I was wallowing in misery the other day, because one of the gardening pages I follow on Facebook, which is based in Britain, was showing off all the beautiful flower emerging there.

But my garden STILL looks like this:

Now, the snow has been exceptionally beautiful this year. Every time it starts to melt and get gross and dirty looking, we get a fresh snow making it all clean and sparkly again. In fact, we’re getting another good storm today.

But I miss my flowers!!!!

That said, when I was out filling my feeders the other day, I did notice come catkins on my pussywillows!

And I am absolutely thrilled! Except for one thing. Those are my PINK pussywillows. And they don’t exactly look pink do they???

For reference, this is what they’ve looked like in previous year.

Now, you can see this year’s catkins are only just getting started, so maybe they will turn more pink? I hope so. I can’t find anything on the internet about pink pussywillows losing their colour.

I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye on these and keep you posted!

As promised, I got to the heel of the pink sock!

In fact, I perservered and got through the heel and set-up the gusset. But…. I have to put it away for a short time.

The kitty-cat hat reached my friend’s daughter…

And while it was a big hit, and absolutely adorable, it’s clearly too big! So I’m going to whip up a smaller one and send it off. Hopefully I can get it in the mail by the weekend. It’s a knit that goes pretty fast, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

As suspected, I can complete a whole embroidery block in a weekend if I put my mind to it!

Block number #6 was done over Saturday and Sunday night – French Knots and all! I can’t show you this one with the pattern dissolved, and all ironed out because – as you saw yesterday, the studio is in total disarray. So you get to see it still in the hoop and that will have to do for now.

There’s 14 more blocks, and if I can keep this pace up, I could have them all done and ready to sew into a quilt, by mid-May!

I don’t have any sewing to show you this week, as my weekend got all discombobulated. It actually all started the weekend before. My sewing machine was being fussy, so I texted Mom and asked if she’d be able to pop out at some point and take a look at her. At the very least, the machine was due for a tune up, and Mom’s a pro at that. (Though I am good at keeping it oiled and cleaned).

Mom said she’s probably be able to come out the following weekend (meaning this past weekend). I decided, since she was coming, I should probably get the studio into some sort of semblance of tidy. I’ve been tripping over baskets filled with fabric for months, and it was driving me crazy.

So last week, on our travels, I got some smaller totes to pack everything into. I didn’t get to actually cleaning before Mom arrived. But while she was fiddling with the machine, I worked around her, and tried to organize the yardage into bins.

As expected, Mom got the machine purring like a kitten and went on her way. After she left, I planned to finish cleaning the room, but Dave kept bugging me to go out and pick up one of his prescriptions. Really – he just wanted to go thrifting.

So I left my poor room looking like this…

And off we went.

In Strathroy, we stopped in at our favourite Used store (it’s like a privately run, smaller version of the ReStore) and something caught my eye…

The pictures don’t really show it’s size… it’s HUGE. I can just see the top of it, and I’m 5’7″. At first, while intrigued, I wasn’t really thinking about buying it. For some reason, I just wanted to open the drawers and see if they opened smoothly. (They did)

As soon as I did, Dave came over and said “What are you thinking?”

And though it wasn’t really my intention when I first looked at it, I replied… “That could fit A LOT of fabric.”

He looked it over and concluded it was very well made – in fact, we’re pretty sure it’s homemade. I did some quick calculations, and decided I could probably fit it in the far corner where my shelves currently are. And being that it’s deeper and taller than the shelves, it should be able to hold all those content and maybe even most of the stuff I have in bins.

For $250 (which includes the cost of delivery) it seemed like a no brainer. It will be delivered on Wednesday and I’m soooo excited.

For now, all the stuff on the shelves is packed away in these bins

So it’s got to hold all of that… and hopefully.

All the stuff in these bins too.

I think it’s up to the job! And will look so nice doing it too!

There hasn’t been much bird-watching this winter… it’s been too cold for me to sit out there with the camera very long.

But, I’ve been keeping the feeders full for my feathered friends. From my office, I can get an idea of who’s stopping by, as they frequently take a break in the tree outside my window on the way to and from the feeders.

It’s mostly the usual suspects, the Jays, the cardinals, the juncos and the house sparrows. But the other day, when taking a break from my day job, I was looking out the back window that over looks the catio yard and the feeders just beyond. And there I spied a couple newcomers.

