More of this 'n that

 With snow on the ground in spots because the wind is blowing a gazillion miles per hour, it is good weather to stay inside!! I have finished the red work quilt top above.  Yea!!  Now to quilt it!!
Also, my friend in Brighton had this top from one of her husband's relatives and I will attempt to finish it for her also....sometime in the future.

Now to add to the adoption story.  My cousin was able to locate her birth father's children, and one half-sister is living still, but after locating them earlier, she was able to meet some of them, including some cousins.  I found a note with a half-sister's phone number and called her this week to let her know of my cousin's death.  We had the most marvelous conversation and I will stay in touch with her for a while at least and decided to send the file and pictures along with other paperwork to her.
There were pictures of her mother and information of her mother's children, but apparently they were not receptive of a meeting nor any contact with her.  I discovered that her mother, Hilda, had been one of several children born in the first part of the 1900's and whose father left her mother unable to take care of the children.  They were placed in homes, some were adopted and others were sent to work with families, but they were all separated. The parents had been of Scandinavian decent and Belgian decent.  The mother went to work doing laundry for miners in North Dakota.   Hilda went to work for a family. A few years later she began dating a man who was a brother of an older sister's husband.   They were engaged and he subsequently broke off the engagement.  Hilda learned she was pregnant and had begun dating another man who wanted no part of this baby.  She went to Denver to a home and gave birth to my cousin.  More later....

This 'n that

 I am working on a quilt which is mostly "redwork", a pattern I acquired over a year ago on a quilt shop hop and above a few of the squares which encircle the main embroidery which I will post later.
I made a trip to Colorado last week to be with friends and I purchased a new Janome embroidery and sewing machine.  I will have an adventure to learn all about it, but am so so excited to have it.

 Just another snap of the many ice huts at the annual fishing derby.  And of course another of the sun trying to wake up the valley.

What I really want to blog about is the "This" of this and that.  "This" past week, my dear friend and I went to Colorado and with my other close friend, we went to visit another old friend.  She was a room
mate of my cousin for nearly 50 years along with another woman who passed a few years ago.  We called them the "Golden Girls" and the 3 of us visited them many times over the past 30 plus years.  We  went to lunch and had lots of laughs.  I lost my cousin in July, and although she was 18 years my senior, we had become close.  There is much to tell, but I came away with "this", --an envelope containing her  life.  Her adopted parents death and birth certificates (her mother was my father's sister, 18 years his senior), her adoption file, retirement documents from the Air Force and awards, and a request to contact a half-sister who was to be notified in case of her death.  After her parents  were gone, she decided to find her birth parents.  Of course "this" was in 1991 when the records in Colorado were being opened and with the help of a mediator, she was successful.  What I discovered, must have been a shock to her.  I will continue with this story, but I was able to speak with a half-sister, her father's daughter, yesterday and I opted to send the information I had to her.  It was mailed yesterday and I felt that as a birth relative, and there are others, that she should have "this" information.  My cousin was born in 1925, and she was adopted as an infant into a home with a loving mother and father and as an only child, she lived a life of luxury for the day and never wanted for anything.  So I will continue this story in my next few blogs.

"To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence. ~ Sydney Smith

More winter

 When winter arrives here, these old trees make wonderful perches for the birds.  As I have posted before, the bald eagles like this pair, spend much of most days here high above the pasture and prairie sage brush perusing for prey.  On rare occasion, they will fly close to the house and from our windows their wide spread wings always leave us in awe.  Our fear is that they might confuse our little grey furkid for lunch, so we are watchful when he is out.  This snap was taken through our spotting scope so it is not very clear, but never the less, they are clearly regal silhouetted against the sky.

Every January for at least 30 years, Saratoga has hosted an ice fishing derby.  When our kids were small, we used to come for the weekend.  We would stay in a motel and soak in the hot springs.  The Mr. and 4 of his coworkers made their huts from plywood and blue tarps.  It was a party!!!  This was long before most had manufactured huts.  There were appliance boxes, and just a myriad of what the imagination could dream up to weather the cold ice.  The snap above shows but a very few huts, but there will be more pictures to follow to show the actual magnitude of people who come from neighboring states to catch the big money fish.  Also please notice the "art show" sign?  We did not check that out however.  Snow sculptures of fish and a whale were also part of the affair.

 This was snapped this week by the Mr.  The sunsets are too pretty to resist.  The sign that marks the entrance into our subdivision appears just in the center of the picture.

