Inspiration

This is the work of Beth Aten.  I love the colors and the stitching.

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A simple wall quilt

I finished this one, maybe....  I didn't intend to quilt it that way.  I was going to quilt diagonal parallel lines.  I quickly drew some free hand lines with chalk when I was thinking about what to do.  I decided I liked the uneven bent lines better than I would like perfect lines.

Right now it is pinned on top of a purple quilt.  I kind of like the dark purple.

The awful icy mess outside

I haven't been outside since I shoveled snow on Saturday.  By late Saturday it had turned to an icy mess outside. I saw on the news that many people were not as cautious.  There are many many injuries from falls on the ice as well as cars that are abandoned, stuck, or banged up.

I think in a few hours I'll be able to go for a walk.  I get cabin fever pretty quickly.

This is how it looks here.

Back yard with iced up plants..

Pippin wrapped up on the curtain watching outside.

Hand cut lap joint

John made a light bulb heater for the other bird bath.  He cut the lap joint by hand and he was very pleased with how tight the joint fit.

Assembling the parts...

Tah dah!!

Snow at our house

We don't get snow that often in Portland (it's been about two years since the last time).  We had big fat pretty flakes and it stuck some.  We both did some shoveling at our house and at the neighbors.  People don't shovel much in Portland because it usually goes away pretty quickly.  This storm has some freezing rain as well and that can be a mess.   So we shoveled.  Sometimes that can make it worse so I shoveled half the walkway width, hedging my bets.

The storm caught us somewhat by surprise with not enough food for three days of ice.  So we walked to the store figuring the walking would be better today than tomorrow.  It was also good to get out.  I've been holed up since the last three days were too windy to endure.

Snow in the back yard

John shoveling

 Snow in the front

And the back

Warming the bird bath... first rinky dink project of 2016

We made our first rinky dink project of 2016.  I do so love a rinky dink project, especially when we collaborate. They say whatever you do on the first day of the year is what you will do for the rest of the year.   So I hope there are LOTS of rinky dink projects in our upcoming year.

When it gets cold like this I know that water is the most important thing to keep available for the birds and squirrels.  The bird bath heaters I've found for sale are clumsy and difficult to install plus expensive.  It occurred to me that our small bird baths have a hollow column they sit on.  So I asked John to make a light bulb warmer for inside the column.

We've used simple light bulb warmers in the past for cold frames and such so we think it will work.  We started with a 40 watt bulb.  I am keeping an eye on the water temperature.

Update next morning: it worked great!  It's been very cold and windy (28 with a wind chill of 16 degrees).  We have two of these bird baths and only one is heated.  It froze within an hour or two and is a solid block of ice this morning.  The heated one is 46 degrees.  Yessssss!!!!!  I think we will be heating the second one, too.

Here you can see what is inside the column.

And here it is installed on the side porch.  I like that you can see it is on.  The upper right corner is the ice I dumped out of it.  It can be hard to get the ice out so I hope this fixes that problem.

Happy New Year

Hope you aren't feeling like this....  I've always been fond of Mr Potato Head but I liked  him best when you used real potatoes and stuck sharp objects in the potato (it made such a great noise).

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