In between the storms

... we've had an hour or two of spring.

I have tried to get hollyhocks established for years. I think they finally took.

 Even the weeds are pretty.

 You can tell there was no wind.

 Blue sky.

 Cottonwood leaves.

 Elms... and elm seeds everywhere in my pool.

 Huge coleus leaves.

 We'll see how far the ivy climbs this summer.

 I may have to do some marigold dyeing again.

 The chives are going to pop any day.

Montana's got nothin' on our Big Sky.

Spring, is that you?

The snow is melting.

Mother nature sculpts whimsically.

Anticipation has begun.

A friend has cotton seeds sprouting on a windowsill.

I've tried for years to get them established up against the south side of our house, but I think this time, finally, the Hollyhocks took!

 Yay Spring!

P.S. Don't forget to enter the contest!

Quilting, and spring

It took awhile to get the baby quilt bordered and

 sandwiched (and sorry for the less than optimal photo- sometimes my phone takes wonderful pics, and sometimes it doesn't... which probably means that the problem is the photographer)

 and basted. You can't see it but I basted lines every 4"-5" around the center.

 I had intended for this shot to illustrate my inability to eyeball a straight line and sew at the same time, but all you're going to be able to see is that the backing is a vaguely brown print. (Darn phone).

 I didn't get a lot of quilting done last night, but this is what I intend to do with the stars- just quilt in random squiggles around them. There are a LOT of stars, so there will be many many random squiggles. I'll quilt the outlines of the design elements, and whatever portions of the insides I feel like quilting. This is probably the least regimental project I've ever tackled.

I love love love my little stickum leather thimble. Keeps my finger almost entirely unpunctured.

American Idol is on tonight and tomorrow night, so it'll be Friday before I get more quilting done (I only quilt/knit/sew in the evenings- during the day I... get ready for it... work...), but I'm sure I'll post pics. More pics than you'll ever want to see.

We're having an exceptionally early spring. The grass is green, and leaves are popping out everywhere. I know that to most of you, the timing is nothing out of the ordinary. But we generally don't get leaves until the first week of May. I'll repeat: no leaves until the first week of May.

And how warm and weird is this weather?

We were too lazy to clean out the garden last fall, so the remains of the Brussels Sprouts are still in the ground. That green you see? Those are re-sprouts. The Brussels Sprouts not only survived the winter, they're growing again. And those other little green things sprouting? Well, some of them are weeds, but easily half is dill.

Like I said, weird weather.

Saturday shopping and Sunday spring

Yesterday, we went to Sioux Falls (185 miles one way) to look for a Mother of the Beach Groom dress. The Hub deserves a medal for waiting, mostly patiently, while we visited a dozen stores, and I looked at and rejected 12 bazillion dresses (not so much for style, as color- it's a wedding and I'm the mother of the groom, color coordination matters), and tried on at least 40 before finding one, at the very last store, that will do, though I'll need a different jacket since there is just a tad too much black in the outfit for a joyous wedding (and it'll be a joyous celebration). Here's a rant for another day when I have the ambition to tackle it: every single dress that I tried on was theoretically the same size. Some were so small that I could not get them zipped, some could have doubled as a tent, others were cut so weirdly that I cannot imagine the figure that would be flattered. And here's the biggest puzzle: the number size was the same, but in some stores that was a Medium, and in others, it was a Plus. Gah!

 On the drive down, I finished one sock. I bought this yarn at Great Yarns in Everett, WA. It's lovely stuff, but I only got two balls. I had to use some stash leftover yarn for the toe. Are you surprised that I had leftover yarn that matches? You shouldn't be. This is a basic mitered-square sock: worsted weight yarn, size 5 needles, 3 rows of 5 squares, the rest worked on 48 sts.

 I worked a little more this morning, but I did finish the heel of the mate on the way home yesterday. These will not be identical socks, but they'll match closely enough.

