My Snowy Garden

The snow storm last night left about ten or twelve centimeters of snow.  We snowshoed this morning and the woods were beautiful.  I took a walk around our yard and the gardens looked wonderful with their thick blanket of snow.  It's hard to believe that in a month and half my hostas will be poking up through the soil. 

Sophie and Burleigh

Sophie and Burleigh

I haven't included any pet pictures on my blog but I couldn't resist this picture.  The black lab is our dog, Sophie and the retriever is my sister's dog, Burleigh.  Burleigh spent the Christmas holidays with us and this picture shows what great buddies they are.  My son is in the background.  His friend, Lennard, from Germany, was taking the photo and the dogs got too impatient and raced toward him.  Lennard caught them in full stride.

The Brown Bag Challenge

One of our quilt group challenges this season is the Paper Bag Challenge.  Any member who wanted to take part was asked to bring 4 pieces of fabric in a brown paper bag.  If you brought a bag then you took someone else's bag home.  I chose M.D.'s paper bag. 

The rules for the challenge are simple. You have to make something out of the four pieces of fabric before the June meeting.  At the June meeting you get your fabric project back!!  You can add up to 2 pieces of your own fabric, if you wish.  The four pieces of fabric on the right are the pieces from the brown bag that I chose.  And the two pieces of fabric that I added are on the left.  I decided not to make a wall hanging or a table runner.

 I made a bowl and a placemat and I hope M.D. likes them!

Valentine Flowers

Happy Valentine's Day!  This is one of the coldest days of the winter so far so I have posted two pictures today that should warm you up.  This is a picture I took last September.  It is my favourite flower picture.  It is a michaelmas daisy, which is a fall aster.  The picture below is the iron sunflower medalion that my husband made for me a couple of years ago.  Sunflowers are my favourite flower.

Josh's Quilt

I just finished this quilt.  It is for my son, Josh. He lost everything in a fire last November, including the reversible quilt that I had made him.  This is for his bed in his new apartment.  The pattern is from Brenda Henning's book, Strip Therapy 4, Bali Pop Frenzy.  You can get this book at http://www.bearpawproductions.com/store.php?cat=2  For this quilt I used exactly what she said to use, a cappuccino bali pop, which is 40, 2 1/2 inch strips of fabric.  Her books have clear directions and great photos.  Josh likes this quilt and hopefully it will get used as much as the last one I made for him.

Filling Up with Snow

 We walk by this wood spirit on our daily walks along our paths.  He gives this old spruce tree a lot of character as he over looks the river and I try to get a picture of him in all kinds of weather.

 

 Today we are suppose to get about thirteen centimetres of snow.  We haven't had much snow so far this winter and I'm looking forward  to a bit of a storm.  As I walked the dog today, I couldn't help but think of Robert Frost's poem, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening and the lines,

'He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow'   

My grade five teacher, Mrs Byron, made our class memorise that poem and I hated doing it but now I'm glad to have it in my head.  This is a picture of our woods filling up with snow:

Monkeying around at the Retreat





This is the group of friends I spent the weekend with at our Quilting Retreat.  They are an odd looking bunch but they are a lot of fun!  Actually, these are the sock monkeys that were created at our Quilting Retreat at the Villa Madonna.  My sister and I offered to demonstrate how to make sock monkeys and the group humoured us by bringing along some socks.

Here we all are at the Villa.  Thirty-nine of us took part in the retreat.  Countless projects were completed and started.  Many ideas and patterns were shared.  I think I can speak for all of us when I say that this kind of weekend is good for the soul (but maybe not the waistline).  The group consisted of people from Woodstock, Fredericton, Lake George, Keswick, Scotch Lake, Quispamsis and we even had one person from the Yukon who came especially for this event.  I can't wait for next year!

Cats and Bowls

This week I had some time to work on a couple of silly projects that are fun to make.  One is an extension of the sock monkey craze that my sister and I have been on.  It is a sock kitten that is really neat.  I found the tutotial on this blog, http://community.babycentre.co.uk/post/a11193015/sock_cat_tutorial. 

This kitten is made with a child's sock.  I made it for my daughter Kate.

The other project I completed is a fabric bowl.  It is made with a fat quarter of batik fabric.  The flower is a tsunami kanzashi flower that I learned to make on You Tube.  It is like origami except you fold fabric instead of paper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaerMKBS8S8&feature=related
This weekend I am off to a quilting retreat.  We'll have lots of laughters and do lots of sewing.