Color In Winter

I live in the Northwest. We have green all year long. Sometimes we need a little red tossed in.

We have no idea what this plant is called, but it loves this southern window next to my computer....I love the window too, but I don't turn red...bright pink maybe, but not red.

Jules mentioned needing a bit of color in these rather gray days. She lives in England, so we share temperature zones.

My Babe and her Babe

Rhiley is now 6 months old.

Her little body is busy growing, building muscles, reaching for things.....so it's too busy to work on eyebrows! I have noticed that babies may be born with eyebrows, indicating there was time in the womb to add those, but once born, the brows are sorely neglected! It's just something I notice, something for my own wall of weird.

And thank you for all the positive remarks on my Crow piece.

Did you reach out and touch...

Haiti? I sure am happy to see how generous we can be!

Our daughter works at a little corner grocery store in our area, along with a fellow employee who knows someone working at an orphanage in Haiti, so donations collected at the store are going directly to the orphanage. It's not much, but it will put cash into the hands of those who will know what is needed. {my daughter also knew, and had worked with, another young woman who didn't survive the quake in the orphanage [building] she was working in.}

Needle work? Yes I have been working on the "Crows" piece. I will take a picture later...see, that didn't take long....

Megan was here last night, with daddy and sister, and started playing with the log cabin. She said she was making a design and got very upset when Lily crashed the party. Lily was just doing what little sisters do. I can't believe all the 'people' Megan found around here!

Crows. this is the one I needed to 'negative the positive' space.

Luckily I hadn't quilted the whole thing before adding the 'dirt' for the crows to stand on. I am using yarn, like I did for the crows in the tree and it didn't like going through the layers.

The Mountain. In our case, Rainier.

For the lower part of the mountains, I broke with tradition, and kept my stitching up/down, vs. my normal way of following the lines in the fabric pattern. [did that in the sky part] But....stitching that way makes the fabric go sideways....wonder if stitching sideways would have made the fabric go up/down??? {yes I know words like horizontal and vertical, but my brain doesn't compute them as well, maybe a dyslexic thing, maybe just laziness, but it's my blog so I will cry my way}

a Whiff of Spring

While out walking the dogs, I noticed a scent in the air.....

one I have never smelled before....a scent of Spring to come. I have smelled autumn on the air waves, but never any other season, until now. And though we may get rain, snow, and cold temps, Spring is in the air!!!

This picture is one of Rob Gonsalves'. Funny I would pick this one, as I got the calendar of his work, for Steph. and if you can't see the picture, go to this web site for more info!

Floor Plans for the future

Christine has asked if the site for these houses is sloped.....we don't know...we think the site is in this area above near the elementary school!....

Ashley and I were looking at the available floor plans the Housing Authority has, and there are others if you are curious like me.

you can click to enlarge, I hope. Ashley was told you can makes changes to your home after completion. So we were looking at how to add a shower to the second bathroom...we were also looking at how closing off one door would make more room in the full bath....and other fun stuff! I also hope wall to wall is not a requirement, because bare floors are better for us allergy prone people.

BTW... "Dad on Beach" would be nothing if it weren't for Vicki Welsh!!! She did the perfect dye piece for me, with very little description from me.

Beach ~ Fish ~ Log Cabins

Stephanie found these cute fish magnets to give as a gift....but she couldn't just leave them in the package, she wanted to magnet them to something. So after rustling through the 'junk' drawers we have, she found this piece of metal that was once a napkin holder I believe....

Cool gift, huh?

I have a thing for log cabins, so I decided to make myself one. These are from the branch I found in my neighbors yard, the one we used the "top" of for a Christmas tree.

I know it looks really strange right now, but it is a work in progress after all. Dan helped me with the drilling {holes for the dowels} and has come up with a few ideas for this too, so it's turning into a project for both of us!

"Dad On Beach" is finally hung up! I just pulled the cotton batt on the edges to roughen them for the 'infinity' idea Christine suggested, {last year, LOL}, instead of binding the quilt and making an end to the beach, water and sky, which we all know are never ending.

And at the top of the driftwood 'shelf' are my jars of sand, dirt and Mt. St. Helene's ash.

Left side jar: bottom sand is from Tasmania, which has beautiful beaches! This sand was sent by a friend who lives there and knows about the beaches. I think, but could be wrong, the St. Helene's ash sits on top of the Tasmania sand. The 'rock' is chalky stuff, I think from WY.

Right side jar: dirt from Utah and Wyoming.....can't remember which is which.

Not all of my jars are properly tagged.

Friendly Cats

This is my neighbors cat, he likes to watch Dan when he is working on the house. Guy thing.

My brother and sister in law have a cat they named Snork....they live in northern Alberta Canada.....in my brothers words;

"The cat’s normal trick for cold nights is to ask to be let out at 11:00 pm then hang around the front door to the apartment building until someone comes home. Once in he can sleep in the heated stairwell the rest of the night of race up and down the stairs. Around 6:30 our neighbour leaves for work and the cat goes out with him, pees and then runs up the plank to the deck so when we get up at 7:00 it looks like he’s been out braving the winter cold all night so we’ll be nice to him. He’ll even rub snow into his coat and stick leaves to his ears to heighten the outdoorsman look. Now it’s so warm he doesn’t bother and he goes over to the college to do foot patrol with the night security or next door to the Youth Assessment Centre to hang with the night staff at their outdoor smoking area. Maybe grab a late snack with them too. He really likes people and now has the full run of the building and everyone knows him. Only person he avoids is the Mr “No Pets in the Building” manager.

