Winter Morning

We had a dry morning for our walk yesterday. It was looking promising as I got ready to leave. Looking out the window, there was the slightest hint of a pink sky and frost on the field. The roads were a little bit icy as I made my way into town.

Because the Fanno Creek Trail is often flooded these days...a combined effort of the rain and some naughty beavers...we decided to start from the far end of the trail, near the Tigard Public Library. We've walked here before, but it's been quite some time...a couple of years, I'm guessing. Quite a bit of work has been done here building bridges, clearing out wild blackberries and brush, and opening up new areas of the trail. At this far end, it has been (and continues to be) somewhat disjointed, taking the walker onto public streets and across highways to the next section of designated trail. Here's one of the new bridges, and a whole new drainage system dug, presumably to prevent flooding.

Along the way, we passed by this pretty Sequoia. There are quite a few along the trail.

Here is Fanno Creek. The bridge at the top of the image is Hwy 99W which is one of the main drags out to the Oregon Coast. It's very busy here, but a new portion of the trail allowed us to walk under the highway without having to wait for a walk signal to cross.

That eventually ended up in a neighborhood for a short distance before meeting up with the trail again. One of the structures in the neighborhood was this assisted living facility.

We got a kick out of the sign on the gate. Spring chickens, we assumed.

Also we walked past the oak savanna restoration area where we saw these dead seed heads on some tall weeds. They're pretty in the morning dew.

Also, this tri-colored blackbird, singing his guts out. He was high overhead, and so it was hard to get a good picture of him.

We walked on, and when we came back, he was still there.

These were some little crabapples...about the size of a marble.

And these blooming weeds...blooming against all odds given the frosty mornings we've had. It just goes to show that weeds will take over the world some day.

I had to run some errands while I was in town, which meant it was past noon by the time I was back at the Three Cats Ranch. When I got home, it seemed like an update on the amaryllis was in order. The thing has grown to about two feet tall, and it looks pretty comical.

Yesterday, I noticed that the bud was just starting to open.

While I was icing my knee, I took some time to do some slow stitching and filled my hoop. Now I've moved it to the right. It's about 2/3 of the way there now.

After that, I spent most of the afternoon downloading patterns from my Craftsy library onto my hard disk. It would surprise me if patterns were to disappear from our libraries with the changes at Craftsy, but I was taking no chances. Mine are all housed on my home computer now. It took some time because some of them were BOM's, and so I had virtual folders set aside for them. It meant opening each folder to make sure I had all the blocks. It took a couple of hours. (I had a lot of patterns stored in the Craftsy library.) If you don't know what I'm talking about, then just know that Craftsy is up to no-good...closing certain "stores," and deleting certain designers. I don't know enough about it to say much, but if you have patterns sitting in a Craftsy library, you'd better claim them now. Time is running out.

After that, there was just a little time left in the day to work on the alley cats. There was just one left for top-stitching, but I had a change of heart about it. In deference to Sadie, I pulled off its red nose and gave it a black one.

Then I top-stitched it down.

That was all I had time for, but I left the machine ready to get busy on the hearts and stars. One set of the four is already stitched, so I just have three each left to do. This should go much faster than the cats, although it takes the machine a while to stitch out that double blanket stitch.

After that, just the buttons are left, so I'm hoping to finish it up today. It'll get tossed on the pile with the rest of the quilts to be sandwiched. I'm hoping to get that done by next weekend. You might be wondering whatever happened to Wind in the Whiskers. Fear not. It's on tap to be finished during the week between Christmas and New Year's. Just the beading is left, and yes, I'm dragging my feet about it. I needed the alley cats for a nice little diversion.

There was a pretty full moon last night. It's not a great picture, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Seems to me it ought to mean something when there's a full moon at winter solstice. Just as I wrote those words, I consulted The Google (blessed be its name) and found that it's rare for the full moon to coincide with the winter solstice. According to this article, it's happened just ten times since 1793! But don't take my word for it, click on that link. The article is interesting. A full moon at winter solstice is called a "full cold moon." Consider that your trivia for the day. You're welcome.

It's about to get very busy here at the Three Cats Ranch. My biggest goal for the day is to get the alley cats finished for sandwiching, and then I'll be spending the time between now and Christmas in the kitchen. Since I didn't get to make any Christmas candy while we were traveling last year, I want to try to get some made this year. Time is running out. Some of it might have to wait until after Christmas. Also, I'll start cooking ahead some dishes for our Christmas family get-together dinner on Christmas Eve. Most everything will have to be made on the day, but I can get some of the preparations done ahead of time.

Winter is officially here. Time to settle in and stay warm. I'm a day late with this message, but Happy Winter Solstice, everybody.

(Image credit: Nic McPhee)