tidy, tidy

It's definitely late winter in the Northwest, and the spring cleaning bug is hitting pretty hard. Did you ever buy a calendar that you loved so much, you just didn't want to give it up after the year was up? I'm thinking I'll cut some sheets of lightweight newsprint and stitch them to these inky/watercolor-y moon phases, to make a dozen pretty little notebooks. I'll still have to give them up eventually, but it's an excuse to keep them around a little longer, and get some more use and enjoyment out of them.

I still have the images from The Wild Unknown's calendar from two years ago, tucked into a box upstairs. I want to use them to make embroidered samplers; now that Solvy makes a printable, water-soluble stabilizer, it'll be easy to scan the images and print, stick on fabric, and stitch away. I can't wait to get started! I have a baby gift to make first, which is rather unfortunate as I'm far more in the mood to do hand work lately than to cut 80 feet of two-and-a-half-inch strips. Meh.

(Yes, the crow is done - I figured I'd post a picture when I got it framed, but if you'd like to see it now, feel free to say so.)

This spring catches us putting more than just the inside of our house together; we've worked about 12 yards of compost and planting mix into our little suburban yard, tearing out a patch lawn, massive laurel hedges, and ivy to build a native understory/shade garden, and sunny berms for a cottage garden of flowering and fruiting plants. This weekend we finally started to unpack some of the many plants we brought with us when we moved. It'll be lovely as everything starts to leaf out and bloom in the spring. (For reference, those smallish-looking black pots in the middle of the frame are quart-sized; I was lugging some seriously large and heavy characters around today!)