It’s already February! What happened to January? We are in the midst of a blizzard, snowing and blowing and bitterly cold on top of yesterday’s ice it is treacherous out there with 5-10 ” expected.

The tile men did come yesterday to work on the floor, but I hope they don’t try to come today. Our dead end road may very likely drift closed and I sure don’t want them to have to spend the night!!

Yesterday’s mail brought an acceptance letter from the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival in VA for “Spring Encounter”, three for three so far this year!!

More snow, more coming; enough already. I know it could be worse, but this is bad enough!

I’ve managed to get a little quilting done this past week, but I am just not really into it right now. The parts with no pins is done but you can’t see the stitching very well.

The 2000 piece puzzle is maybe three quarters done, and has been a focus along with getting the books caught up to file sales tax, and some knitting. I have not been outside to walk and get some fresh air and it makes me unmotivated!

This week I have had an inordinate amount of spam on this blog, which is VERY time consuming. Some to enlarge parts I don’t even have, etc, that are easy to spot and delete, but mostly posts that are phishing for something. They will be full of compliments that are so ambiguous they could just as easily apply to golfing as quilting. I have spent hours this week dealing with this and I don’t “get” it. If you have sent me a legitimate post that did not get approved please be more focused, I don’t want to ignore YOU!.

The storm didn’t leave us with much snow, but there was ice and lots of accidents so it turned out to be a great day to sew! The dog looked as comfy as if he had good sense, sleeping in the ground cover, but I disturbed him with my
interruption to snap his photo.

The Stonehenge fabric that I had anticipated being perfect for the rock ledges is proving to be rather boring actually, so I have pulled some old fabrics from the stash to mix in. I removed a fern piece and replaced it with one that extends into the border, cut a piece of foliage to complete that corner and added a border to the opposite side.

Don’t really like that lower corner, so I laid the removed piece of fern in on top just to see the effect. I think it lightens that corner – time will tell!

Yesterday’s snow was the beautiful fluffy kind that I like. Not too cold, not too deep, no wind.

Too heavy to stay long on the branches, the beauty of it didn’t last very long though,

and now much of it has melted into puddles and mud. More predicted for tomorrow. I’m ready for spring!

Mt goat number two has a butt!

Here on my monitor the shadows look blue-er than they really are. I see some areas that may need tweaking but for now it’s OK. I will wait until more surrounding stuff is done to decide.

The last few days have been warmer and very overcast and foggy so a lot of the snow has melted, but not all. This picture was taken when it was still crisp and cold, the powdery snow was filled with diamond sparkles. The early morning light gives the snow a pinkish hue and casts wonderful long blue shadows.

In a few short months there will be green leaves and flowers where now it appears lifeless; hard to imagine that right now, but the catalogs are coming to tempt me with glossy promises. For the perennials already planted, this snow will offer protection from the killing cold and winds as well as nurturing moisture as it melts.

We got OUT yesterday!  The temperature even got up in the 20’s and this whole week will be above freezing!   The wind sculpted drifts are really quite pretty if you can get past the inconvenience of it all. 

Our road runs east and west so the north wind sweeps the fields and dumps it all in the road.

Especially at the tops of the hills  where you pray you don’t meet up with someone going the other way!

Amazingly, once you get out to the main blacktop roads they are for the most part clear and dry.  The gravel roads, however, stay snow packed and icy for a long time.

I did not get much beading done over the weekend so that’s the plan for today. Again.  Time is running out!

Bet you thought I’d be done by now….NOT!

I had some interruptions that kept me from putting in the hours so I am a day or so from finishing. I have beaded all of the flames but the early work is not as dense as the later so I am having to go back and fill in. Last week we had to make an emergency run into town to restock up on beads before the big snowstorm and we just made it home as the snow started falling. By the next morning we had huge drifts. Even though the snowplow came through, by noon the road was drifted shut again with a five foot drift! Since we live on a dead end road, that is not a good thing!

Yesterday was the coldest day in years, record breaking cold with a chill factor in the minus double digits and wouldn’t you know – our furnace’s blower fan died. Luckily the road had been plowed, the wind let up and the repairman made it in to fix it. With the fireplace going it was not too bad in here, but not conducive to beading so I started a jigsaw puzzle.

I just had to bundle up and get a picture of this 3 ft drift before filling the bird feeders destroyed it’s beauty.

You can see how horizontal the snow was this time as the trees are coated up one side but there is no pretty snow on the branches and you can see how swept the open spaces are to make those drifts. We got 8-12″ by the end but it’s hard to tell for sure.

Lots of fun for the dogs.

Not so much for the people.

Last week I ordered 26 half yards of batik on sale and on Christmas Eve day they arrived! Well, 25 of them arrived plus one quarter yard piece. I’m not sure if it was a freebie or if it was all they had of the 26th piece. Whatever. Today I will wash, dry and iron them all and try to find a place to put them!

You can’t really see them, but the whitish ones on the left were ordered for the next piece I am anxious to get started on, Mountain Goat kids. There are some nice leaves against blue sky prints that I am always on the lookout for and general nature texture type stuff. They were photographed laying on the back side of the “Spring Burning” piece which is finished except for the beading which I got started on yesterday afternoon.

We are hoping to be able to have our family Christmas on Sunday, but by the looks of the snowdrifts this morning — I don’t know. It all depends on when the wind quits as even if the plow gets through the road will drift shut again as long as the wind blows.

The sun is not even up yet, but I can tell Christmas is canceled! This is the view from our front window.

We are snowed in with old fashioned drifts. I guess Christmas is postponed here!! By the looks of the drifts by the front door, I think our dead end country road will be impossible. I guess too many people prayed for a white Christmas! The churches have even canceled and the plows are only doing emergency routes.

The photo shows the view out the front window, snow caught in the screen and the drift beyond. Couldn’t open the front door so you can see where the dogs broke through the drift from the garage door.

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you are all safe and warm, especially the travelers…….