Spring

 The weather has turned warm, and sunny, finally. Today, it is 23C. The flowers are blooming everywhere in the yard.

Some are native plants. Some are bulbs we planted. It is tulip time in Ottawa. The Tulip Festival began on the weekend, and continues for the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, I have been knitting on my May socks. This yarn is from a new to me dyer, Area 51 Yarns. She is in Regina, Saskatchewan, and has some great striping yarn.

This is one of my silly googly eye heel turn pictures. Now I am on the home stretch of the first sock. 

Spring means it is time to sew purses. I started one yesterday. It is going to be a hybrid design. based on two patterns I have. We will see how it goes.

I'm using some leftovers to make my concept bag. These cats were asking to become bag, again. The cork is leftover from another bag. They look good together.

The reno continues. It always takes much longer that the 60 minutes they show on TV. 

Decisions

 I have been missing because the contractors arrived and the reno began. We are still sorting through "stuff" and deciding what should go where, and if there is a way to give stuff to people who can use it.

We have made 2 trips to drop off Ewaste, 5 bags of books have gone to the annual church book sale, fabric and patterns have gone to be freecycled, along with kitchen items, toys, and other useful things. Sadly, some of the "stuff" just has to be thrown away. No one wants old textbooks, broken plastic items, and other such treasures. Some days I feel like my head might explode from all the decisions.

When the workers get too noisy, I have been hiding, either knitting in the sunroom with the pets, or spending time organizing my sewing stuff. 

These are my very alert guardians.

I have gotten some knitting finished.

These are my April socks.

And a pair of  baby socks.

I finished one fingerless mitt, but then spring arrived. I must finish the second one.

Easter came, and I made a family favourite, Easter cupcakes. 

This year is the 100th anniversary of the forming of the United Church of Canada. The local region decided to make a quilt to commemorate the occasion, with one block for each "pastoral charge".  I don't know who is going to put the blocks together, but I was asked to make the block for our congregation. (What were they thinking?)

This is my block. It is a six inch block, and I was asked for 4 sections about the church. Just try to do four ideas as 3 inch triangles. Everyone seems happy with it, so it is off the join the rest.

While I have been organizing my sewing room, I have been rewarding myself with a few minutes of sewing. Just a small project I can work on in small bursts. Today, I finished this little bag from 2 1/2" squares of Shweshwe fabric. I discovered I had been gifted with a bag of scrap strips from someone else's quilt. I don't remember who gave it to me.

Spring is finally here, so I have some pictures of our gardens.

I saw a cute couple looking for a new home, the other day. They were checking out our backyard.

I think they decided that there were too many dogs in our block, so they have gone elsewhere.

Snow?

 Yesterday, we woke up to this.

Doug looks a bit bewildered. The snowdrops were up and we were seeing green shoots. Then we had a total of 15 cm of snow yesterday.

This looks like some angels from a Christmas pageant partied too hard and left their halos behind.

The birds weren't going near the feeder.

 Fortunately, we were prepared.

It's a Canadian thing. Snow storms often cause power outages, so you need to stock up on snacks to munch on while you are waiting for the power to come back. This is four bags in one. Ketchup, Sweet BBQ, Salt and Vinegar, and Sour Cream and Dill, all in a convenient oversize bag. The chips are from a company in New Brunswick and use local potatoes.

I have been sorting, and clearing stuff out. I gave away about 60 patterns, that I hadn't ever used. I shared fabric with several people, many of them beginners. I have put a number of magazines in the recycling (I get my sewing and quilting magazines on my tablet as digital downloads from the library, these days.)

Now if we can keep our momentum going, we will have a very organized household.

My first April sock is finished and the second one is well on its way. I had some fun with the first one the other day.

 I think that socks look like Muppets when the heel is freshly turned. The stripes make it cuter. 

Today, I finished entering all the information for the income tax. I will wait another day, to see if I think of anything I've forgotten. then I will send it on its way. Not bad, I'm 3 weeks early.

The Clearout Continues

 I have spent most of my time clearing out the sewing stuff in my basement. Some has been claimed by friends. Some will be going to the local "Buy Nothing" group. A lovely piece of wool fabric had an encounter with moths, so is sadly gone into the garbage. I kept a small amount of the things stored in the basement. Hopefully they will appear here soon, as newly finished projects.

This week, we started to have hope that spring was coming.

Snowdrops appeared in a sunny spot in the side yard, as the snow was melting. Of course, yesterday, we got another 5 cm. of snow and today we have freezing rain. Tomorrow we might get +16C, unless the weather forecasts are just teasing us. This is spring in my area.

I finished the purple shawl, making two UFO finishes in March. As a reward, I cast on my April socks, a few days early.

I see I have cat hair on my pants (no surprise) but that yarn is such happy yarn. Who doesn't like a rainbow, symbol of hope!  They are going quickly. They should be done in no time.

