Do You Want to Live in Montana?

We are in that time of year that the husband describes as “the weather that makes you decide if you really want to live in Montana or not.” Sure, everybody loves it when it’s 80 degrees and sunny (which lasts for about three weeks). It’s much harder to love Montana when the high is 4 degrees and everything is frozen solid. W'e’ve been here for 25 years, so you know what we think. It’s worth it. This does seem to be an unusually long cold snap, though.

The chickens are annoyed. They are stuck inside the coop, which is not small, but it’s still a coop. The big rooster was pretty vocal while I was feeding him scratch grains yesterday afternoon (by hand, because he is spoiled). He crows a lot but he doesn’t usually grumble. Yesterday, he was grumbling. The farm store has chicks, but it is way too cold to try to keep chicks alive out there. We’ll wait a few weeks.

I don’t really see a break in this until about the middle of March. I won’t even be able to get over to the greenhouse to start seeds before then.

Work on the new shop continues, however, despite the frigid temps.

It’s a catch-22—the husband said he would like it to be warmer, but I pointed out that if it were warmer, he’d be out pouring concrete, not working on the shop. At least the wind died down a bit. I am sure it wasn’t fun trying to wrangle huge sheets of plywood in those gusts.

I didn’t sew at all on Monday, despite my good intentions. Yesterday afternoon, I started this:

I told myself that I would do just enough to see if I liked the design, but I kept going and ended up making about half the top. (The pattern is an enlarged version of the Baby Lattice Quilt from Moda Bake Shop.) I’m using those charm packs I picked up at the quilt store in Bonners Ferry. Apparently, I need to use charm packs every so often so that I will remember that I don’t really like charm packs. The edges tend to fray, although the pinking on these is tinier than on other packs I’ve used and that seems to be keeping the worst of the fraying in check. Where I really struggle, though, is with the placement of fabrics within the design. The idea of a charm pack is to have 5” squares of each of the fabrics in a line. A line may have 18 fabrics and a charm pack contains 40 squares, so some of the fabrics will be repeated more than once. Trying to spread the colors and prints throughout the design is making me a bit nuts. I did a lot more ripping with this than I usually do. I think I have it under control, though, and it is coming together quickly. Perhaps I am just too used to working with scraps and that’s why I am befuddled by coordinating fabrics.

I am going to have to do an Aurifil thread resupply tomorrow when I’m in town. I went through an entire spool (1400 yards) when piecing that Ritzville top. I use a neutral beige or a gray for piecing and I’m almost out of both.

I stumbled across a great set of YouTube videos on wool pennies from Charisma’s Corner. I had them playing in the background while I was sewing. At some point, I’ll go back and sit down and watch all of them again. I rather wish I had watched them before taking that class last week. Of course, now I’m itching to start a wool penny sampler like the one featured in the videos. Farming season needs to get here, and soon, to rein me in.