 We drove through some interesting weather on the way home- hail, and ominous clouds. The clouds followed us, and I snapped this shot of a downdraft from our back deck.

 We decided that 6 hours of being on our feet yesterday qualified as exercise, and so we skipped the walk this morning (the iffy weather made that decision a little easier). Instead, we drove around and snapped a few flower pics. Last year,  this crab apple tree had about four blossoms. It may be overcompensating this season.

 Beautiful, beautiful overcompensation.

The lilacs are beginning to bloom

also the flowering crabs.

Such beauty. 

Maybe next week, we'll have some blooming irises.

 The water level in Turtle Creek has dropped (the high water mark is the green line on the peninsula), but it's still very high (it's still at least 15' above the normal level). Turtle Creek flows into the James River, which flows into the Missouri, which joins the Mississippi, along with every swollen creek and river in the entire Midwest. I am not surprised that they're readying for flooding down south. I put on my lawn-mowing shoes and braved the mosquitoes and wet grass to get that last shot for you this morning...

...unfortunately, I forgot to put on my lawn-mowing pants.

Signs of Spring

I took a walking tour of the grounds with camera in hand, yesterday, and though it's still chilly (frosty this morning, in fact), I did spot some distinct signs of spring.

Turtle Creek is still very high. In fact, I don't think we've ever had such high water levels for so long. The water had gone down, but in the last couple of days, it's back up, higher than this year's previous high water mark. But at least the snow is gone.

And the muskrats are out and about.

And the rhubarb is poking its head out of the ground.

And the garlic chives are thriving.

And the lilies have sprouted.

And our lone tulip has made an appearance.

And the irises are here, though they're so overcrowded that they barely bloom. This year, I will thin them out.

And the crab apple tree is beginning to bud.

But the surest sign of the changing season?

The Hub found himself a (free) beater pickup to play with.

Yep, it's spring.

Udolpho, S'meep Update, Undeniable Signs

So, I am nearing the end of The Mysteries of Udolpho- I have about 6 audio chapters left, and by the time I finish those, it'll be time to start running outside again (I listen to the traffic when I run on the highway. Much safer that way). It's been an interesting, and often infuriating book. Poor Emily has a chance to rid herself of Valencort, who is not only manipulative, passive/aggressive, and deeply stalkerish, he's also massively stupid, but I suspect that she's not going to, and our young lovers will end up together in the end. On the other hand, Emily isn't the brightest bulb in the lamp either, so they're probably well suited.

SPOILER: It's interesting that Radcliffe spent chapters (and in my case- weeks and months) detailing every evil committed by Montanari, and yet, Emily escaped from him rather easily, and he didn't even chase after her. And then he's permanently dispatched off-screen in the space of a couple of paragraphs. Count Morano seems to have disappeared as well. And the string of coincidences must have strained even contemporary readers: Emily just happens to be shipwrecked near a castle where the housekeeper has a secret to tell her, Ludovicco, who disappeared mysteriously awhile earlier, just happens to have fallen in with robbers who just happen to be in a fort where Blanche (and why the hell are we spending so much time with Blanche and her family anyway?) and party stop by for shelter because there just happens to have been a nasty storm. From which they just happen to escape.

And then, there's the poetry... every chapter a poem of some kind (did people sit down and write them at every whim back then? about everything?)... and the scenery- there is no bit of action so intense that it can't be interrupted for a long, detailed description of the surrounding mountains and the "verdure". And the delicate women- my God!  They're like fainting goats, falling senseless at the slightest provocation.

And yet... and yet... I still want to know how it comes out. I want to hear the end of the story. Go figure.

On to much more delicious things: my young testers tried out the S'meeps today. We learned that breaking up the bunny and melting it a bit on the graham crackers before assembling and then nuking again, makes for a much less poofy treat. It's still extremely sticky though- better suited to eating with a spoon and fork, than the fingers.

And finally, these:

are tulips. Spring IS here.