Just a few more huts on the frozen lake.  I was in Colorado this week to spend time with friends and take care of some business.  I did however buy a new sewing/embroidery machine.  My sewing room looks like a sweat shop with 5 machines up there.  It was a true splurge for me to spend the money that these machines command, but I love to sew and I am so excited to start learning what it can do.  So there will be posts of my adventures in technology as it is much smarter than I. 

Big things in small pkgs

 With the freezing temps we have had, we have mostly been holed up in the house.  It has given me an opportunity to actually do some sewing on some quilt projects.  Over the past few years I have purchased fabric with a specific project for (when I have time) or just because it was a good deal or just because, with nothing in particular on my mind.  As a child, I loved to sew and it started with hand work at the knee of my paternal grandmother.  She was a small lady, several inches shy of the 5' mark..she wore a size 4 shoe.  Must be where we all got our lack of height.  But big things do come in small packages.  I honestly don't think there was anything she couldn't do.  Her mother died when she was only 6 and having completed first grade, she then stayed home to keep house for her brothers and father.  A neighbor woman took her under her arm and taught her most everything she needed to know.  She gave birth to 11 children, 9 of whom survived to adulthood.  She taught me to crochet, and although she was left-handed, she really could use her right hand as well as her left.  So when I was old enough, my mother let me start on the sewing machine.  I started out with doll clothes and eventually was making my own.  Thus my passion for the sweatshop upstairs. Good light, good music and the companionship of my furkids.  This is my version of the "baby gate" for my machine.  Purchased at the dollar store, (it was the 5 & 10 when I grew up), I cut off the handles and with a little more tweaking..voila.  I came out of the bedroom on Monday and stooped to pick up what I thought was a thread. (I find them all over my clothes when I sew).  It was a long piece, down the hall, across the living room, wrapped around the legs of the secretary, up the stairs, through the loft and into my sewing room and still attached to the machine above.  Coalette rubs against the machine, but her tail picked up the thread and she proceeded to come and find me. I do have a cover for the machine, but it is a soft vinyl and she has chewed holes in it. Bad cat!!

 These are two of the collars my little boys are now sporting that the Mr. made and he is working on one for Hildy.  Both little guys got haircuts this week so it is only fitting that they have new hardware.

We had deer outside the patio this a.m. when Spencer here went out with Hildy, (Roger, above, is my fair weather dog and still hasn't gone out.) and even though he is only about 15 lbs, he thinks he is a Russian Wolfhound and takes off like he is flying.  He doesn't have a clue that he hasn't a chance to catch them, but big things do come in small packages.

"Act as though it were impossible to fail." ~ Anonymous

Artiste at work

The Mr. has not done any leather work for a few years,  and he has done some beautiful work in the past.  He has a pool cue case that is the envy of all who see it and now he has the time to pursue this hobby again.  I have been asking for new collars for the furkids and so this is the first of three to come.  Using a basket weave stamp he started on Spencer's 5/8" collar.

 To attach the buckle, he used an awl to punch holes in both pieces of leather wrapped around the buckle.

 Then using two needles he stitched through the punched holes.

The collar was then dyed, and a finish applied and will appear in the next blog as little Spencer is now sporting a new collar.  The next collar for little Roger, will be a little more ornate with some jewelry and Hildy will get one too.

Do you see him?

 I shot this a couple of days ago hoping that the profile would be clear and it is.  If you cast your eye to the left of the photo and slowly move your gaze to the right, you will see the sleeping Indian in the rock formations just to the southeast of us.  These I believe are Baggot Rocks.  On the right is the profile of the tree which has been the eagle's perch and three small peaks.  Then the forehead, nose, chin, neck, chest and body lying peacefully in the early morning dawn light.  This formation can also be seen for miles from the south as we travel on our return trips from Walden Colo which is about 60 miles south of us. And now of course these little bucks are easy to see as they grazed on the low brush in our back yard.  They weren't particularly concerned about me at the patio door, but my poor furkids were pitching a fit.  I finally had to chase them away so that the "kids" could eventually go outside. 

