"The North wind doth blow, And we shall have snow"...

And the North wind did blow and we have snow once more, blanketing the thawed areas under the trees and the gravel around the house where we had pathways to walk and drive.

The birds are hunkered down, hoping we have more suet to put out as they have once again decimated the offerings. The blue jays now have a nickname of 'flying pigs' because they just gorge on the suet. However, the flickers, chickadees, and nuthatches find the gaps and get their feeding in as well. But we are now down to one block, having forgotten to pick up more on our last trip into town. It's 13 miles one way to the garden store and when we have a winter storm nobody really wants to go out.

This time we were very lucky. We might have received four inches or so, with some of it drifting and blowing with snow devils whirling around in the wind gusts. But overall, we got rain for almost 18 hours before the dropping temperatures brought the snow.

I sat indoors all weekend while it drizzled and then rained steadily, crocheting the rest of the Afghan squares for a blanket for my second-youngest son. I started this 3+ years ago as a gift for Christmas. The grandchildren all got their soft Afghans but not my son.

I've been sewing a cathedral window quilt but for some reason I did not want to spend the weekend getting my fingers pricked by the pins I use to set the cathedral window pieces in, so I turned to crocheting away, no pins needed! I set myself the goal of getting at least all the rest of the 81 squares crocheted and managed to finish 41 of them, completing the first stage.

Once the squares were done, I laid out the quilt squares to make a decent pattern as I used leftover yarns from various projects to make the squares. I photographed the pattern and this week, in the evenings, I will crochet the squares together, trying to get the squares crocheted, and a border added by the end of the week.

One of the saddest parts of going through my parent's belongings was the carefully folded tapestry and embroidery cloths and knitting projects packed away and never finished. I have my own set of projects started and not finished and I'm now determined to see if I can not only finish my projects but over time, get my mother's projects done too. 

It occurred to me while writing this, that my mother started passing on projects to me to finish when I was five years old. The learned to sew when I was four or five years old, first by hand, and a couple of years later, by machine. My father taught me to make patterns for my teenage doll and to create clothes by hand for her. My mother taught me to do embroidery and gave me a tray cloth to finish when I was five. I still have that tray cloth, in decent shape even.

Sitting in a bentwood chair with the windows full of mountains and trees and birds at the feeders, working my hands is a sight more useful than spending all the hours I have on social media over the past six years thinking I might make a difference to the political situation in this country.

I have made some wonderful friends online and I will keep those. :) But it is time to work again with my hands  and create beauty in its many forms, crewel-work, embroidery, crocheting, knitting, quilting, and painting. Happiness.