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!!!!