Tuesday, March 13th - winter finally arrived - well sort of

Last week it was predicted we were getting a huge storm. We did get a bit of a storm on Friday night but nothing near what was predicted. Now this morning they are warning us of yet another one on the way for tonight. Not getting so excited about this one. So far this winter the predictions have just not lived up to expectations. Although Brenda was able to get out and do a little cross country skiing in the woods by her place.

 This morning's sky is looking pretty ominous. The old saying about "Red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky in the morning, sailor take warning". We'll see just how accurate that is later today.

Another pretty quiet week.  I only had to work at cards one day last week. That's always my day to do whatever other errands I have in town. The rest of the week was spent mostly in my craft room. I've always said I'd never make a whole queen sized quilt with pieced blocks because I have trouble matching up seams no matter how carefully I measure, cut and sew. Secondly, I think I'd just get too bored before it was finished. Well last week I was looking at my 'stash' of pieces. Quilting is somewhat like scrapbooking, at least for me it is. If you cut off a small piece of fabric (or paper) you throw it in a box. You just never know when you might need a small piece of some colour. My very large box of paper scraps should tell me that they rarely get used, but what the heck. So instead I've made some blocks that I believe are called crazy quilt. You just randomly sew together any mixture of colours and fabrics and the result is actually quite pleasing. I'm doing it so each block has the batting and backing on it so it's all sewn together at once. Then at the end I just have to sew them all together. I have enough backing material to make  52 blocks. I have 15 finished. 37 more to go. Next week I'll include a photo of a couple of the blocks.

We're both making plans for our upcoming trips. Lloyd is pretty much all set. He's going to Ontario a day early so he can spend some time visiting friends before he heads out. Patti and Greg and the kids will be away while he's there, so he won't see them but he is able to stay at their house so that works out.

I know it's not going to be very great weather on Martha's Vineyard while I'm there. In fact yesterday they had a blizzard warning for that area. But another month could make a world of difference. The down side is the weather not being ideal and lots of things won't be open yet, but the upside is it will be very quiet. From what I understand it gets extremely busy in the summer with tourists. I'm looking forward to touring around and seeing the sights without crowds of people. It was like that when I went to Nantucket Island a couple of years ago. Ideal for a relaxing vacation.

I'm hoping planning to do some bicycling while I'm there. My bike is in the basement and has been there for several years. Needless to say it's not in the best of shape. So I went to Canadian Tire on Saturday and bought a new one to take with me. I'm planning to do much more riding this summer.

My quilt project has quite a bit of hand sewing when it comes to joining the blocks so I may take a few of those for something to do on a rainy day. If it doesn't rain and I don't get to it, even better!

Lloyd and I went out to the home show on Saturday. We're planning to replace the ceramic tile in the kitchen. We've never been a big fan of it and after nine years, it's finally time to replace it. Lloyd thinks he may do that while I'm away, but that's a huge undertaking right after getting back and I expect he'll be jet lagged for a few days. We'll need to move everything out of the kitchen but fortunately we have another kitchen to cook in, and we can eat out there as well, or in the living room. While at the home show we were also looking at windows, siding, etc. All we need to do now is win that lottery and we could do it all at once!

It was a busy weekend for James. His cadet squadron traveled to Ottawa and did a fair bit of touring around by the looks of all the pictures on their facebook page.

 Looks like a great time was had by all.

Patti was in Japan and Meg was working, prompting Tristen to call just to chat.  He must have been pretty bored!



I did finally receive the photos we took out at Island Hill while he was here.

Speaking of Island Hill, we had the owners over for supper on Sunday evening. (It was supposed to be Friday but our brief storm postponed things). We had bought our goat(s) from them and had talked about having them out for supper but it just never happened. While Tristen was here and we went out   to visit I took my calendar with me and we set a date. I find it you don't do that, it never happens. So I brushed up my cooking skills and made a really nice dinner and we had a very lovely evening. I suspect we may do it again sometime, as we all really enjoyed ourselves.