Good morning, my friends. It was nice to see the sunshine yesterday, even if it was bitterly cold. It has been so dark the past few days.
Looking out the window this morning, the sun is just now coming up. It's hard to tell what the day holds. Our weather people have been breathlessly forecasting freezing rain, high winds, and massive power outages. The storm is coming from the south, and our county will be the first to get hit in the Portland metropolitan area. Sigh. This was the day our carpet was to be installed. It has been rescheduled to Monday of next week.
We had a bit of a scare last night. After flushing the toilet, it didn't fill again. We turned on one of the faucets and watched as the last bit of water drained from our apparently frozen pipes. This happened once before during our first winter in this house (2002). As cold-weather/higher elevation novices, Mike had unplugged some heat tape in our pump house that kept the pipes from freezing where they attach to the well head. Oy. Fortunately, our neighbors were available to help us out. Now understanding the function of the heat tape, he plugged it back in, and we had water within a few hours.
So, fast forward 22 years, and we could only think the heat tape had stopped working...or something...who knows? So Mike was out riding his ATV back and forth between the house and the pump house. As it turns out, the heat tape was working, but the well head itself seemed to be frozen. He set up an electric heater in the pump house and turned it on. We went to bed and slept all night. When we got up this morning, WATER!!! Yay! Okay, so disaster averted.
Also, we drove into town yesterday to get more gasoline for our generator, just in case we lose power today. It was surprising to find the streets hadn't had any cold weather maintenance done to them. It was hard-packed snow all the way to the valley floor. I can only assume the weekend and the holiday meant no one was working on that. Oh well. We had no problems getting around, and there were almost no cars on the road. While we were out, we got the kitties some wheat grass, and that turned out to be a very popular item.
Just about every time I saw Smitty yesterday, he was nibbling at it. Sadie doesn't like it as much, but she likes to do whatever Smitty is doing.
Back at home, I tied the third row of blocks on the French Roses quilt. Now that I'm more than halfway, I've rotated the quilt around so that I can work on the blocks a little closer to me, and I can still have my view out the window.
When that was finished, I moved to the sewing room. Sadie was my sewing cat yesterday.
Smitty was my emergency back-up cat.
And then I pieced together a back for the Domestic Affairs quilt. Now this one will go onto the to-be-sandwiched pile.
From there, I went to work quilting the Dwell in Possibility wall-hanging. I outlined the moth and then did a moth-flying meander in the background.
In the outer border, I did a swirly-loopy pattern I saw on Pinterest.
The quilting took less time than setting up the machine for quilting. Here's how it looks from the back, although it's pretty hard to see the quilting there.
and sewed on the binding.
Through all of this, Sadie had to kill her pink puff ball over and over again.
From there, I headed upstairs to watch the news. While I was watching, I finished hand-stitching the binding. That's a finished quilt right there. It ends up at 15 x 15 inches.
Okay, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed the electricity stays on today. And I'm hoping the freezing rain just doesn't pan out, although I'm pretty sure the weatherman is right. The rain isn't supposed to start until a little later this morning. If nothing gets in my way, I'll get to work sewing the little Bumble stitchery into a finished quilt top.
I have some cute fabrics to finish this off. If I can get that finished, I'll be back to my list of WIPs, starting with another block for When Quilters Gather. Probably I'll do some laundry and a little housework, and we'll continue our task of emptying drawers and cabinets and clearing surfaces. Fingers crossed we don't lose our electricity.
Yesterday I read that 80% of the country is in this deep freeze. How is everyone doing out there?
19 comments:
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We started out last night with snowfall--only light, but this morning we are in the midst of a freezing rain/sleet mixture...so the fallen snow is all crusted--oh joy!!
Your bumble stitchery is so cute...stay warm and hope your water keeps on flowing for you!!
Hugs, Julierose
How we doing? Deep freezing! Burrr. The snow is reflective, so it's slow stitching. Treees are snow covered from last week, so just waiting for the power to go out any minute. We didn't get the wind predicted. Thank goodness.
Supposed to be warmer tomorrow, Wednesday. If the power goes out our pipes will freeze. No saving us on that one.
Here in the piedmont area of NC, we are getting rain/ sleet/snow today with a high of 42 degrees. Low is in upper 20’s. I complain about 5he cold but couldn’t live in areas that are minus degrees. My old bones just can’t handle it. I’ve got Brunswick stew warming for lunch to keep us comfy. I plan on doing some cross stitch this morning, then pressing 4 quilt tops and backing to go to long armer and then to bind 4 quilts that are donations for local cancer center and maybe a short nap. Stay warm and hope you keep power.
