Brrrrrrrrrrrr

The kids [twin great niece and nephew] had a great day with their ski instructor and unlike here at the house, ten miles away over the mountain [as the crow flies] at the ski resort the sun shone on them all day!

It kept snowing and snowing up here all day long and the temp. dropped to 13 degrees by 5 p.m. and 2 degrees by 11!

It's up to 3 now, wow, global warming!

Oops, not, just checked it again.........I will update in the morning!

Snowy Days In Colorado

It has snowed pretty much all day every day for the past week. Last night the snow had covered the windows too.

Gorebal warming, LOL!

DH keeps clearing the deck but the snow keeps piling up! Oh well, the exercise is good........

The snow is consistent enough that we haven't been able to see our mountains for days.

This is our porch swing................

Twenty four degrees right now and still the snow falls. This morning DH and company went to Telluride to ski, they had to drive out through a couple of feet of snow.

Our snowplow just now came up to the house but there will be another foot-maybe more- by the time the family returns this evening.

This is typical Colorado mountain winter weather, it's pretty much the same every year the only variable is when it happens not if !

Yesterday we drove into Ouray to see the ice climbers. It was snowing.............?!

Duh, it's winter in Colorado!!





The ice formations are amazingly beautiful but terribly cold and it all looks dangerous to me even though the climbers are fully equipped and use safety harnesses and cables.

The town of Ouray is quite famous for ice climbing, and for the Ice Climbing Festival the first week of January each year.

After that the kids [and the other adults] went sledding but those pics aren't on my camera because I was trying to get my feet defrosted and watching the sledders from the warmth of the truck! I finally thawed out at Mouse's Chocolate house with hot home made cider with whipped cream and caramel sauce[also home made]. OH..........MY! You have to try it sometime, it's a simple enough recipe!

As for me I am going to do a little work on one of my current quilt projects.

Back To The Mountains

I am not posting for VTT this week but instead something more topical.

It's cold up here, low teens at night and 20's-30's daytime. Brrrrrrrrr. It's not as sunny today and it looks rather bleak out so I will be staying indoors.

Yesterday I took advantage of the opportunity to connect with my quilty CO. friends the Huggy Bunch that meets every Wednesday in Montrose.

Then I met our visiting family members at the little airport at 4 p.m. -they had been up since about 1.30 a.m. our time in order to leave Boston, then their flight was delayed nearly three hours, so by the time we had dinner last night here in CO. the twins[5 this May] were exhausted as were their Mom and Dad!

Here's a peek at how it looks up here, no new snow for a day or two and daytime temps just enough above freezing with the sunshine to melt the top layer. DH shoveled part of the deck yesterday[that's our little carved wooden peeping tom bear] though we don't use it much in this weather.

As I write it has begun to snow again so we'll have more fresh snow to plow.

When we came in Tuesday we drove through about a foot or two of the white stuff giving DH a chance to play with the snowblower!

Today the rest of the household have been out sledding on the slopes around our mountain home, towing the kids in inner-tubes behind the snowmobiles so they came back hungry and needing hot chocolate and lunch.

The twins with their Mom ..............

and Button who loves to ride on the snowmobile too.

Leslie's Quilt

The quilting on this beauty was completed late last night, have you noticed a trend of late night finishes? You may get the idea that I am a bit of a night owl and you would be correct!

I guess the block construction was quite a challenge, it was a class project, but Leslie persisted until she got them done. Her points are always so nice and the quilts so square and this one was no exception.

The quilting is hard to see at a distance, the fabrics are busy batiks and the thread is a blue/green variegated in the body of the quilt and a King Tut green/yellow variegated for the border and sashing.

Each block has a leaf wreath and the border is leaves. If you click on this close up you can see some of the quilting detail, it's very "subtle" so as not to distract from the geometry of the quilt.

I forgot to take a pic of the back but the quilting was even less visible there with an olive green Bottom Line thread. I love BL thread in the bobbin, not so much in the top because it seems to shred on my machine [unless I go slow]. I would use Sew Fine in the top when a thinner thread is needed, not necessary in this case.

The quilt is already on it's way back to Leslie but I will ask her for another pic once it's bound.

Finished For Friday, Monet's Wedding Ring Top

This was actually to "flimsie" stage before Friday! It's from Judy Martin's book "Scraps".

There are two extra borders in addition to the original, a three inch white strip and the three-piece blocks left over from the nine patches that sewed up nicely into a finishing border and brought the size to 63". The white on white for the background was an extra purchase but the remainder of the fabrics came from stash. Too late I realized that I had some lovely WOW already in stash, but fortunately this was $2.50/yd on sale so yes of course I bought the rest of the bolt, there may even be enough for the backing. A colored binding would be nice, it may have to be scrappy, I don't know that there is sufficient of any one of the colored fabrics.

I really love this quilt it's so sweet and old fashioned girly-looking it delights my eyes! It would be a lovely baby girl quilt for my first GD-if any of my sons ever produces a girl! Meantime it goes on the bottom of the growing stack for LA'ing. I think I will feather it.

Hostess for Finished For Friday can be found at Litandlaundry.

VTT Signed Lithographs

I almost forgot that tomorrow is Thursday, Vintage Thingies day. We had the baby two days this week and my brain lost a day!

The following are lithographs that came from our three year sojourn in Europe in the 70's. As we travelled I purchased a few signed lithographs from a street stall, flea market or one of the old book stores in various countries. My love of all things botanical and especially flowers, shows in the collection.

They are signed and numbered and some are dated.

