We knew yesterday before 1 pm that school was called off for today. I got busy and continued longarm quilting the King Rosebud embroidery quilt that my grandma embroidered back in 1973.
I'm using the design board called Marmalade from Urban Elementz for the quilting. I like how it's looking in the negative space.
I like the way it is looking over the embroidery on the sides.
It seems to be hitting okay in the centers of the wreaths.
Looks good to me around the blocks with bouquet centers. I'm super pleased with the quilting design choice. This one takes a bit longer to quilt in relationship to some of my other boards because you can only quilt one row at a time and then have to advance the quilt. I think it's totally worth it. I think my grandma would be thrilled to know that I am finishing another one of her 50-year old UFOs.
I finished about 40 percent of the quilting. I'll work on it a little later today. There's a really good chance that we will have tomorrow off school as well. We got about 12" of the pretty fluffy stuff. The county is considered a level 3 (basically don't drive on the roads if you don't have to go out). Temps at the bus stop tomorrow are predicted to be negative 15 (which means no school for the county again). Here's my view out the quilt room window watching my husband plow with the old rat-motor (big block) truck, Betsy. She is rusty, but she has been faithful all these years. Sometimes I ride with him. I hold a snow brush in my hand in case a mouse runs out of the seat. My husband hoots and hollers when I start swinging the snow brush. LOL. But I'm the luckiest girl in the world to be able to do that with him.
Delay in trash, businesses closed, banks opening late. I have no plans to go anywhere. Because we have an 800 foot driveway, I know our deliveries are just going to throw them out near the end of the drive and hope for the best. I already made our son the "employee of the month" of our receiving department.
Oh, and don't worry about the herd of cats. Here are half of them yesterday during the big dump of snow. The others were out and about. Two were sitting on the picnic table by the quilt room. This morning they are just sitting on the porch and not even in the box. They seem to like the wind barrier area. The feels like is negative 3 right now and they are all out of the box.
This cat box is tucked in by the house and the steps. It has a rubber mud flap as the door. The cats weren't too thrilled about my husband and I dragging the piece of plywood baricade I asked my husband to install to keep even more wind out. They've got it made... heated water bowl, full food bowl sheltered from the weather is on 2.5' thick styrofoam building material to keep their paws from getting cold while eating.
The chickens and ducks are in a similar situation. I don't run a heat lamp in the chicken coop because it usually isn't safe. I save the heat lamp for when I raise chicks. Due to the super below zero temps, I did plug in the radiant heater. I make my way up to the coop twice a day to make sure they have water and gather eggs so that they do not freeze. Yes, my chickens still lay eggs this time of year because I keep a 60 watt light bulb on in the coop all of the time (when the days are short) so that they still have light. It's controversial to do that because some say the chickens don't lay as many years. Usually a predator takes out a few chickens every year. I'll take my chances of them getting ovarian cancer. I can tell they are content and comfortable when I go to the coop because they are not gathers directly under the radiant heater nor are they far away from it.
