The birdseed “ornaments” Griff and I made last week are definitely being consumed, at least by the resident pair of cardinals. I got a photo of the male snacking away this past weekend.

His mate has clearly been chowing down quite a bit more than he has. She is HUGE. I did some research and cardinals aren’t supposed to have their first mating of the season til March, so I don’t think her rotundity can be excused by eggs.

I’ve been finding some time to spin here and there over the last few months when Griff lets me. Here are 4 bobbins of singles: two black Shetland, two of my hand-dyed (Shetland and Finn).

I have around 2lbs of the black Shetland from a fleece I bought a while back, and I’m planning to ply it with various hand-dyed stash braids and then knit something for myself. I’m thinking maybe another Liesl. This is the first plied batch, just over 5 oz. Have not checked yardage or weight yet, but guessing in the DK range.

Sean and I have been working on getting the yard ready for spring (again, as Griff allows). The part of the yard that’s most heavily travelled was having a tendency to get muddy and the grass was never going to grow back, so we bought a bunch of little pavers and used some free mulch from our tree-service-guys-needed-to-empty-their-truck mulch pile to make a path.

We put together our two 4×8 raised bed kits as well. I’m also planning a bean teepee for some pole beans, and I think the watermelons I have planned will go somewhere else to keep the vines from taking over a bed. (Note that we dropped the raised beds over the existing broccoli plants! The main heads are long gone and the plants will be pulled up soon when we fill the beds, but they keep making delicious little florets that Griff and I snack on when we’re out in the yard, so they stay for now.)

I finished Griff’s second fleece vest (from this pattern) and he really likes it. I discovered that my machine does a really nice blanket stitch and used it to applique a couple cutouts from the lining fabric.

Griff actually napped today, so he was pretty agreeable about doing an afternoon photoshoot. 🙂 If only he was so amenable to POOPING IN THE @#&!%@& POTTY. Ahem.