Pick Up Day

January 14, 2010 by Debbie.

This was typed out Monday 1/11 - It was a balmy 49 degrees here today. Tonight should be close to freezing but not down to 7.3 that we had yesterday morning.

Today was what I’d call a ‘pick up day.’ No, no one came to the door and tried to … oh, well, never mind on that. It was a day to pick up everything that was disrupted by the cold snap. I was so glad to push the couch, chair and table back into place. We had pulled them up close to the wood stove over the weekend. Our living room is quite large so being up close to the wood stove kept us much warmer. I’m wondering why most Americans keep ‘moving up’ to bigger and bigger homes so they can work more to pay more utility bills. I’m embarrassed to  post this picture as you see all our ‘living’ clutter - quilts, books and sewing things laying out within easy reach.  We even brought the dogs’ food bowls out for them to eat while laying on their Christmas beds. I did hold my sanity with the blind and curtain darkened room, but barely.

The north windows don’t have blinds as I usually only use blinds to keep the sun out in the summer time. Strong, constant North winds convinced me it was worthwhile to cover these windows, even temporarily with quilts and an insulated batting.

The sunlight coming through the windows made the quilts look like stain glassed windows in the afternoon! I’m so glad for this special effect encouraging me to keep the window coverings in place. I liked it so much I’m investigating making either fitted window quilts or Roman shades. Instructions for making Roman shades can be found at joann.com. The insulated batting (on the door above) really worked well. It’s actually batting to use in ironing board covers. 

All the quilts had to come off the windows and then folded up and put away.  All the extra waters - both in pitchers on the counter for drinking/cooking and buckets for flushing and dogs’ waters - had to be used up and containers stored away til next time.

Same in the barn, plastic walls had to be pulled aside to let the babies out to romp in the sunlight. The two bucklings continued to knock the lights loose so everyone lost the lights now that the weather is warmer.  The cold frame covers came off for the day as soon as the sun was strong enough. We only lost one bed, which I was lazy about covering. There’s a couple of questionable seedlings in the big cold frame - not sure if they will come back or not but a good chance of it.  Laundry had to be done but the drain hose had to be thawed out first - I spent the first washer load hanging over the washer back watching the water to make sure it freely flowed out. After several false starts and quick stops I got the hose thawed out. It goes out to a gray water hose that sits on top the ground, not buried  like the ones going to the septic tank so laundry in the winter time truly depends on the weather.

It took all day to get life back to normal and I’m glad it’s done.

BTW, I finally put up my design wall in the sewing room.  Here’s the Monterrey Star Medallion quilt I’m working on. The benefit of the design wall is evident in this quilt - the blue points on the  center star are too dark for the rest of the quilt so I’ll have to tear those out and replace the points with a better matching blue. Fortunately, most of the blocks are not sewn together up here on the wall - just sticking on the flannel background.

Now that life is calm again, maybe I can get a little more quilting done …. but while baking John’s lunch cookies I noticed how dirty the kitchen cabinets are so maybe not. Spring cleaning is just around the corner.

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