Blizzard, Snakes, and T-Shirt Quilt

Blizzard

We had our second annual April blizzard this last week. Where I live, we did not get nearly as much snow as we did with last year’s blizzard. Thank goodness. Other parts of the state got hit way harder. And, the saddest part is this storm is triggering a bunch of flooding all over again. I know later snow is normal for April in Minnesota, but this is getting crazy. We even had a rather unusual thunder snow. That’s a thunderstorm where

it snows instead of rains, complete with lightning and thunder. At my house we even had dime sized hail for about ten minutes in the middle of the storm. I’ve never seen something like that before from what I can remember. Meteorologists called this a bomb cyclone and without a doubt I can see why it earned that name. I am hoping this is the second and final annual April blizzard since they’ve both been these bomb cyclone things.

Snakes

Oh, man did I see something cool today. We went to the local nature center for Cub Scouts as the kids are working on their adventure focusing on hiking and outdoors. So, the first thing we did was sit with a naturalist as she talked about different animals in the area. Then she fed a painted turtle and a Blanding’s turtle. I hadn’t realized they feed them live minnows and such, along with some veggies and turtle pellets. Watching that part was interesting, but not the best part of the presentation. Then she fed the two snakes she had—one mouse each. I don’t remember for sure what breed of snakes they were, but they weren’t big. One I think was a black rat snake or something like that. Both were constrictor feeders, meaning they wrap themselves around their prey first before they eat it rather than poisoning it. Those two snakes grabbed those mice and rolled up around them so fast it was crazy. I posted the video of one snake grabbing the mouse here at the end, so be forewarned. I thought it was cool and the kids watching were quite impressed.

T-Shirt Quilt

Here’s your update on the T-shirt quilt I am making for my husband. I have 8 of the blocks sewn together into two 4-block groups. This is weird though. With the interfacing ironed onto each of the shirts, they don’t move like fabric should. It’s almost like sewing on canvas, but not quite. And my sewing machine does not enjoy feeding that interfacing though at all. Lucky for me—and by sheer accident—we decided to put sashing strips in between each of the blocks and a border around the whole thing. To address the interfacing not feeding through the machine that well, I learned to put the sashing strip down. Then the feed dogs grip that to push the fabric through. I’m not sure I want to do one of these again for a while. I might be convinced otherwise because it’s been simple so far because it goes together easy. It doesn’t work quite the same as regular quilt fabric, though, and that’s weird.