This week will have more basement clearing. I hope I might get a little bit of sewing time.

The Great Clearout of 2025

 We have a new project to keep us busy. We have been planning to fix up the basement, for a number of years. We finally got to a point where we had a clear idea of what we would like to do, found a contractor that saw our vision (sweet and simple), and decided to go ahead. Then we heard the horrifying words: "I can start in two weeks." So now we have a deadline to sort through the many years of "stuff" that has been stored down there, doing the toss, donate, keep process. 

This was my giveaway piles of fabric on Thursday night. I found 5 Beaver neckerchiefs, brand new, which is odd because I only have 2 kids.

I mentioned on Friday morning to my church handwork group that I had some fabric and craft supplies to giveaway. They all stopped in on the way home, and took at least half of the stuff there. Of course, I have found more. My DIL, a goddess at posting on the local Buy Nothing group has volunteered to post the stuff for me, and handle the pickups.

It is surprisingly easy to let stuff go, when most of it hasn't seen the light for many years. My sewing space used to be in the basement, and when I moved upstairs, some of the supplies didn't get moved. There are also the hobbies I don't do any more. So very little is staying.

Of my current hobbies, my March goal of finishing a couple of WIP's is going well. 

The Boublay scarf is finished, and just needs blocking.

The bobbles along the cast off are beaded.

I am on to my next WIP. It is called Sobriquet, and the pattern is by Romi Hill. I started it in Feb. 2024.

It should be finished next week. I am just working on the border.

I also started a Musselburgh Hat. 

It is a top down hat and from here it is about 14" of straight knitting. Great project for meetings and waiting rooms.

In an effort to have a bit of spring, I forced some Forsythia branches.

The yellow is bright and cheerful. In a few short weeks, the whole bush will be covered in yellow.

Meanwhile, my Christmas cactus is having an identity crisis. It bloomed the end of November, and then decided to bloom again this week.

More pretty flowers to enjoy.

So, tomorrow is back to the clear out.  We can actually see progress, as more bags and boxes leave the house. I'll report back on the progress.

In Like A Lion Cub

 March came in, not like a lamb, but like a rather small Lion. There was more snow.  We got 109.3 cm of snow in February, in 12th place for the snowiest month on record. The snow has continued into March.  Today and tomorrow we are above zero, but that ends tomorrow night, and we are back in the freezer again. 

It seems like a good month to bake. Yesterday, I made Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies, to have with our coffee.

It was Shrove Tuesday (or Mardi Gras, or Pancake Day) so I made pancakes for supper. They are Oatmeal Apple Banana Pecan Spice Pancakes. When my kids were at home, they would eat a double batch in a single sitting. I made a single batch, and half are stored in the freezer for another day.

We had local maple syrup with them.

I finished the Trail Blazer Socks. I missed finishing in February but it was close.  So two pairs of socks for 2025.

I have decided that March will be a good time to finish three WIP's that I have sitting here. All of them are single skein fingering projects, two small shawls and a cowl.

The first one is a very small scarf, that uses a 30 gm ball of fingering. It is called Boublay by Laura Nelkin. Beads will be added.

Aren't the colours great! The yarn is Uneek by Urth Yarns. The colour is "54". There is purple still to come.

Not much sewing accomplished, but the knitting is going well.

Snow, Cold, and Now a Thaw

 It started to snow after my last post. In a 4 day period, we ended up with 80 cm of snow.  If you don't speak metric, that is a lot of snow! It has also been cold.

The snow on the road got plowed out fairly quickly, but the snow contractor for Canada Post got lost, and didn't manage to plow out our community mailbox.

The carrier couldn't put any mail into the box, because he couldn't get the doors open. We were three days without mail. Because that carrier didn't want the parcels to pile up (parcels go into the big boxes at the bottom that you can't see) he went door to door delivering them.  This meant that I didn't have to wait for some beautiful yarn I had ordered.

I couldn't resist these colours. It is from a hand dyer in Regina, SK, Area 51. 

https://area51fibres.com/

Yesterday and today the temperatures have been above zero, so some of the snow is melting. I looked out this morning and saw this on my neighbour's shed.

It looks like someone has piled quilt batting on the roof of the shed.  All ready for 5 or 6 beautiful quilts.

We had Valentine's Day, in the middle of the snow, so I made a heart shaped pizza. If one has a heart shaped pan, one should use it at least once a year.

My February socks are coming along nicely.

I'm just turning the heel, then it is straight to the toe! I have 4 days to finish.

I was looking for a fat quarter for a new pouch pattern I wanted to try. I opened my drawer, where I keep my fat quarters, and it was a mess. So, I spent much of today sorting and folding everything, again.

I still have a few more to refold, but I think they look very good. I probably should have sorted them by colour, but this is so much more fun to look at. I found lots of things I'd forgotten about.

Here is Doug, playing in the snow. He buries his ball and digs it up again. He really enjoys playing in the snow.