As a youngster, I ate a good deal of venison.  My dad always hunted and we always ate what he shot.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table while he and mom butchered and worked at supplementing our larder.  We always had lots of meat with the myriad of animals we raised also.  Venison was a break from the beef, duck, chicken, rabbit and occasional pork which graced our table.  Mom was not a particularly experienced cook.  As I recall, everything was either fried or roasted.  She once told me that Dad actually taught her to cook.  She recalled the first chicken that she cooked after they were married.  I was raw inside.  She made her first gravy in a skillet and it became a rather large gravy pattie it was so thick.  Because of her childhood marred with the murder of her father, she apparently had an unconventional difficult and she once told me she wasn't allowed in the kitchen.  At the time I didn't question that statement, but how I wish I knew more now.  My paternal grandmother took her under her wing and taught her to can fruits and veggies and my dad loved to garden, so we had lots of good food. However, living rurally, we didn't have salads and the fruit was limited to pears, apples, cherries, and peaches which could be canned,  and an occasional orange at Christmas. So although we led a frugal life, we surely ate well.  That would explain my addiction to food, especially dessert!  We never had a meal without it.

"In youth we learn, in age we understand." ~ Marie Ebner von Eschenbach

Brrrrr........

 It has been cold here....8 degrees right now.  The bald eagles that we have here will sometimes stay in the tree all day, but I have never seen them spread their wings like this for a very long period of time.  Yesterday this one stayed like this for quite a while and I can only assume it was sunning itself to keep warm.  I watched from my dining room for quite a good time and finally it flew away.  We have both these and golden eagles and usually see one or the other every day.  You can also see the string of cattle barely in the background feeding on hay that is brought out to them by the rancher. I cannot wait for warm weather to actually sit on the patio to watch all of this wildlife.

 Coalette is my constant companion and she is a rather large cat.  My sewing room is upstairs and she will see me go up, jump from her perch and run up the stairs.  Really she sounds as if she is wearing combat boots! I doubt that she could sneak up on anything and being a house cat, she can only hunt bugs and flies and spiders.  It is too cold for them now too, so she crawls up on my sewing machine which is warm from both the lights and motor.  This is a larger than normal machine as I use it for quilting so she pretty much fights me for the machine and the thread gets wrapped around her tail and the battle is on to stay atop the warm perch.

Since I have been quilting and it is such therapy for me, it probably is good that we have cold winters.  What would I do with so many quilts? The patterns intrigue me and I see it as a challenge to attempt a new pattern.  My thrifty childhood does not allow me to throw away very many scraps.  When I saw this pattern which uses a paper-pieced pattern, it gave me a chance to use all of those small scraps that I couldn't bare to put in the garbage.  Even the binding is pieced from small strips.  The background is a sheet (and that is a no-no by "real" quilters), but I felt that this would have replicated a quilt made by true quilters of bygone eras.  These women did not have access to the wonderful fabrics, machines and tools we use today, but the quilts used to keep them warm on cold winter nights like we have been having, used scraps of anything they could salvage to make warm coverings.  This is a smaller twin size that will be used to throw over a lap at night with a cat on my lap.  Stay warm!!!!

Happy New Year

 I have been away from the camera, the blog and except for a few necessary E-mails, the world of technology for a couple of weeks.  It is a struggle for me to figure out all of the tech stuff, and I know that I will probably be left in the dust.  I have a cell phone, but not hooked up to the "net", so as we have no land line, that is a must.  After years of working and dealing with the public, we are loving the relaxed style of life and serenity now out here on the prairie.  People who are important to me know how to contact me. There are no more trips to the big box home improvement stores with carts of building materials which scream "work", no waiting at a stop light for it to change just to get to the post office or the grocery store, no door to door sales people and no stray dogs to worry about when the furkids go with us for walks.  When we go to the only grocery store here, or the post office, or the eateries (which by the way are wonderful), everyone greats us with a big smile, something we missed.  Guess that is the small town hick in us.

 My Coalette is my constant companion and in the morining, she sleeps at the keyboard as I check the computer and blog and read the local paper on line. She gives me fits as I try to quilt and loves the machine which in itself is a little scary.  The thread wraps around her tail and I am constantly scooting her away from the needle.  She loves to lay in my lap when I am doing handwork and she is a wonderful cat.  Below, little Spencer cuddles under a quilt and as I type this, the outdoor temp is 5 degrees.  All of our critters love us and "home is where they love you". 

With a few exceptions, we have completed most of the "business", of relocating and as soon as those things have been accomplished, I am planning on a New Year of adventures.  This will be my 50th anniversary of high school graduation and may try to get the gang together...there were less than a dozen of us, I have a wedding cake to do in the spring, I want to do more glass projects and have been asked to teach a painting class and .....Oh my!  I may not do any of these for I plan to do a lot of reading and more quilting, and spending time with friends and being just "home where they love you".   Happy New Year!!