I got the camera an zoomed in

At first, I thought it was a Chipping Sparrow. We had lots of Chipping Sparrows at the townhouse, and while I’ve heard them around here (they have a fairly distinct call), I’ve never seen one. But this guy seemed a little bigger than I remember the Chipping Sparrows being. So, when I downloaded the pics, I ran them through Google Lens and discovered…

It’s an American Tree Sparrow! There are several small differences between it and the Chipping Sparrow (one being the size), but the easiest is the colour of the line from the eye. On the Tree Sparrow, it matches his cap, while the Chipping Sparrow’s is a dark brown/black.

And I wasn’t the only one happy to have a new customer at the restaurant….

No patron goes unnoticed here!

When Dave and I go out thifting, we usually hit up a few other stores (like Home Depot, Walmart, Giant Tiger, etc.) And I ALWAYS look to see what house plants they have. Happily, I have soooo many houseplants that it’s rare that they have one I don’t.. so I don’t end up buying anything. But recently there were THREE exceptions.

First…

I found this lovely little Juniper Bonsai. We have another Bonsai (a Ficus) and we adore it. The nice one is, this one can stay outside in the winter… so eventually it won’t be house plant at all.

The next was a plant I’ve seen on my British Gardening shows, but never in real life

It’s a Primula. And it’s a little more purple than this one appears in the picture. The jury is out on whether I will be able to keep it alive, as I struggle with most blooming house plants (Orchids and African Violets being the exception – though there have been plenty of failures in those arenas along the way).

The last is an orchid. And I wasn’t really planning on buying any more orchids. I already have 12… two of those are in bloom and two are about to bloom. But then I saw this one at Walmart.

Not only was it covered in flowers… but look at that colour…

It’s the prettiest dusty yellow with just a touch of maroon on each petal. I’ve never seen anything quite like it! It just HAD to have it! (It helped that it was only $15, which is super reasonable for a two-stem orchid)

So…I guess now I have 13 orchids. Lucky 13!

Excuse me boys…. but where am I supposed to sit now????

I think I’ve told this story before, but when I was a kid, there was a house on a corner on the way into town. It was a lovely brick farmhouse, and the door was fairly close to the road. The lady who lived there always had a beautiful big wreath on the door – a new one for every month.

We’d drive that route frequently, and as a kid, I dreamed of having my own door where I could hang a pretty wreath every month.

Over the years, I’ve slowly been creating my own collection. I have a Hallowe’en Monster wreath, a Christmas wreath, and the Easter wreath I made last year.

It was time to add to the collection. I had some of the things I needed to make two wreaths – one for January and one for February. But I really needed some silk flowers. So Saturday night, Dave and I made a stop at Michaels.

The January wreath was inspired by these little guys.

I picked them up from the dollar store the year we moved here, as well as the rope wreath form. Both have been sitting, waiting for the right floral accents to make it a wreath.

January is a tricky month for wreath creating… how do you make it winter… but not Christmas?

Well… I attempted it with some twigs and pussywillows. The pussywillows are frequently peeking out here in January so I think it’s appropriate. For the green, I opted for a little bit of lavender foliage. Lavender isn’t exactly an evergreen plant here, but it does keep it’s structure and leaves throughout the winter, even if they are a little dead.

I hung it on my door just to get an idea of how it would look, and I’m pleased. Now it’s safely tucked away for next January.

Next… it was on to February…

I’d picked up this wicker heart wreath while thrifting several months back. Clearly it has seen better days. Wreath forms can be really expensive, so I thought it was a good deal, and knew I could breath some new life into it.

I stripped everything but the pink ribbon off it and got to work.

I just love playing with silk flowers! It’s now hanging on the front door, and I couldn’t be happier.

March won’t get a wreath just yet. We found this guy at Dollar Tree on the weekend.

But I do have a grape vine wreath form… so ideas are percolating for May….

The poor pink sock just hasn’t been seeing much love lately.

These sad few inches are all I’ve managed to complete since I cast off the kitty cat hat. It’s definitely a case of Second Sock Syndrome. And it’s coupled with a case of WHY THE F@$% DID I DECIDE TO DO SO MUCH RIBBING? AKA “WTFDIDTDSOMR”.

But this week…. this week I’m going to get to that heel if it kills me! (And this much ribbing just might…)

With a little help from the ginger twins….

I put my mind to it and got all those French Knots knotted! And boy howdy there was a lot of them!

Sadly, I had to take the picture of the final piece when it was still a little bit damp, because I forgot to take it out of the hoop, dissolve the pattern paper, and iron it until late last night. Still – you get the idea.

And…. I may have already bought another embroidery quilt kit… but more on that another day.