A Better Day than Yesterday

After I posted last night, there was more satin stitching. I was cranky yesterday and needed to hunker down behind the machine with a good cd and an interesting project. For me, that only really happens after everyone is tucked in bed and sleeping or almost sleeping. Everyone. Husband, kids, dog, cat, hermit crab. There's nothing like a loud, resonant, "Mo-o-O-oooom!!" to ruin a little private time with needle and thread.

I finished satin stitching around the stalks of my fern fronds and was ready to tackle their 'pointies'. This recquired a thread decision:


Not having the best choices at my fingertips meant having to dig into The Behemoth that is the contents of my nice, empty, spacious, clean sewing room (The Behemoth is in the adjacent family room). We can only have one room clean at a time. Right now it's the sewing room. This means it's *Not* the family room. I've read about a house that has all the rooms clean all the time, or at least once a week. This is not that house.

Here's my final thread selection:

Nice and rainbow-ee. I like that.

While lunging deep into The Behemoth Pile, I ran across the thread on the left in this picture:

It is perfect for a project that I'm quilting for a friend (you know who you are!). This is actually the project I was looking for a couple of days ago when the fern quilt grabbed my attention. I couldn't find it then. But I did find it later as I was emptying boxes from The Behemoth. It's a more traditional round robin quilt and I'm doing my best to give it fine, traditional-style free motion quilting. Will need a sunny day to take a good detail shot.

Speaking of sun, we did have a bit today. Just a wee bit! The weather was warmish--for February in Michigan. It was just above 40 F. There's not much snow. All this meant that the kids could play outside (hooray!) and that I could ponder an upcoming garden project:

Like it? It's a swimming pool...filled with dirt. Previous owners of our home did this because they no longer wanted a pool. They turned it into an 'herb garden'. They buried, under about 6 inches of dirt, a pool-sized sheet of black plastic that has been my nemesis since we moved here. Kinda' hard to use a Mantis Tiller when it's chewing up black plastic. So, on yet another warm day waay back in January, my husband--the Head Elf--took on the back breaking chore of helping me tear out all the plastic. There was a network of grass roots that I can't even begin to describe. This year, I will turn it into a functioning kitchen garden, heavy on the herbs, with flowers for cutting here and there.

In additon to being so very handy in the 'butt-busting-chore department', the Head Elf is a nutburger. Completely Cuckoo for Coco Puffs...and here's proof. Remember, it was 40 today. In this day and age, with dryers commonly available, my husband...in the name of black belt tightwaddery....does this:

Now, I know people (like my mom) used to freeze dry their laundry and all that. Below 60 degrees is about my limit for getting my hands wet outside, thank you. But then, any man doing laundry is a man best left alone (unless they're about to shrink wool not meant to be shrunk). He got 4 loads dry by nightfall. Yet another point for being a good boy!