Last week’s prompt for the SAHRR was “Triangles”. Now in quilting, there are lots of types of triangles…

• Half-Square Triangle (HST): Formed by cutting a square diagonally from one corner to another, resulting in two right triangles. When these triangles are sewn together along the diagonal, they create a square block with a diagonal seam.

• Quarter-Square Triangle (QST): Made by cutting a square into four smaller triangles, usually by cutting it diagonally twice. These triangles are then arranged and sewn together to form a larger square block.

• Flying Geese: Comprised of a larger triangle (the “goose”) and two smaller triangles (the “sky”). The smaller triangles are sewn onto opposite sides of the larger triangle, resembling the shape of a flying bird.

• Equilateral Triangle: All three sides of this triangle are of equal length, resulting in three 60-degree angles.

• Isosceles Triangle: This triangle has two sides of equal length and two equal angles opposite those sides.

• Scalene Triangle: All three sides of this triangle have different lengths, and all three angles are different.

So Burton and I had to decide what triangles we wanted to use, and how…

After much back and forth, and sketching on our graph paper, we finally settled on a design.

So we made some triangles

Half Square Triangles for the win! And to tie this round in with the rest of our quilt, we made some hearts too.

And then we got to sewing them together.

Burton was super excited about how it turned out, and I have to say, I agree with him. I’m just loving it so far.

The top is 50″ square now. There are three rounds left, so it still has some growing to do!

Like many of you, we’ve experienced “above seasonal” temperatures this week. It was only supposed to last to Wednesday and then turn grey and cold again. But it persisted, and so did the sun. And by Friday it was 15, and sunny, but very windy. Naturally, I was poking about in the gardens.

The pink pussywillow is in her full glory now. She’s always earlier than the others, and will eventually turn dark grey – but right now she’s just perfectly pink. I think I’m going to cut a few of these to put in my Blue Mountain Fish vase.

And there are lots little bits of green – snowdrops, columbine and daylilies.

And as much as I love yard squirrels, they are troublemakers. In addition to bulb pilfering…

They’ve made an absolute mess of my raised beds. For most of the beds, that doesn’t matter – there’s nothing in them. But the one on the left has garlic (I’ve already tossed a couple they completely dug up) and the one on the right has all the perennials I got on clearance last fall. They’ve totally toss about all the markers and I’m pretty sure dug up a few plants completely. We’ll just have to wait and see what’s left – and what I can identify!

But elsewhere, there’s promise of good things….

My Bluebeard shrub, and Tinkerbelle Lilac are budding.

And so is my Azalea. It wasn’t doing great in the spot I had it last year, so I moved it under one of the windows on the front of the house. I think the fact that it’s budding is a good sign, because this time last year, I thought it was completely dead!

Of course, Mother Nature has now flipped a switch – that wind blew in cold and grey… so it’s been an inside weekend. Maybe I’ll go start some seeds…

Back in December, I was scrolling through Facebook when I came across a post by Winsor & Newton (art supply company) offering free tutorials in the New Year. I’ve been wanted to get back into my art for a while so I signed up.

I consider myself a self-taught artist because, though I took Art all through school, very few teachers ever actually taught technique – they just gave us an assignment and we were left to do our best on our own.

The exceptions were:

My Grade 7 Art teacher (who’s name I can’t remember, though I can picture him clearly). He was the person who taught me how to draw faces proportionately, and also how to use a grid to help making sketching easier.

and

My Grade 12 Art teacher - Mr. Izatt – who taught me how to properly use acrylic paint.

Though I’d never been taught it, I’d always had a love for Watercolour. I was first given a set when I was probably 8 or 9, and would play with it every now and again.

In my teens, I discovered watercolour pencil crayons… and I had a blast with them. The media I’m most comfortable in is pencil crayons. And as much as I loved them, they didn’t give a “true” watercolour look.

In my early twenties, I interviewed an artist who did watercolour on canvas. During the interview, she gave me a quick, 10 minute lesson, and I went home and tried it on my own.

With this technique, you use them thick, like acrylics, and pull colour off with a wet, clean brush for your highlights. It also requires a special type of canvas, and I haven’t seen them in stores for years.

Still – I’ve always wanted to do “traditional” watercolour properly. Though the tutorials came out in January (there are four), I haven’t had a chance to sit down and actually try one until last Sunday.

I decided to start with one that was a butterfly.

I’d forgotten that painting something would require me to sketch something first. Luckily I had Lemmy to help me, as my sketching skills are a touch rusty too.

Eventually I got him to settle elsewhere…

And set to work on following the tutorial with paint.

Step by step I followed it and eventually ended up with something that definitely looked like a butterfly…

But, if you compare it to the guide on my screen, I definitely need more practice.

So… I’m on the hunt for more tutorials because… I’ve had a book of these since forever…

And I think it would be fun to use them all up this year!

“OMG! Are those Froot Loops?!?!?”

The second round of the Stay at Home Round Robin was “Two colours”. Any block you want, but use just two colours.

Now the thing I love about the SAHRR is that the rules are very loose – you can stay as close to the prompts as you want… or deviate a little as needed.

I decided to interpret the “two colour” prompt as “two prints” and started cutting for some piano keys.

