Snow Days

There's nothing like 40 inches of snow, a busy slate of leisure and work activities and a nasty, if short-lived, head cold for interfering with a person's crafting schedule.    The snow:

See how thrilled I look?  Yeah.  I'm not nearly
that happy.  

Small car.  Big snow.

The cats are quite puzzled by this. 

This was after the first storm.  We got another fifteen inches last week, plus four more today and we're scheduled for another foot tomorrow.   Just in time for my commute.  Wish me luck, folks! And strong shoveling muscles- I'm going to need them!

In between storms, we made it out to the big train show...(Amherst Model Railway Society Show, but around here, 'the big train show' doesn't need clarification.)

Not even the train layouts escaped the snow.

Then Cookie had a vet visit.  Poor baby- he had four teeth taken out, had to go an entire night without food, and worst of all:  The car.  There's nothing to make you feel truly rotten like your normally silent cat crying piteously all the way to the vet's.   In a snowstorm.  Of course, as soon as I stopped the car, he stopped crying and he completely charmed the vets with his friendly personality and demonstrative affection.  We're a little cynical about the affection at home.  Cookie is pretty ecumenical when he's hungry- you have thumbs, he'll suck up.

Anyway, between all that, and the head cold (I'll spare you photographic evidence of that), there hasn't been a whole lot of crafting.   Some mittens:

There's a hat still on the needles and I finally started the edging on the pastel vest, but really.  Not much.

In the sewing department, I'm making some window coverings for a friend who just moved into a new house.  They're losing a lot of heat through the windows, so I figured they could use window quilts as a house-warming present.   Though sewing projects always seem to been multi-step things.  Wherein step one is to deal with a pile of mending that is blocking access to the sewing machine.  (A pair of pants, a shirt, a sweater and a jacket have been returned to my closet.  And various other garments have been deemed irreparable and put into a garbage bag.)

Next step, lay out the project--in this case, some long curtains I had, that only needed to be shortened for my friend's windows.

At this point the whole thing bogs down, as spreading fabric on the floor is a guaranteed way to get 'help'.

With both Cookie and Biscuit on the job, things rapidly got more complicated.

Biscuit wandered off after being removed a couple of times, but Cookie was determined to thoroughly check out the project.  In this case, by determining how comfortable it is to curl up on.

After I callously dumped him off, he went on to inspect more fabric while I sewed.  Biscuit likes cutting out, but he thinks the actual sewing is boring.  Especially when I refuse to let him get up close and personal with the thread, the threaded needles, the sewing machine, etc.  Once I thwarted all his paws-on inspection, he started complaining and trying to get me to do something more interesting before finally wandering off to nap.

After my feline assistants settled down, more progress was made. Though naturally I didn't have a bobbin of thread in the right color and had to wind one.  Then there was an interval of taking things apart and cleaning the bobbin race before the thread would stop tangling,  But.  One set of windows down, two more to go.

Now I just need it to stop snowing so my time stops being chewed up by horrendous commutes and snow removal.