Frozen Birdbath

I'm not kidding, the birdbath was frozen when I opened the drapes this morning.  It's April 27th and the birdbath was frozen!  Ack!

The day lilies against the house and the rhubarb by the hose are doing just fine but it was cold enough to freeze that water overnight.  I took the heater out of the birdbath on Easter just before I rammed a scrub brush bristle under my fingernail.  It was over 60 degrees that day; I thought it was safe.  Evidently not.




This morning KW, AP, and I went down to the KI Center to hear William Kent Krueger, the author of a series of books we like, speak at the Untitled Town book festival.  It was great to listen to him talk about writing and, even better, we were very early and wandered into the room to get good seats and got to talk to him for a few minutes.  I have to say that we resisted going fan-girl all over him, but it was a near thing.  Authors and publishers were selling books and one of them had copies of a collection of short stories by a woman I met at The Clearing years ago.  I bought one.  She's a good writer.







When I got home I sliced and sauteed a pound of mushrooms to put into the freezer.  Then I made chicken salad with a chicken breast leftover from my cooking frenzy last week.  I had some for supper, it was deeeeelicious.








I finished the April Preemie Hat #4 and played yarn chicken toward the end.  Good thing I decided to make the micro preemie hat because you can see that I had just a touch over 6" of yarn left.  Whew.




This evening I went downstairs and ironed all of DD's doll clothes so that LC can play with them when she comes to visit.  That's a lot of ironing.





27 April--Charles Frederick Worth, Bertha Palmer's evening dress.

She wore the dress like a shield.
A famous surname is
no prop
to a girl's self-confidence
when Mama was a famous beauty
but she looked like Papa,
right down to
the whiskers.
~~~~~ 

My sinuses decided to start draining this morning.  I'm hoping that it's because of the huge weather system that's barreled through the region today, snowing on Northern Illinois and Milwaukee but missing us altogether.  Thank god.  I think I might have run screaming into the street if snow had started falling today.  Or moved into the basement so I didn't have to look at it.
--Barbara