Snork (cat’s name is Snorkel) also runs across the street to see the kids off on the bus on school days. He’ll even lay in the street on his back when cars are coming to get the girls to scream."

thank you for the comments

on my daughters happy news! The whole process can take up to a year before building even begins, so by the time I mention it again, we will have all forgotten what the hell I was talking about! Hopefully we will know more about the area they will be building in long before that!

Good News

for my daughter, Ashley and her husband, Danny. They have been approved for a Mutual-Self-Help-Construction home. The kind where you help build your own home, and help with the others too if you can put in the time. Ashley is so excited, she so wants her own home!

Slow Sunday

Yesterday was a slow day.

I did do a little vacuuming.

I vac'd my pin cushion.

Nary a pin was sucked up into the block hole.

Later, Ben came by.

Megan and Lily put on a dance for us grandmothers,

each dancing to their own tunes,

one with words {Megan} and one without {Lily}.

Finestkind.

Meg and Me

I invited Megan over for the afternoon and evening yesterday. Now that she is almost 5, I can almost keep up with her. Anyway, I discovered this morning that Megan had taken a few pictures yesterday.....{{{I am thankful my camera turns itself off!}}}}...This is what Meg was doing.....

and here is me....thank goodness this is blurry. am I on the PC also? why yes I am.

This shot sure makes it look like gads and gads of light comes in....and it does....I like having my chair in that corner.

Sewing. This is a WIP from wayyyyyyy back. For my niece the World Traveler.

Depression was making my world a lot slower for many years, that's why the lack of progress. Until Now.

The blocks are all Test Blocks I did for Marcia Hohn of the infamous Quilters Cache website!

I know the block in this right hand corner is called Compass Star because it has the name on the pattern pieces...and the Flying Geese were part of the pattern Windmill, but I split them up for this purpose.

And here is the back for now.....look at all that lovely paper to be removed!

I love this part. Seriously! I live the whole process of Paper Piecing because I can get points! Though I tend to run them over when sewing blocks together, but I know they were pointy at one...point. and if you want to see an old picture of me and a list of all the blocks I 'tested' for Marcia, go here. I have a binder fullllllll of pages of all the blocks. A lot of the blocks I made were given to friends and family. Like these will be.

The Crows are all sandwiched, basted and waiting for baking.

hehehe

Quilting actually.

Thinking...

Many people I see are picking a 'word' for the year. I knew of one person who has done this for years, now she seems to be crowded with other participants! She picked the wonderful word, "believe" for her 2010 word. I have considered picking a word for a year, but it doesn't happen....mostly because I don't want to step on toes.....and because I have a word I try hard to live by every year, all the time, even in my most PMS-Menopause-y moments---well....after the menopause-y moments.

Positive. Positively. Positiveness.

You Can Do It.

Yes We Can.

Go For It.

Remember a while back when I showed you the Visual Thesaurus? Well here is another cool 'thing'....a Literature-Map. Enter the name of your favorite author and find other authors...well, I am just getting you all confused, especially myself, so go see what they have. BTW, I used the author Miss Read for my example.

Something to Crow About

This is what i have done so far with my Crow idea. The one I got from the Lark Books Contest...I won't be entering, but Judy did and her entry is wonderful! Go See

I will repeat the whole story about my family and crows when I have this finished.

For now I have a mountain, Mt. Rainier as 'seen' from University of Washington, ie; Stephanie.

I came up with an even number of crows....not sure it will stay that way. The white thing pinned there is the 'pattern' piece of batt for the crows.

The crow on the right didn't get her beak appliquéd 'open', so I will have to fix that somehow with a spot of paint or thread. She needs to be seen "talking"! The one of the left is a male crow...the one in the middle is a youngster.

runcible...

in other words....a Spork....

runcible

1871, a nonsense word coined by Edward Lear; used especially inruncible spoon "spoon with three short tines like a fork," which first took the name 1926.

We like to do our own word search. Found this word in a poem. Via a blog....of course!

You guessed it!

Dorothy is correct, the picture of gray hair is from our dog Abby. Still, it could have been the top of my head. VBG Now I need to figure out a way to put it outside for the birds.....without it becoming a big blog of gray hair on the lawn.

Counting Crows

I thought I would share another ingenious idea of mine.....the first one was the machine stitching around the paper pattern onto the black fabric that you can find here...

This time I needed a "pattern" for a crow shape, so instead of all the other things I could have used, I went with a piece of batt....after stitching about halfway down the body, I pull the batt piece out and save it for the next bird. I didn't start at the top of the bird in case I needed to pull the batt out from there. The embroidery 'thread' is yarn because I am out of DMC 310. {click to enlarge the pic}

I will let you mull this one, picture, over for awhile.....

Proof is in The Pictures

Here is a link to the local paper that has pix from this years Olalla Polar Bear Plunge!

I used to be able to hear the cannon go off, but now that we are 3 miles farther away, I didn't hear it.

Blue Moon on Cake

These were the only pictures I got of the Blue Moon Thursday night as it was over cast here in western WA [state].

My Ashley added the moon all by herself, and it is grand!

I heard another explanation, last night on the news, for the term 'blue moon' . One year after a volcanic eruption somewhere, the dust in the atmosphere made the moon appear blue. [as you can tell, i was paying distant attention to the news guy...]

Happy New Year!

Every year, no matter the weather, there is a Polar Bear Jump in Olalla. The only thing they wait for is the tide....works better when the tide is in, because otherwise jumping in the rocks and mud is messy.

Other pictures for you to see are at these places.....Here at flickr. And here
and Olalla is mentioned here on wiki...

We know of several people who have done this jump once. One time.