My 2017 strips report has been a little "light" lately - that's because I failed to report any in January!

The sad thing, I didn't report any, not because I failed to write the report, but because I didn't do any.

However, I made up for it in February. I actually have been working quite diligently on them this month.

Here are the results of all that sorting/cutting:

1.5" strips - 3.3 kg or 7.3 lbs. They really barely filled this blue laundry basket.

2" strips - 15.3 kg or 33.7 lbs!!! I was really low on 2" strips, so I focused on cutting my scraps into 2" size. I needed to move them from a laundry basket into a bag a few days ago.

2.5" strips - 7.9 kg or 17.4 lbs. They really don't properly fit into the laundry basket.

Both the 2" and the 2.5" were boosted by some previously uncounted/unweighed- but- cut-into-strips from last fall. I just waited and threw them in with these.

Note: I measure these strips by pounds because I don't have any idea how else to do it.

I also separated out 2.25 kg or 4.96 lbs. of crumbs/strings into a bag which I put into a laundry hamper (I went from 5 kids at home to 0 kids at home so I have extra sitting around) to be someday (hopefully) used for crumb/string blocks. These were either too irregularly shaped pieces for me to cut up further or too skinny or crooked strings for me to try to cut up - or else I just felt like throwing them into this bin! Partial blocks were thrown here as well.

I can't tell you how many pounds of tiny little itty bitty scraps I've sent to the fire to use as kindling this past month, but its been several bags or boxes full (not huge trash bags, but just smallish bags) - they were not necessarily packed down before I sent them to the fire. This one is ready to go down to the fire next time my husband goes down...it's pretty well packed down.

I know that some of you can't understand why I would have bothered with all of these pieces of "trash". - and you would have just tossed all of the scraps - but these little pieces of "junk" were the beginning of my whole 2" series. I'm tickled pink...and while at times they have hung heavy over my head, as I've worked them down and down, the "burden" has gotten lighter and lighter. I'm getting where I really want to work on them all the time as I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm excited to get them done before it gets warm here in Poland. Once it gets warm, I really like to keep the extra pressing to a minimum. I especially like to iron during our cheap time as we have a two tiered electricity plan - and our cheaper time is between 1-3 pm and 10 pm -6 am plus weekends. I don't do a lot of pressing between 10 pm - 6 am normally but I can iron between 1-3. Obviously during the summer, this is also the warmest time of the day and when I least want to iron! It is then that I stay up later and iron after 10 pm.

I started keeping track of my totals when I decided to tackle these scraps last year. My totals for strips I've cut in 2016-2017:

Have a great month and hopefully I'll have some more strips to report back at the beginning of April!

February 2017 strips report