Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

January 2012


Happy (belated) New Year!

I spent the last few weeks of December in Northern California
with my sisters, Nancy & Judy.
(also known as my personal chefs)
and am now trying to get into a regular routine again.
When I first got home, I would say
"That sounds good!"
But no dinner magically arrived.
Sheesh.

Judy & I relaxed & played games & did some shopping.
It was just what I needed after being laid-off!
I kicked back & watched TV with my BIL, Walter -
learned about gold mining in Alaska & bidding on storage lockers!
I did not have to think about anything at all - YAY!
We did Christmas with my nephew's family,
with my niece & her boys there too, as well as both sisters & Walter.
Yummy Chinese food for dinner, a new tradition for us.

On New Year's Day my sister Nancy & I took a drive up into the mountains,
where we stopped in a little town


called Downieville.
The first shot is of a river/stream that was rushing along side of the highway 49.
I looked up the Downie River, but I'm not sure if this is part of it
or part of the Yuba River or one of their tributaries. 
It was beautiful up there,
cold & crisp but clear blue skies!  We even saw a little snow off the sides of the road as we were driving along.  We stopped whenever we saw something interesting & there was a safe spot to pull over.  A few times I just rolled down the window & snapped pictures with my arm out the window, until my hand would get too cold!


OK, so they didn't all come out perfectly.
Let's call this one, um, artistic, OK?

Nancy paints - oils, acrylics, water colors -
whatever strikes her at the time.  She's going to be in a show/sale this coming weekend, and asked me to help her pick out the 4 paintings to enter.
What fun!
It was hard for me to only pick FOUR!  But I perservered, pointing at one, then another. 
"I like that one, um, and that one....  Yes, I really like this one, I think it's my favorite, you have to put that one in."
The next day we went back into her studio to give them all names &
for Nancy to decide on pricing.  But she didn't do that one that was my favorite!


(These were taken in November)



Then, after picking her 4, she said:
"That one's not going in the show, because I'm giving it to you."
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I haven't taken a photo of it yet,
but this is the stream that is the focus of the painting.


(Her painting is much better than my photo)

Do I have an awesome sister, or what?

The next photo trip we took was to take some shots of cows.
She wants to do a painting with at least one cow in it.  :D


Wouldn't you love to have thick eyelashes like these?


Love those horns!

Well, I think this has gone on long enough.
More photos soon.

Happy Leap Year month!


sue






Wednesday, October 19, 2011

TLC Racers


That's me, peeking over the top!

Last Saturday I taught my very first
TLC Quilters guild workshop,
all by myself!

I taught the Jelly Roll Race quilt
and we had a lot of fun.

2 of my sample tops

My first instruction to my students was this:
"Take out all of your strips,
fluff them up
and put 'em in a big pile on the table!"


This one had all of her strips neatly separated by color
and wound around cardboard tubes!




There were batiks, civil war repros, Halloween,
red-white-&-blues, and Christmas strips.



Making sure there weren't any twists.
An impossible task!


Out of the 8 students that were sewing,
5 of them had completed tops by the end of the workshop!
A 6th one emailed me on Monday, that she finished her top on Sunday.  I think that's pretty good!

Here they are, in order of finishing:

Marlene

Jean
Carol
Look how it divided itself - dark on one side, light on the other!

Jenel

Dawn

And the whole crew:

Laura~Marlene~Carol~Dawn~Jean~Jenel~Lydia~Donna~Mary Ann

They were wonderful students!

They've made me start thinking about
what I could do in another workshop.
Thanks!

sue