Finally Clearing Off

 Yesterday we were finally able to get a glimpse of the mountains.  We've had stormy weather for a week and a half and a lot of snow in that time.  But until yesterday the clouds were banked up against the mountains so we couldn't see the peaks.

 Yesterday began with a beautiful sunrise.  These pictures at the beginning of this post are all from yesterday.

It may not look like there is much snow up there, but that just shows you how steep these mountains are.  Winter camps are in full swing at Red Cliff Bible Camp up in these mountains, and they had 40 inches of new snow just in the past half week.  Another friend said they had 6 days of over a foot of snow a day up that direction, so you can imagine how much snow that adds up to.
 

Our yard is pretty deep too.  That bump at the end is a hay bale.  I've been enjoying seeing all the animal tracks in the yard.
 

Not sure what kind of animal did this digging.  Tracks were pretty small (far enough from the house that I am not going to wade out there to find out what kind of tracks).  And the tracks end where the digging begins, so I'm guessing there's a hole there or else whatever it is is living under the snow.

Can you make out the row of cows in this picture?

The ranchers are feeding them now as it's too deep to graze.

As near as I can count, there are close to 100 head in this group (not all in this picture).

Pretty setting to raise cattle, don't you think?

More pictures from the yard.  The rabbits like our play equipment.  I'm sure it shelters them from the wind and there is still some bare grass under some of it.

This is what I woke to this morning... another bank of clouds.  I took this picture around  7 this morning, and it's still cloudy up against the mountains now at 10.  Good thing I looked at the mountains yesterday.  Might not see them today.

 Lately I've been working on hand sewing during chapel.  I listen to live streaming of chapel from Ambassador Baptist College.  The original plan was to listen while on the treadmill...

But little people keep coming to my room overnight, and I'm not overly anxious to wake them up in the morning.

So I had to find something quieter to work on.  It's slow going.  I did the blue one day and the red today.  I don't remember how many of these units I need, but it's a bunch.  I think I'm going to switch methods.  I've been using the English paper piecing method, but I think once I get this set sewn together I'm going to mark my fabric by tracing around the hexagons and just hand stitch them together.  Another blogger I follow, Karen, is putting one of these together using the Inklingo method, printing the hexagon designs out with her computer.  I think that method wastes quite a bit of fabric, but I can accomplish the same thing by tracing.  Plus, I already have my pieces cut into rectangles I was using for the paper piecing, so printing with a computer would not be possible.  Anyway, without the papers, she is going much faster than I am (not to mention she's an old pro at hand sewing).  I would like to get this project done fairly soon though (as in within a year or two) so I'm going to have to switch methods.