A Gift of Orange Webbing

The husband asked me if I wanted the orange webbing that had come on the trusses, and of course I said yes. Who knows when it might come in handy? I took off the pieces of metal and then washed the webbing:

It cleaned up nicely. I have no idea where I’ll use it, but some project will pop up, no doubt, and now I don’t have to buy webbing.

My fabric stash is full of all sorts of weird stuff.

The trusses on one of the lean-to sides of the new shop went up yesterday.

It was a gorgeous day. I looked at the shop pictures I took about a week ago and compared them to these. Probably half of the snow has melted, but much remains. (And it’s just ugly snow now.) This is how the garden looks:

The snow is about a foot and a half deep over the lettuce bed. My currant bushes are budding out, though!

I’d love to get into the herb garden and clean it up some, but it’s still covered in a lot of snow. I’d have to dig the gate out to get in there.

My list of outdoor tasks is a mile long, but I can’t get started on any of it until this snow goes away.

The chicks are getting bigger. The roosters seem to have settled their differences. Nothing has popped up in the seed trays yet, but I check every day.

I started playing around with some embroidery on the wool pennies, just for fun:

Because I don’t know many of the stitches, I just pick something from a book or website and try it. The red around the brown penny is called “scroll stitch” and it’s now one of my favorites. I’m going to sew a little button to the middle of that orange penny. I’ve seen beads and buttons added to many of these samplers. My stash is full of ones I’ve collected over the years.

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Yesterday was a frustratingly non-productive day (pictures above notwithstanding). I spent the morning on more product development that kept crashing and burning, so I gave up. The projects I could have worked on were lacking supplies and I did not want to make a special trip to town. One of the projects is a quilt. The backing I ordered arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon, but by the time I had washed and pressed it, it was too late to start working on putting the quilt together. I finally pulled out my Accuquilt cutter and the basket of Kona scraps and cut tumbler blocks. I am cutting blocks as I get scraps and putting the blocks into a plastic container for a leader and ender project next winter.

I know, I need to look at my four hours of crashing and burning product development as forward progress, because now I’ve found a bunch of ways that don’t work. Yay me. And if I leave it alone for a while, some breakthrough will likely occur in my subconscious. The husband pointed out that everyone has non-productive days and that I am delusional to think I am so special that I can avoid them. (But ask him some time how grumpy he gets when HE has a day like that.) Now that I have the supplies I needed, however, I’ll have plenty to keep me busy for the rest of this week while I wait for the snow to melt. Our fire department auction is a week from this Saturday, so next week is going to be spent getting ready for that event.