Sunday Afternoon

Feels like winter with the cold air, gray sky and snow flurries.  When the sheep water freezes in the barn and my hands hurt without my mittens I find myself longing for spring.  We brought home two weeks worth of hay today.  The landscape trailer is coming in handy once again.  It used to have walls on three sides which made me call it the Marie Antoinette cart, reminiscent of the cart used to take French Revolution prisoners to the guillotine.  The walls started to collapse so Matt took them off.  Luckily not a single pricey, precious bale bailed on the way home with the hay.  With the cost of fuel predicted to go up even higher farming is more and more becoming a hobby for the wealthy, or subsistence for the very poor.  I have to make some hard decisions shortly.  In the meantime I am making the most of my Sunday afternoon with tending critters, that's a given, sewing and cooking.  I just finished a tote with some new fabric.  Lovely stuff, very sturdy, which sometimes means hard to sew on like this fabric.  I might make just a few big totes with the ten yards I have rather than many little ones.  Sometimes the fabric tells me what I'm going to do with it.  I cooked some frozen shrimp I had in the freezer and got a little adventurous, unlike me when it comes to cooking.  I made a sauce with evaporated milk, lemon curry, allspice, tomatoes and veggie pepper then added the shrimp.  I'll put the sauce over rice and see how Matt likes it.  I'm out to chores now, and should come in and scrub the kitchen floor, but I might just cut out another tote out of the other Fabric Guru cloth I recently received.  This tapestry chenille should be a little easier on my little-old-lady machine.  She and I are the same age but I am proving to be able to take a beating better than my little Singer, who is rattling and clanking a bit.  A two hour treat is in store for me on PBS tonight - two hours of Downton Abbey!!  I am hooked on it and want the decks cleared before nine.