Quilting in the Snow

I braved the cold of our unheated basement to quilt two small projects last weekend.

The first one is the scrappy baby quilt with white washings and borders all around.  I decided to do a freehand Feathers All Over motif to counteract all those straight lines.

I stitched curvy stems from side to side the whole length of the quilt, and then created feathers and outlined them.  Where there was too much space between the rows of feathers, I quilted in some ribbons and flowers.

The other one is a little smaller.  I did a leafy meander with some posies here and there.  Nothing like dreaming of some actual foliage and flora in the middle of winter!

This is my setup in the basement.  If you look out those double French doors, you can see the world of white outside.

                              

Two of these babies helped a little.

 It was really beautiful outside.  It snowed about ten inches the weekend before, and there was lots of fluffy snow left for us to enjoy outside.

It is amazing how much color is in the winter landscape.  I took this picture during a late afternoon walk along the creek.

 This time next week we will be leaving again for Florida.  It is hard to imagine.

Snowy Week

It is rare to get a snowstorm in Raleigh, North Carolina.  But it happened this week!  We got several inches on Tuesday night, accompanied by frigid temperatures.  Life slows down to a crawl as everyone enjoys a snow day at home.  Even my intrepid husband with the big pick-up truck stayed home yesterday.  Loved it!

I actually did a lot of cooking over the last few days...hamburger soup, baked butternut squash, barbecued chicken, roasted veggies, and focaccia bread!  That's not like me at all, but it was very satisfying to fill the house with delicious aromas.  I am trying out the Wheat Belly diet, and am using recipes from the cookbook.  So far, so good!

Here are some more sights from around our yard.  If you live in an area that gets a lot of snow, you probably aren't excited about it like we are here in the South!

 This afternoon I get to visit with my grand baby Charlotte.  Usually I babysit on Monday and Tuesday, but I only went on Monday this week.  Now the parents are back at work and the two grandmas are tag-teaming today to take care of our little snow angel.

A Fast Week

Last week went by in a blur.  With the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday, babysitting on Tuesday and Wednesday, and back to the mountains on Thursday, I had almost no time at home!

I bought a new book called Watercolor Tips and Techniques, by Cathy Johnson.  I am working my way through, from brushstrokes basics to mixing colors.  I did not have my good brushes or tube paints with me in the mountains, but I had fun playing with a few pages.

This page was an attempt to mix some juicy colors by letting the paints mix on the paper, rather than on the palette.

This one was just making a color wheel and experimenting to see which were warm or cool colors.  In the mountains I have a set of 24 Pelikan pan watercolors.  I forgot how pretty some of the colors are!

I have only attempted one painting recently.  Karlyn Holman, one of my instructors at Art of the Carolinas, had an article in the current Watercolor Artist Magazine about painting backlit winter trees.  I am not thrilled with this one, but might try it again.  I think I should have started the tree line closer to the foreground.

I had plenty of inspiration for winter scenes in the mountains.  It was freezing cold, and snowed off and on all weekend.  

Here is our new cabin, still not finished, but looking welcoming in the wintry weather.

The creek and pond were frozen, with icicles coming over the dam and also on the rocky cliffs between Laurel Springs and North Wilkesboro.

When we got home, the somewhat icy pond in our Raleigh back yard was reflecting the afternoon sun coming through the evergreens.  It looked so pretty!  I will have to add this to my wish list of future paintings.

After we got home, we went to the Apple store in Crabtree Valley Mall.  I got a new iMac laptop.  I don't think I've mentioned my computer problems since someone broke in our house in November and stole our laptops and wedding silver.  I waited a month to get the insurance check, then bought a Sony touch pad laptop with Windows 8.0.  I hated and did not understand that version of Windows, so I went online to watch some tutorials.  While I was watching one on the Microsoft site, a pop-up window said "You are watching a video about using Windows 8.1, but your computer has Windows 8.0. Would you like a free upgrade?  So I said yes.

When you upgrade to 8.1, you have to have a wireless router that runs on a different system.  All of a sudden, I had no more Internet, e-mail, or printing.  It did not work on anyone else's router that I tried.  I did not want a new Router, and there was no fix for the problem.  

So, I tried going back to Windows 8.0.  OOPS!  You can't, unless you created an image on your computer before upgrading.  I don't remember any window advising me to do that.  Anyway, I got mad and sent the Sony laptop back.  The refund for it just came last week.  

So now I have an iPod, iPad, iPhone, and iMac, and everything is playing nicely with each other.  Charlie already had an iMac and has a back-up drive and CD/DVD drive for it that we can share.  

And we have a good alarm system and are much more careful about hiding our stuff when we leave the house.