Have you made a Rag Quilt yet?

So while I wait for the spring rains to subside enough for me to get outside and acually enjoy working in the garden instead of freezing my buns off (did I mention it is supposed to SNOW again tonight?!?!?!), I've been sewing. Now let me let you know, I do not sew. I am just learning. My 9 year old daughter wanted to sew, so last year, we joined a 4-H sewing group. This is her second year in the group, and I have learned via her learning. Over Christmas break, I got brave enough to sit down and try my first ever sewing project. I made a Rag Quilt for my youngest daughter. Here's a picture:



A close up:



For all you other fearful wanna be sewers, let me tell you this is a great easy project to start with. I have in fact, started a second one for our bedroom, in turquoise, tan and chocolate brown prints with a chocolate brown backing. Here are the squares.



I will try and take more pics as I assemble the quilt and show them in another post. Right now I have about 2/3's of the squares assembled, meaning the backing, batting in the middle, and top print square, are sewn together by stitching a simple "X" through all three layers. I have to finish doing this to the rest of the squares, and then start sewing the squares together to make the rows.

Spring Rains are here....

Now that it is officially spring, I guess I can call them that! Since I posted a few weeks ago about it raining, and it still is. We've been busy with my mom visiting, and trying to refinance the house, so we've been pretty busy and not really able to get outside much. We did score a bunch of free pallets off of Freecycle.org almost 2 weeks ago, and will begin working on the new coop this weekend. DH took spring break off with the girls, and we plan to focus on the coop project while he is off. That's the first full week in April. The chicks are growing so fast, they need to move outside! I also purchased our first incubator this week. No using it until the coop is done though! Right now it will just be used to help the breeding project of the Japanese Bantams if it is needed. But I've been spending a lot of time on BackyardChickens.com and am really really tempted to buy some eggs off of some of the members there. But that's on the back burner for right now.

Garden projects are piling up way too fast! I've set up my lights for starting seeds, but haven't acutally started any yet. I still have winter cleanup to do in several garden beds. I need to get more peas in. Haven't planted any since I posted here last, and none of those are coming up yet. I fear either the birds have got them, or they've rotted, or maybe it's just too cold still. I've got all my seeds purchased, and just waiting for my final order to come in which included potato starts, onion sets and some strawberry plants.

March 1st and more planting done!

Well, my to do list was very long today, but I made a good dent before the rain came in. I planted 2 more packets of peas, this time the Little Wonder variety, last weekend I planted 2 packets of Early Frosty peas. I also got in 1/2 a packet of Swiss Chard, the Large White Rib variety...that was when the rain started! I had wanted to get some spinach and shallots in too, but I had to stop planting and put up a little fence around the garden bed as Toby the 1 yr old Puggle puppy keeps getting in the garden beds and digging around. He has also been eating my new young blueberry bushes! I planted 6 new ones last summer, and he's chewed them down to the ground! I bought two more to start replacing them, but need to put a fence around them too, so didn't get them planted today as I had hoped.

My husband and I also worked on the chicken coops a bit today too. Their run's are so muddy and gross, I bought tarps to put over them and needed the hubby's help to build a support to help the rain run off of the big one. I checked it out before coming in and it seems to be working well and not pooling too much anywhere. We need to find a rain barrel to place where all the run off goes. We also put 1/2" hardware cloth around the base of the smaller coop where we keep our Japanese Banties. They are the nicest birds we have and the girls want to use them for fit and show at the fair this year. Unfortunately, a hawk was fighting with our rooster this week, and through the chicken wire, the hawk managed to bloody up our rooster Charlie pretty good, by just reaching through with his talons, he was able to grab onto Charlies comb. He wasn't looking very pretty when we found him! I've been reading a lot on www.backyardchickens.com, and they say the 1/2" hardware cloth is the most predator proof material you can use, so hopefully it works!