby blanket. Which was good, because 6 fat eights really don’t go that far.

It didn’t take long for us to formulate a plan and several hours later, we had a completed baby quilt top.

It’s nothing fancy as you can see – just partial borders of flying geese. I really do love this technique for framing panels. It doesn’t matter if you do one, two, or three partial borders. It always looks great! I got lucky and had the perfect shade of solid grey in the stash for the background. (This one is a little lighter than the grey I used on the chickadees).

I’ve got some adorable, almost perfectly matching flannel for the back. And some wee stars for the binding. It will be a while before you see this one quilted – there’s no plans to head to Mom’s until I have at least a few more tops finished.

Although it was a mostly rainy weekend here, it was a pretty warm one. I took advantage of a few hours between the storms to do a small expansion on the veg garden.

It’s nothing major – I just extended Potager Parlour a few more feet to line up with the edge of the shed.

It gave me a little more square footage for a few more containers including the raised greenouse bed I showed you a few weeks back.

I still have to get some mulch to cover the landscape fabric (so it matches the rest of the veg garden), and some bricks to raise the other containers up off the ground. But I was able to plant up the greenhouse bed.

It’s not huge, but it’s got six short rows of seeds – three of lettuce, and three of spinach. And I hope this new bed is the key to being successful with both.

It will still be several weeks before I have anything really exciting going on in the veg beds.

But my garlic is sprouting nicely!

And…

I think I’ve mostly decided what plants will go where throughout the beds. I have six containers unspoken for so I have to decide it I want to get some more seeds… or just plant them up with some flowers for cutting.

Since I was working on the Groom’s sock on Saturday, I only had a few hours on Sunday to work on block 11

I almost got it finished…. there’s just a few French knots and some small stitches attached to them. This one will definitely be completed this coming weekend. And maybe even Block 12 too!

Welll… I guess I should have as much faith in myself as you guys do.

Several of you said I could complete the Groom’s socks by the end of the week and you were right…

I got the heel and the bulk of the foot done Wednesday and Thursday night, and Saturday morning I finished up the stripes and the toes!

For a quick recap. Yarn: Alley Cat in Carrot, and Alley Cat BFL in Raisin. Worked over 72 stitches with basic sock math for heel and toe. I added the graduated stripes at top and bottom just to give the socks a little more pizzazz.

I’m very pleased to have them done, and even more pleased that I got a good start on the bride’s.

As you can see, I’m reversing the colours for some matchy-non-matchy fun! Twenty-four days left to get this pair done!

Have you guys heard of the Porch Goose? If not, click this link.

Every since we bought the house, I’ve wanted a porch goose. But did you know porch geese are hella expensive??? At least around here – good luck finding a concrete one for under $150. Even the plastic ones on Amazon are $100.

Now I can justify a lot of things… but spending $100 or more dollars on something I’m going to dress up and put on my porch…? Just couldn’t do it.

So imagine my delight, when after almost four years… Dave and I were out thrifting at the ReStore and we came across not one… but FOUR porch geese. Solid concrete and $15 each!!! I literally squealed in delight. Dave was very confused. Apparently, I’d kept my porch geese desires to myself all these years and he had no idea what I was talking about. When I explained it to him, he thought I was joking until the cashier confirmed it was an actual thing people did.

But that’s enough explanation… you want to see her, right?

Isn’t she magnificent??? Well…. she will be. As you can see, she’s in need of a bit of a make-over. But she is solid concrete! And she is HEAVY! Dave was buying a set of speakers and had his hands full, so I had to carry her through the store and to the jeep.

Once the weather warms up enough to paint outside, she’ll be getting a glow up. In the mean time, I’ll be taking her measurements so I can make her first summer outfit!

Despite what the calendar and my little garden flag say…. Mother Nature flipped the switch on us and we’ve been lucky to get a few degrees above freezing this past week.

All the crocuses are staying tight closed up! The only thing new that’s bloomed is a small clump of Glory of the snow.

And like the crocuses, it’s been staying tightly closed. I have several little clumps of it, in several different colours. Like the crocuses, it seems to be starting to multiply.

Speaking of multiplying, I’ve got several clumps of daffodils that I should probably break up this year after they are done flowering. So many of them have really expanded – I love it!

And last…

The pink pussywillow is starting to get its little pollen blobs… it would be covered in bees… if it was warm enough for bees to fly…

Sigh… maybe next week will be warmer.

How much is that Rupert in the window????

For the second finished quilt, I had lots of help with the binding.

First Lemmy.

Then Rupert.

Then the pair together!

And finally – Relic and Rupert.

Even with all that help, it took me a couple nights to bind. It’s a pretty big one.

It finished up at about 66″ x 82″

You may recall that this quilt came about because I was using up some leftovers.

After finishing up my latest Blockhead quilt, I had some scrap left that I turned into those fussy-cut centre bees. They became nine-patches with some other bee-themed yardage I had (also used in the Blockhead quilt)

Then I dug into the stash to make some coordinating dizzy daisies.

I used that honey comb yardage for some cornerstone too and pulled it all together into a simple, but beautiful quilt top.

For the back, I got some great charcoal grey bee-themed yardage on sale.

It really was too perfect!

So that’s the last finished quilt for me for a bit… I’ve got two tops on the go but I think I might just start something new… stay tuned!

I was probably overly optimistic thinking I could get the Groom’s second sock completely finished by last weekend.

I’m not even remotely close. I am, however, just about to start on the heel. Can I finish them by this weekend…?

Probably not. But maybe the weekend after that. Either way, I’m still on track to meet my overall deadline!