I Love Snow! I Hate Ice!

Snow storms are great! Felix can plow the snow and it curls right up along the edge of the plowblade and then it stays put where he stacks it. But when three inches of snow turns into freezing rain, it all turns to sloppy squishy glop. It is very slippery and hard to plow.
Yesterday my poor Felix was walking out to his plowtruck and slipped and fell and banged his head on the asphalt pavement of our driveway. He said that my hand-knitted and hand-spun wool cap cushioned the blow somewhat, but he was soaked through to the skin in the wet slop. He chose to just continue on to the truck and plow anyway. I did not know that he had fallen until he came back into the house after finishing the driveway. A change of clean dry clothes and a couple of tylenols later, he was okay.
This is a picture taken today, a day after he had plowed. You can see what a heavy gooey mess it is! In the warm sun of today, we spent a lot of time handshoveling with scraper/pusher type shovels.

We have winter woes, but at least it is not too buggy like in the deep south, so I really don't mind it.
I continue to work on those Criss Cross Blocks for Nickelswap. This batch is due February 15th and we are doing reds and/or purples in Civil War fabrics and Piecrust Primitive Muslin by Moda. Just to be on the safe side, I ordered two extra yards of it from Fabric.com. I really like the way it looks with all the Civil War stuff. Here's my process going along:

This looks black but it is actually a very deep purple with a white stripe.
Here is a Jo Morton crimson before and after pressing and trimming the made-up blocks.

I just love how they look! The blocks are 5" unfinished, so they are small and quite challenging to construct, even with strip piecing methods.