I do recall that the one below was a gift from my friend Veronique.

More often than not I have forgotten exactly where I found them, but this one I remember came from Italy, it was a page out of an old book.

The kookaburras I had to have, "Lachender Hans" or "Laughing Hans" the kookaburra is called in Germany. Kookaburras - click on the name to hear them laugh!

Kookaburras are the largest of the Kingfisher family, but they don't fish, they are carnivores, they eat lizards, snakes and rodents. They are often seen smacking their catch against a post or tree branch, I have seen a kooka doing this to a snake! I thought the bird was just making sure the snake was dead but apparently they do it to break up any bones to aid in digestion! Yuck, to each his own but it's good to have them around they help to control the pest population!

They are very handsome birds, the male and female are hard to tell apart they look so similar, and they mate for life. They are also very territorial, and are long lived birds, up to twenty years in captivity. They cohabit well with humans, my Mum used to put out raw meat for them on the fence posts, Aussies love their kookas!

The aborigines believe that the kookaburras laugh every morning to tell the Sky People to light The Great Fire, the sun.

For more vintage delights visit our faithful hostess Colorado Lady.

Disappearing 9 Patch Quilt with Applique

Isn't it a beauty?
Quilting on this top was finished late- very late- last night. The center is busy so we decided on freehand "swirls" and the border is simply stippled, Nadine didn't want any quilting inside the applique so they will "pop" a little. I love how she has combined the simplicity of the blocks with dramatic hand applique, it's a very pretty quilt.

Black thread on black fabric makes it hard to see much quilting detail, but it's better in the photo below.

I am now working on piecing another Shakespeare quilt with a different arrangement of the original three colors, red, black and white. It's taxing my brain a bit, figuring out how many of the flying geese of what color combination I need for the small stars and what to cut for the monkey wrench blocks.

We had baby Matthew again today [two days this week, we got lucky] so my brain was on baby not quilting! These grandchildren are such delightful little distractions!

I am going to cut only what I need for the SITP as I go so as not to get myself too confused or make wasteful cutting errors. I got well along on the first 14 of the small stars this evening. I am going for a different effect with this Shakespeare quilt and there will be much more red in the second version. I have been thinking about some way to bring back more black now, never content!

Monday Is Baby Matthew day

No words needed!

Matthew's helmet is now painted with New Zealand Rugby League colors!

The Picnic Schnibbles Quilt and a" Long Arm Machine"

This one was such fun to quilt with daisies and leaves, that seemed appropriate for the "Picnic" theme and for the prints Angela used. If you click on the picture it will zoom, the quilting is hard to see.

It's a bit clearer on the back.

I already have another quilt loaded on the longarm machine, so I need to go get busy!

PS. For non-quilters, a long arm machine is basically a huge domestic machine! It has a much longer, larger throat, and has handles either end of the machine. There are also mid arm machines that have a throat space of 18" or less[I think that's the approx. cut-off!].

These machines have wheels that run on tracks so that the machine can be manipulated in any direction 360 degrees up and down the length of the "table". Mine is a 14ft. long frame though 12ft. is more common. You need lots of space for these machines because you also need room to walk around them -mine is in our large loft. Most people stand to use a LA but ergonomic saddle stools are available so you can sit for small detailed work; I have one and it does come in handy especially if I have to "frog" some undesirable quilting ["frog"= ripit-ripit, LOL].

Here's a picture of my machine, it's an A-1 Elite- there are many excellent LA machines but this is my preference. I always say that using a long arm is like "drawing with thread" because you can stitch any design that your brain can imagine. Many LA'ers give their machines a name, mine is Ellie, though she seldom is addressed by name!

The quilt, batting [filler] and backing are attached to rollers either side of the table and you stitch across the length of the table then roll the quilt on to the un-quilted area. Some LA'ers have computers on their machines so they can choose a design, or make their own, set up the machine and the machine will sew it [this is a very simplified explanation!] and if you really want to increase your productivity this can be a good way to go though it way more than doubles the cost of the machine.

Personally, I love the creative experience of actually "driving" the machine myself and I am blessed not to need the extra productivity that a computer driven machine would afford.

Finished For Friday, Angela's Schnibbles Quilt

I have two of Angela's Schnibble's quilts to longarm and here is the first. It will make a cute table topper [maybe for Valentine's] or a wall hanging.

Pink and brown are so retro sweet, I wonder what Angela will do with it?

You can check out other Friday Finishes at Litandlaundry.

VTT Goebel Figurines

When we lived in Germany in the seventies, these little statues by the Goebels company were all the rage with many Americans and they collected them! I thought they were sweet but I really didn't want a collection of them so I only ended up with two.

The first, this little chimney sweep was a farewell gift from DH's Battalion when we returned to the USA.

The stamp on the base shows a trademark that is one of those called "the Last Bee". Like many manufacturers Goebel's trademark underwent periodic changes and after a couple of versions of the "stylized bee" the V and the little bee disappeared completely from their products. This was trademark #3 and was used on items until around 1972. I have no idea what the "Br" means.

The little holy water font with the shepherd and lambs is the one I purchased because I thought it was adorable. I'm not sure if this is meant to represent the figure of the child Jesus because I couldn't find any info. on the web.

This trademark came into use in 1979,the year I acquired it. Again what the Da 80 means is a mystery!

I was unable to find any pics of either of these two particular figurines so if anyone else has any ideas I would love to hear about it. Both are a smidge over 5" tall.

For more vintage fun visit Colorado Lady our kind hostess for Vintage Thingies Thursday.