Back Sewing!

Basement renovations started at the beginning of March, and now that normal activities are on COVID-19 hold, we decided to make the basement liveable. The new walls are up and some of the electric is done.

This is the start of my new sewing room! I am not unpacking everything, because there is still lots that needs to be done. I am so happy to have somewhere to sew again!

So far I sewed the first six blocks of a new mystery sew-along from Temecula Quilt Company, called Stay at Home Sampler (I think it is just on Instagram - link, and Facebook). These are 3" blocks, and the sew-along is for the month of April.

I made a new anti-predation collar cover for the cat.

She looks like she is ready for Halloween. I think I will make her a pink one next - it is very muddy outside and it is good to have a few collar covers. The bright collar covers seem to stop her catching birds, and she still catches plenty of rodents.

I also made a few masks (something I never thought I would have to make). The pattern is the Olson mask. It was very easy to make.

Photos from around-

We've seen a few different tracks around-

 Maybe skunk,

and Canada Goose (these ones are surprisingly big).

Going for a walk.

Today we had an assortment of weather - wind, rain, ice pellets, snow, sunshine, dark clouds... 

 The sky was amazing, and changed so fast. 

 By the end of the day we ended up with snow that stuck.

All the best!♥︎

April Goal

My One Monthly Goal for April (hosted by Elm Street Quilts) is to weave another set of tea towels.

This is the last of the kits I bought from Jane Stafford Textiles. These are to learn Huck Lace - again much easier to weave than I thought it would be. Made from plain 8/2 cotton, the kit is for 8 towels.

Each set of towels I have made I have had to deal with some kind of a weaving issue (a great way to learn! A few loose warp threads with the first ones, and replacing a warp thread with the second ones), for this one I made a mistake while threading the heddles (the wire pieces that hold the yarn and create the pattern), and had to move threads around and add a couple of repair heddles (made from cottolin) - probably not the correct thing to do, but it worked for me.

It results in some of the warp threads not having the right spacing, but I hope it will all come out in the wash! I didn't want to re-thread over 400 threads.

Photos from around -

 We had a snow storm last week (the second biggest snow fall this winter).

 Frost on the weeds in the ditch.

 The puppy running circles around the cat.

All the best!♥︎

More Tea Towels

I put another set of tea towels on the loom.

This is another kit from JST, called Sassy Brassy Log Cabin. I bought a few different weaving kits to learn new weaving techniques (this one is log cabin weaving), and now that we are renovating the basement I am glad to have something to make. Sewing on the dining room table is definitely not like sewing with a proper cabinet, so I won't be able to do too much sewing for a while - I was able to bring the weaving loom upstairs, but the sewing machine cabinet is too big to move.

Photos from around - 

 Both pets are coming for walks again now that it is warmer.

 More snow today.

All the best!♥︎

Finally

I finally got around to pinning the quilt I was hoping to start quilting last week.

It is a Flowering Snowball quilt I cut using a GO! die, and started about 5 years ago. 

Photos from around- 

 Molly finally managed to get her big stick home.

 She had a hard time maneuvering through her track, but she made it.

 The ice on the rink is so thick.

Luckily there is one tree by the rink, so we can stash our boots away from a puppy who likes to run away with them.

 A couple of coyotes caught on the trail cam last night.

All the best!♥︎

More Tiling

Today was another tiling day. This time in our other bathroom. It is a tiny room at the back door (you can tell it is a farm house - it is so practical at the back door).

I tiled the backsplash around the sink,

and a row of tiles around the shower stall, to hide the edge of the shower. My men were a bit worried about how this would work, none of the walls are straight - the tiles did a good job of hiding the problems. Just the grouting left, but that can wait until next week.

Photos from around -

 Molly was determined to carry the biggest stick this morning.

Bark falling off a dead tree.

All the best!♥︎

Love It When Things Work

Finished tiling around the bathtub.

I am so grateful to the have the right tools to make this an easier job.

I was so happy that the hole for the tub spout worked the first time!

I am still working on the handspun sweater. I think it will be long enough when I finish that ball of yarn. I guess this is Maggie's territory - it is near her food bowl.

All the best!♥︎

Tiling

 I had big plans on pinning a quilt together today, but more important duties called.

I painted the bathroom and started tiling - hopefully I will finish it in the next few days so I can get the quilt pinned.

My Mother sent me a picture of her finished quilt!

All the best!♥︎

A New Decade!

Today marks 10 years since I started blogging! I can't believe that I have been here for a decade. It has been fun, and I have made some incredible friends! At one point I was going to stop blogging, but I am glad that I have kept it up.

My very first blog post (here) I said that I was starting blogging as a way to keep track of the things I make, and that is exactly what it has been over the past 10 years. 

The past two years I challenged myself to post at least once a week, and I am so pleased that I managed that.

I can't imagine blogging for another decade, but this last one went so fast, you never know.

This is what the start of 2020 looks like where I live.

Wishing you all the best for the New Year!!♥︎

Kitchen Renovation

We have been renovating our home since last March, when we finally sold our other house, so I thought I would show some pictures of the renovations so far. Apart from a new furnace, some plumbing and the countertops, we have done all the work ourselves. We have renovated houses before, but this is the most work that we have done to a house - just about everything is new, luckily now we have two adult sons who did lots of the work too.

It is funny how things work out the way they are supposed to, living in the house for so long before renovating really changed our plans for how we wanted to renovate it (we reconfigured a few spaces).

Here are some before pictures -

The kitchen was very small, we had to overflow into what was the dining room space.

The living room was big enough for our dining room.

The best thing that we did was to remove the wall splitting the two rooms, and going around the stairs to the back door and basement (we did have an engineer come in to make sure that it wasn't a supporting wall).

I love having just one big room (we had that in our house in Alberta).

We went with simple wood cupboards because we live in a small farm house with grain bins in the front yard (the cupboards are from Home Depot).

While deciding the plans for the kitchen I had asked a couple of people who had recently renovated their kitchens what they like about their new kitchens.

My sister has a nice wide space around her island, so we did the same. It worked out great, there is lots of room for everyone to work in the kitchen, even space when the dishwasher is open. She also suggested lots of drawers which I am glad we did too. A dear friend said that she was pleased that she had moved things to have more space between the sink and the stove, and I am so happy with that - I would have kept the stove centred on that wall now there is a great work space. One big change that I wanted was a second sink in the island - my family thought it was a bit much when I suggested it, but now they all think it is so handy, I love it. I am glad that we went with a slide in range rather than a freestanding one - it seems like there is more room on the stove top (we had the free standing version in our last house, it can be one large oven or two small ones), also we went with a counter depth fridge - it has the same amount of space as we had before but it is wider and not as deep, making it much easier to reach things in the back.

There are two areas of renovations that are mine - the painting and tiling (I could do the hard wood floors by myself but I like to have some one to help get it started straight). I was really happy with how the back splash tiles turned out around the window - it's nice when measuring works out!

Photos from around -

Still spending lots of time in the kitchen canning! These are pickled beets and pickled carrots - Taqueria Carrots from a Blueprint class (the verdict is still out on them, maybe time will improve the flavour).

We are still having so much rain-

 crayfish holes everywhere

 the soybean field around us is flooded (the tractor has been sitting there for two weeks)

 we surprised a skunk when we went out for a walk in the rain

 the harvested fields have started growing even the bales have growth on top

(there is a hawk on one of the bales)

a heart shaped red onion

All the best!♥︎