My Groundhog Entry

I had to get an entry uploaded before another month goes by with no entries.  I don’t want this to be NoEntFeb.

Weather is weird.  We had temperatures off and on in the 60s over the last couple of weeks and I wake up this morning and it’s on ly 28 degrees.  And it isn’t just cold these last couple of days, its a wet cold.  The kind of cold that chills you to your bones.

I started fighting back at the cold by pulling out my quilt and working on finishing it up before next winter–yeah, it could take that long.  Of course, it got warm for the next couple of days and sitting in my grandpa chair with the quilt on my legs and in my lap got a bit too warm.  But these last few nights it’s been toasty warm and I keep stitching away.  I started my quilt about three (or was it four) years ago.  Mrs. Ender was quilting at the time and while she was off visiting her parents I cut out the material and hand pieced my quilt top.  It’s queen sized, maybe a bit larger.  Hand cut and then hand pieced so it made sense that it had to be hand quilted.  And, boy does it have a lot of quilting, all straight lines, but, oh my, all the lines.

I thought I left off with it only 1/4 quilted, but I think it’s more than 1/2 finished.  I’m moving right along and I can see the end, so I must be getting closer.  That will leave me with putting the edge around the whole thing, and I can’t remember if I had precut edge pieces.  I think I have to dig around to find something I might not have even done.

I have to do some travelling for work, middle of March, to Florida.  My poor, SAD self needs some sunlight and rest, so I will add a couple of days to the end of my work stay and get to watch some Spring Training Baseball!  Yea!!!!

Not too much on the soap front, I’ve been too tired to do much after work.  I made a batch of liquid soap about three weeks ago and it has turned out quite nice.  I’ve been using some locally sourced Palm Kernel Oil and it turns out that unprocessed Palm Kernel Oil smells a lot like burned coffee when I heat it up to liquify it.  It is also a very dark brown and tends to slide all my soap toward brown.  I think I’ll need to use the good Palm oil if I need a lighter, less coffee smelling soap.  The liquid soap with the Palm Kernel soap came out a creamy tan, white.  I might not have to thicken it at all.

I made a batch of coffee soap last night.  Regular soap, but instead of mixing the lye with water I mixed it with a cup of coffee.  Then, just before I poured the soap into the mold I mixed in coffee grounds.  The only problem is that, as of this morning, it doesn’t smell like coffee.  I hope that changes as it starts to dry out.

Other than that, I can’t think of a thing to say.

Ender is out.