Some New Artsy/Quilty Things

Here are a few more things that might interest you from my lovely Christmas gifts.  (Amazon Wish List is a wonderful thing!  You can add things from any website as you are browsing the web.)


First is the little piece of artwork that Tom Jones enclosed in the package with his book on Watercolor Landscapes.  Pretty!

In case I run out of watercolor projects, here is a DVD by Frank Francese that looks like a great way to learn more about the subject.  I saw his name listed as an instructor for the summer workshops at Cheap Joe's in Boone.

And another DVD by local quilt artist Lyric Kinard.  This one is called Bead It Like You Mean It.  It looks really interesting.

We are having extremely mild weather this weekend to celebrate the end of the year.  It is sixty and sunny today.  Yesterday I took the dog for a walk on a new section of the greenway that begins at the Smith Creek Soccer Center on Heritage Lake Road.  Previously this trail followed the creek left to Rogers Road.  Now it continues to roughly parallel the creek to the right, all the way to the Highway 98 Bypass.  It is not quite finished yet.  We saw them installing this metal bridge at the beginning of the new section quite a while ago.

It is somewhat muddy on the unpaved section behind these houses in Heritage.

Then it becomes partly paved, partly boardwalk, as it continues along more woodsy areas.  In fact, there are two or three more of these bridges to cross the creek as it meanders along.

It ends at a concrete tunnel that goes under Hwy 98, and is supposed to eventually connect to a trail around the Wake Forest Reservoir on 98.

Kasey was all for exploring the tunnel, but it looked really muddy and dark.  No thank you!

It is nice to have a new trail to explore.  Kasey is mostly a small golden retriever, but she does not retrieve at all.  She loves to stick her nose in grass and dirt and make snorting sounds like a pig.  Can she be part terrier?

There are some pretty views of the creek, some nice natural areas,

and a pine woods so thick that it reminds me of the mountains.

I took down all our Christmas decorations today, and spent a long time sealing up the boxes.  We are probably going to put our Wake Forest house on the market some time in 2012, and so I packed like we were moving.  The prospect is rather daunting because we have been in this house for seventeen years and have accumulated tons of stuff.  I am sure you will hear more about this effort next year.

Happy New Year, and I hope it is a good one for you and yours.