I think they work quite nicely with my round of hearts and leaves. I put plain black in the corners so the round wouldn’t feel too confining. And I don’t think background fabric should count in the two count.

The piano keys gave me an opportunity to use the script fabric, something I always have trouble working with. I paired with with the green on green foliage print and I think it works well

A new round was released on Monday, and I hope to work on it this weekend. Stay tuned!

The Jupiter sock doesn’t look a whole lot different since you last saw it. I had set it aside to work on the cross stitch for my friend (and yes, she totally loved it).

I did take the sock with me to Ottawa, but both flights were so short, I didn’t get much done. I pulled it out on the London to Toronto leg, but by the time we got up in the air, we were almost ready to land again (it’s like a 40 minute flight, and I think only a little more than half of that is actually flying). I got about three rounds done before I had to put it away for landing again, so I didn’t even bother to take it out on the Toronto to Ottawa leg. Even the time in between flights wasn’t very long – mostly just long enough to grab a quick bite to eat and get to the next boarding.

Knowing this, I didn’t even bother putting it in my purse for the flight home. I put it in my back pack… which got sent for secondary inspection after it went through the xray at security.

I was wondering what might have alerted them until the security agent stopped pulling things out as soon as he got to sock. The “aha” look on his face gave it away too. I guess those needles in that arrangement would look very suspicious to someone who doesn’t knit. After he pulled it out, he looked at me and said “I don’t want to mess this up on you, so are you ok putting it back in?”

I had a good laugh to myself and told him it was not a problem.

Now that I’m home, and have no more urgent projects, this sock will definitely see more love.

With my friend little bird cross stitch done and framed (she loved it), I needed to get something new in the hoop. For a while, I’ve been admiring a variety of patterns done on black aida. Eventually, I settled on a set of patterns from an Etsy seller.

When we renovate my office this summer, I want to decorate it something like an old Victorian Naturalist’s room. I think these would look amazing on the wall.

I’ve started with the first butterfly

It’s not going to be a fast project. Not only am I working on black aida, but it’s also 18ct – so it’s pretty small. I think it’s going to look amazing though! I just have to take it one stitch at a time!

Once I got my unpacking done, and my laundry started, Saturday was the day to tackle fixing the corner on my SAHRR quilt.

I got out the seam ripper and got work taking those rocketship corners out. Then I got out the graph paper and started playing around. It took a little bit, but I finally figured out something that would work better. And once I did, they took no time at all to cut and sew.

Simple hearts on point. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t think of them sooner. And you can probably tell by Burton’s face… he thinks I should have as well!

Once they were together, it was just a matter of getting them sewn back into the top.

The photo is a touch blurry – but you can see it looks waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better now.

The second round of the round robin was released last Monday (and another one will be announced today), but you’ll have to wait a few days to see what I did next.

Technically, it’s far too early to be worried too much about the gardens. And it’s still to early to plant any of my seeds inside. But the snow we had is gone, and the weather’s back to hovering above freezing so naturally the boys and I were outside poking around.

The cats aren’t the only furry things soaking up the sunshine…

All three of the pussywillows are starting to show their catkins. I thought it seemed a little early, but looking back at last year’s photos, it looks like it’s about right on time.

There’s lots of green popping up everywhere, but the thing I’m most excited about are these

Last fall, planted a pile of crocuses for some early spring colour. Despite these healthy sprouts, it will be at least a month before I see blooms on them. But it makes me happy to see the green, because not all of the bulbs I planted are going to bloom…

It seems the squirrels have had their fun with some of them. But that’s why I plant a tonne – hopefully the majority will make it through!

As mentioned earlier in the week, I was gone from Tuesday to Thursday on a little jaunt to our Nation’s Capitol.

It was a mix of business and pleasure, and with travel taking up most of Tuesday and Thursday, and business taking up most of Wednesday, there wasn’t a tonne of time for sight seeing. But I did get to walk around downtown Ottawa – which seemed to be mainly comprised of hotels, bars, restaurants, and office buildings and a few statues here and there:

And even an ice sculpture

I believe Winterlude is set to start this weekend and the sculpture is part of it. There were others but they were covered up

Ottawa was pretty similar in style to most of the big cities I’ve visited (ie Toronto, Chicago, etc), with a couple of exceptions.

1. There was a lot more people speaking French (for those who don’t know, Canada has two official languages, so with all the Federal workers, and Quebec literally a hop skip and a jump away, this wasn’t a big surprise)
2. These fancy buildings..

Our Parliament Buildings. (There’s another big building on Parliament Hill – West Block/House of Commons – but for some reason I didn’t take a picture.

As you can see, they were under construction (friends tell me they are ALWAYS under construction) but they are still quite pretty. If I’d been able to get pics of them in the day, you’d see that the roofs are a beautiful green colour (copper roofs that have patina-ed over time)

But I don’t think the Centennial Flame would have looked as cool during the day (my pics don’t really show it’s splendor).

And even though it was a very short trip – I was very happy to return home. I am a homebody at heart. And someone else hates it when I go away too

He says I’m not allowed to leave again – he’s going to be really upset when I go to Mom’s in a couple weeks…

Let cheer him up by voting him America’s Favourite Pet! (Don’t forget to vote daily!)