Ice and snow

Today we woke up to a white world. More than I would expect here in the Triangle. Normally we can count on it melting very quickly but it's so cold out! Tomorrow night it's supposed to get down to 12F!!

Out back...

Out front...

Ice covered road.

I don't think we'll be going anywhere for a few days!

People are funny.

One of the cultural differences I noticed after our move down here is the common courtesy practiced by just about everyone. I always thought people were pretty nice back in New Jersey but they just don't hold a candle to southerners.

Case in point - shopping carts. In New Jersey (and the parts of New York we frequented) there was never a place to put your shopping cart when you finish packing your car. The common practice was to leave it between the parked cars or worse, behind the next car so that person couldn't pull out until they dealt with the abandoned cart. (I admit to having words with a few individuals in the past.) :-)

Now in North Carolina, not only does just about every store provide corrals for their carts, people use them! It's the rare individual who abandons a shopping cart. Doesn't matter what the person looks like, how you might profile them, even the most unlikely seeming folks walk their empty carts to a corral or back to the front of the store. And teach their children to do it too!

That said....this is what happens when the store doesn't keep up!


Seriously! There's about a car-length of carts sticking out there. As I searched for walked to my car people just kept adding cart after cart. (I guess the courtesy factor doesn't translate to finding another corral?) The parking lots at Walmart are very spacious (and they provide plenty of cart corrals unlike some stores I could name) but these carts were more than halfway across the roadway. As I got into my car and buckled up, I watched shoppers add to the line of carts, drivers maneuver around them without even a pause, and was even more amazed at the driver who squeezed his pickup truck into the space opposite the carts like it was the only vacant spot.


People are funny.

Origin of Doll

On Saturday lucky me got to attend a Judi Ward doll designing workshop. Wow.


This is the one I wish was mine. I bought the class but have never made the doll! Now I just have to!


At the workshop we learned to make patterns from existing dolls. Very cool.


This is what I came home with. Pretty good actually. Just her toes are awful! :-)


And at this angle she reminds me of The Ascent of Man / Origin of Species progressions. LOL


(Arrrggghh. Don't look at those toes!) Hair, a face and clothing should do her wonders. To say nothing of shoes!!!

Double Delight

I've been working (finally) on last New Year's Bonnie Hunter mystery, Double Delight. I've been chugging away at it in the evenings.

Soooo many pieces!


But it's nice to see it coming alive on my design wall. :-)


Slowly. Sigh....

The dumb part is that I've done IT again. What is IT? IT is not finishing a project in a timely fashion and not being able to get more of the yardage I bought for it. This time around it's the brown and gold which I'd love to have for the borders. The brown is Moda's Bistro in Espresso Steam and the gold I can't find anywhere. I did find a little bit of the Espresso courtesy of the bit of selvage on the almost-yard I still have and the wonderful helpful staff at Wish Upon A Quilt. I just wish they still had some in the store!

But at least having the name makes it so much easier to search online! And I found 7/8 of a yard! I doubt it's enough but at least it's something. The gold is turning out to be impossible and I'll just have to find something else. I just have to keep reminding myself it's a scrap quilt anyway! :-D

Happy New Year!

Hello again. I've been lazy lazy lazy about blogging. :-) But the holidays are over and now I can feel like I have a little more time to sit at my computer.

So.... who can resist a grandchild saying, "CHEESE!"


Or one with a runny nose and a smile. :-)
In a quiet holiday moment I whipped up this little cell phone pouch. Cute! (A Fig Tree pattern)

In November I took a Happy Villages workshop with Karen Eckmeier. A lovely lovely lady. This is my Fairy Tale Village.


I couldn't resist buying her Accidental Landscapes book as well. I made three as Christmas presents. I made this one of Cape Cod Bay for Mom and Dad. I did a bit of browsing online for appropriate photos and came up with this view of Cape Cod Bay at low tide. The ship on the horizon is a depiction of the Liberty ship, SS James Longstreet. It was "planted" there in 1944 as a target ship and has since disintegrated and is no longer visible. I remember hearing the nighttime bombing as a child. My brother says he remembers going to the beach to watch.


These two are New Zealand scenes for The Tramp. The first one is sheep on the Canterbury plains with the Southern Alps in the distance. The sheep are little tiny balls of batting. What a struggle it was to get them looking even vaguely realistic!


This one is of a friend of The Tramp flying his glider over the Southern Alps near Omarama. We have a large framed version of the original photograph in our living room. It must have been an exciting moment for both the photographer and the pilot!


This evening I couldn't resist a few photos of the sky. I almost missed the moment in the few seconds it took to get the camera.