It's minus 10 here today, but I'm happy because it finally feels like winter! Lots of quilts are out and keeping us warm!
Congrats on finishing the Dwell in Possibility stitchery - it looks awesome!
Hello! It is sunny and no dark rainy clouds right now. My view from the kitchen is the coast range and yesterday's warmer temps melted the snow off the trees.
We still have 4 1/2 inches of snow and 1/2 inch of ice. It is 24F right now.
I am so glad that your water woes were remedied. I placed a warming seed mats from the greenhouse onto the pump parts and we haven't had a problem. The new pump house 10 inch insulated walls - Yeah, probably over kill, but it was free product, so I over engineered/built it.
The bird collective - too many to count are finishing off the braeburn and melrose trees. I've gone thru 40 lbs of bird seed this week. I pile the birdseed onto a gunny sack and then my silly 8 mo border collie pup pulls it all over the yards and scatters the seed willy nilly. She has a ball and the birds are loving it.
We were told to expect snow, but if it came overnight I can't tell. It remains very cold here in SW Ohio, the high yesterday was 10°. Our thermostat is haunted. It keeps changing the setting so that every time I walk past, it's set to a different, lower temperature. It's generally set at 62° at night, but regularly changes on its own to 57°. Either way, our gas bill for this month will be humongous.
I started doing hand embroidery about a year ago and just love it and turn them into small quilt projects. Everyday seeing what you do encourages me so much to continue on. Thank you for this wonderful blog. Winter here in Iowa is full force, below zero for days and 25 inches ofsnow in the past week. Ready for spring.
Great mini finish and the little bumble mini is cute. London is cold but dry, no snow. The north of the country and Scotland have snow. I hope your electricity stays on. Stay safe.
That was a close call with the pump. So glad it worked out. My darling husband cleared the snow off our driveway and the neighbors. When he got the snow shovel out of the garage he had left the garage door open. I didn’t discover this right away. I went to get something out of the garage and walked into an icebox. Usually our garage stays in the mid 40’s in super cold weather because the furnace is out there. I immediately checked the water in the utility sink, it was still running so I started it dripping. Later my husband turned on a heater in there to warm it up a bit. We are back into the 40’s and using the front door instead of going out thru the garage. We have a good friend who owns a pumping company and he is extremely busy at the moment. He was only super busy before the storm. Our oldest daughter worked yesterday and she said it didn’t look like Mill Plain had been cleared at all. There were tire ruts but lots or snow and ice. It thawed a bit during the day from cars driving but as soon as it got dark it all refroze so she slipped a couple of times on the way home. Then they had to go pick up her husbands grandma from ER. She had slipped taking her dog out and broken a wrist. They now are keeping her little dog for her.
Yaym water! Water is my scariest fear.
I hate to say it but we're in the midd-60s. Sorry guys, but that's why we pay the big bucks for our sunshine!
Dwell In Possibility turned out beautifully! Glad Mike was able to fix the frozen pump head issue overnight. We've been worried about water freezing in the sinks on the outside walls, so have had the water trickling in those since Sunday night. Fingers crossed it warms up enough today to turn those off for a bit. Hoping you didn't get a lot of freezing rain that that your power mostly stayed on. I think all of us are ready to get this winter stuff over with.
Sorry about the frozen well head. Your moth is gorgeous.
Glad you have power. We're finally going to get above zero today (17 degrees). Woohoo! Especially since I'm giving someone a ride to the doctor, and I'll be sitting in my car while they are inside in the warm. Stay warm!
Bitter cold here in W. Michigan. Getting more lake effect snow. We've had about 16 inches so far since Friday. We go out and shovel until our fingers are freezing, come back in to thaw and then go out again if we didn't get it all done which depends on how much snow has fallen and also how much the plows dumped in our driveway.
Seeing the sunshine lulls you into a false sense of it being warm out and then it's a rude awakening when you step outside. Glad Mike was able to solve the water issue.
Glad it was a quick fix for the water situation, and no burst pipes and all that headache. I am glad I'm a homebody because it is too cold to go out lately (although I did get out yesterday). Dwell in Possibility is a very pretty finish!
Our water froze Friday afternoon, after my shower thankfully! It took some work, but yesterday we both got to take showers, at last! Today I'm planning laundry! I may even get some more of my WOF strips cut into squares so I can continue progress on the next quilt. It is a simple affair with large squares of Christmas fabrics, interspersed with large golden stars. I'm not speedy like you.
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