Calendar Girls Meeting

This is my friend Jackie. She is one of the neatest women I've ever known. We had our Calendar Girls meeting at her house today. Jackie & her hubby Gene are going to be snow birds & head south to Texas for the winter. I am going to miss her a lot. She has been a friend & a mentor for me . I'm trying to convince her she should blog from TX. so we can keep up on what she's up to.

Gene participated in our meeting today, because we were playing with jewelry, which is his specialty. He used to make silver & gold jewelry. He helped us with making jump-rings,
& drilling with a dremmel.

I've come to the conclusion that we're all a bunch of Magpies, because we all collect lots of stuff!

I'm not quite done with the things I worked on there, I'll post them later when I'm finished.
When I came home, I HAD to take some pictures of the wonderland of crystals we have outside right now. We've had over a week of low temps, & no breezes. Eveything is covered with the snow that fell before the temps dropped, & crystals of ice have grown all over everything.

I thought the Cowparsnip made a lovely crystal flower.

The blanket of crystals cover everything.

When I brushed them off of my car on Monday, they just floated like delicate feathers, & made a fine crackely noise like corn flakes being poured, as they landed on the ground .

The dishwasher man came to repair the fancy dishwasher. Now it needs a new motor! So another couple weeks of waiting, GRRRRR! I think Meile should give a whole new dishwasher!

We stopped by & saw Aunt Ethel this evening, she's doing well.

A Winter Saturday

Here's a quick post about what I did yesterday.

This little quilt top was made by Bonnie Walker, a member of our quilt guild, ALCQ . She donated it, & I took it home to finish for the Teddy Bear & Friends Tea that happens in November. We make little quilts to go with teddy bears or other stuffed animals, & they get donated to local organizations to be given out to kids in need for Christmas. I thought the flying geese top would be perfect for the little gray goose/ugly duckling that I had. So in just a few hours I had it quilted & bound. I have to say, I felt really rusty when I first started quilting on it. It's been a while since I'd quilted anything larger than my Journal quilts!

Broccoli was setting in our bedroom, bird watching again. The bird feeder is on the upper level above this window, so the birds frequently spend time on the ground here, by this window. When we start our landscaping, I want to put a little water feature outside this window. Moon rise was beautiful last night. The photo is a little blurred, but it gives you an idea of how pretty it was.

Winter Day in Alaska

You know winter is really here in Alaska when the bird feeder can go back up. We HAVE to take them down in spring time because of the bears.
My Brocolli cat loves bird watching.


It was such a pretty day yesterday. I spent most of the day near the fire watching tv & just vegetating. I found the Beta button last night & switched to Beta. It does seem to be easier, & I don't seem to have lost anything by switching. I had saved my template just in case, but when I logged on this morning, it looked the same on the surface, & loading pictures was much faster.
This last image is a set of 7 antique copper stamps thatI got from Ebay. There were 2 sets that I wanted, but somebody else wanted them too, & after I bid high enough to get this one, I decided I didn't want to spend that kind of money to get both sets.

ChEMo & WIP Wed on Thur

My sister Em, gets her 1st Chemo today. Please whisper a little prayer for her that all goes well.
Sorry I didn't get my WIP Wednesday posted on Wednesday. I worked the past 3 days, then we went to the Moose's Tooth for soup & breadsticks for supper. The gAHrlic-tomato soup was good, & so were the warm cheezy bread sticks.
When we got home, we went out & soaked in the hot tub under a lovely moon. It was a chilly 18 degrees Farenheight (what's that in centigrade? about -10?, I used to know the calculations). Needless to say, by the time we got in the house I was so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open, so I'm posting it today.
I'm staying home today, even though it's a Quilt Guild day. I'd rather hibernate. I've started a fire in the wood stove & will enjoy every minute of staying home!

For my WIP (works in progress), I don't have much exciting to show. The white paper on the wall has some pencil sketching on it. Can you see it? Not done yet.

The green thing will be a small lamp shade when I'm done. It may stay in the shape it's in until next weekend when I do my lecture at the Anchorage Museum. I'm talking for the local Weavers & Spinners Guild. They were interested in some of my threadplay & embellishment techniques, so I'll be doing a trunk show & Demo for them.
The last 2 pictures are my young friend Christy, (from my last posting), wearing her friend's Irish Dance Dress. She borrowed it to show me an example of one, so I could see how they're constructed. I've drawn up a design for her, & last Sunday we went & bought the fabrics. She has them all, right now. I let her take the drawing home so she could study it, while she fondles her fabric for a while. Christy is a quilter too. I taught her & both of her sisters how to quilt years ago, so she appreciates a good fondling of fabric.

So that's all that's happening here. I had decided I would switch to Beta Blogger this weekend, & the button is no longer on my blog! It's been there for weeks, when I didn't have time to mess around with it! Oh well, such is life.

Psychic Connections

These pictures were taken Friday. We have big fat flakes of fresh snow falling right now. I'm happy to see it, because if we don't get a good covering early, then it usually turns bitter cold, & things freeze & ice. It's much nicer to have a little fluffy white to insulate things.

Our friends Mindy & John came over last night again, for a relaxing meal. It was a last minute thing, so I pulled a big bag of chicken wings out of the freezer & tossed them in the oven. Mindy brought fixings for a pear salad, & Warren went to the Flying Dutchman, & got a Pumpkin Flan. It's the best bakery in Anchorage. The wings were tequila-Lime from Tyson. He got them at Costco, & if you ever see them, get some & try them. We all loved them!

Christie, Mindy & John's middle daughter, won a Regional Irish dance competition in Arizona last weekend. Now we have to make a dress for Nationals. The dresses they use are like very fancy applique & embroidered quilts built into the shape of dresses. Christie borrowed one from a friend, to bring over to show me, so I could see how it's constructed. I've always told them I would make one for them when they needed it. John did a lot of construction on our house, & wouldn't let us pay him, & Mindy & the girls helped insulate & paint, & nail & screw, & sand & strip paint on old furniture, so I feel I owe them. These dresses sell for over $1000.00, so it's not your every day dress. I was amazed at how heavy it was. The skirt has big box pleats, that flash when they dance, & it has a stiff batting, like Timtex, & it feels just like Lutradure in the back side of the pleats. Christie wants snowflakes on her dress, to represent the fact that she's from Alaska, & since I'm the snowflake Queen, it'll be easy for me to include snowflakes on her dress.
Christie & I have an interesting connection. I went on the internet, & did a search for dresses. I printed out 3 that I thought were similar to what she would like. When they got here, they were amazed, because there were 4 she had found on the internet, that she liked the style of, & I had printed out 3 of the 4. That may not sound that amazing to you, but there were hundreds of dresses, on about 30 web pages that I looked at, & Mindy hadn't told me which web pages to look on!
Once when we were in Michigan, for Warren to go to school. I had injured my back when lifting a 450# person at work, & was laying on the floor at home, trying to make the pain ease, Mindy called me to find out if I was ok, because Christie had woke up from her nap (she was 2 years old at the time), & told her mom I had fallen down. She insisted "Debbie is hurt". Now what's really remarkable about this, Christie hardly even knew us at the time, because she wasn't even a year old when we left Alaska, to go back to school.
Another time, we were planning a trip back to Alaska, & we wanted surprise everyone, so we hadn't told them, & as we were getting ready to leave for the airport, the phone rang & it was Mindy. She said Christie had woke up that morning insisting that she should call me. She wanted to know if everything was all right. Mindy nearly fainted the next day when we walked into her office at work. That was a fun surprise!