I am a musician so I often find myself humming or singing as I work around the house or drive thru town.  Often it is the song that I have just played with the choir or the one I am rehearsing for an upcoming church service.  But things that are going on in my day also often call to mind a song from the past which I find myself singing and occasionally writing parodies of on the fly.

Today’s song was inspired by the very exciting event of the past weekend — the first sighting of swimming fish in the pond as the snow has finally started shrinking here in our part of Connecticut.  Last Sunday, hubby saw the first swimming orange fish in the shallow end of the pond where the ice has finally receded.  There is a rubbermaid box with a light bulb in it that floats upside down (with the aid of some pool noodles) in the shallow end of the pond.  Its purpose is to keep an area of the ice open for oxygen transfer.   The bulb comes on after dark so it illuminates the water immediately under it.  Since for a large part of the winter the pond itself wasn’t even visible, let alone the floating box and the water under it, I have been really worried about my BFFs (Best Fish Friends).  But since Sunday night, fish have been visible slowly moving in the water below the box.  YEAH!   They made it through the winter!!!!!   You don’t know how absolutely happy this has made me.

So, today’s song is from the Beatles:

Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter.

Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here.

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces.

Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here.

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting.

Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear

Well, particularly that last verse has had me singing today.

Little fishies, it’s been a long cold lonely winter.

Little fishies, it feels like years since you’ve been here.

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right.

Little fishies, the smiles returning to our faces.

Little fishies, it seems like years since it’s been here.

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right.

Little fishies, I see the ice is slowly melting.

Little fishies, it seems like years since it’s been clear.

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right.

It’s all right.

It’s more than all right, it’s wonderful.

I just finished a quilt for my guild’s challenge.  Several months ago, we each reached into a paper bag (without looking) and drew out three paint chips.  The challenge was to make a quilt using ONLY those three colors and a background color (either black or white).  We also could add one extra fabric but it had to contain ONLY those colors from our paint chips and could not introduce any additional ones.

I ended up making my quilt out of essentially solids since my randomly-drawn paint chips were an odd combination.  There was no possibility of finding an additional fabric to use because no fabric designer in their right mind would have combined the colors that I drew into one fabric.

The quilt was required to contain at least one flower and the creation had to be named.  Given the long, cold, lonely winter we’ve been having here, my quilt was named:

Out of the darkness, Light!  (or – Out of the darkness, tulips!)

And, here is a photo of the quilt, in progress, in my quilt studio with those blasted paint chips:

So, the long winter is almost over and I’m trusting the tulips, crocuses, and daffodils are down there in the darkness waiting to pop up as soon as all the snow melts, just like the fish.  Makes me wonder a bit about the fish and what they do during the winter in the very bottom of the pond.  I’m sure it was real dark down there, covered as it was by 75 inches of snow at one time.  No wonder they are up near the surface now seeking the light.

Oh yeah, and for the last two words of the post title — wool slippers and hardwood floors.

The construction project continues, but slowly.  Today the floor guy was back to fix 6 places on the floor, 3 with too much finish and 3 with too little.  The curing and waiting process begins — a bare minimum of 2 weeks before we put rugs and furniture back in and longer would be better if we can actually wait longer.  We’ve been waiting so long, what’s a couple more weeks?  Hopefully I’ll soon be taking pictures in the new kitchen that have bare feet in them rather than thick felted-wool slippers.

The color in this photo is way off.  Don’t know why and don’t have time to fix it.  Suffice it to say the slippers are a darker blue and the floor a more golden-red color.  Perhaps the camera was having an adverse reaction to taking a photo of the orange and red tulips in that quilt!