Birthday bounty

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I am not a material person. Like a lizard (?) I have shed my skin and possessions more than once in my lifetime.

But I recently had a birthday – a big one – and am as pleased as punch with my gifts.

Here they are. To avoid any favoritism, they are listed in order based upon the number of years I have known the giver. My kids are very competitive; each one asked me if they were the first birthday wisher. Yes to the 6:00 am text message and yes to the 8:00 am phone call.

1) A beautiful bouquet of spring flowers, just when I am getting a wee bit tired of winter weather.

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2) A beautiful floral blouse, fits perfectly and looks perky.

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3) An extremely functional, handmade gift for my pepper mill. I have one of the older brass pepper mills, featured on the Frugal Gourmet years ago. It’s so tall and top heavy, it’s lethal around pottery or glassware on the counter because it frequently tips over. No more.

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4) The sky delivered a beautiful sunset and should probably be listed first.

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I see DC

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I’ve spent a lot of time in the car these past several days. I drove to Montpelier, back home, to Washington, DC and will head back to Montpelier for two more days after one night in my own bed. I haven’t had a home cooked meal for a week!

But I ate oysters, and Ethiopian food – hard to find in the Adirondacks. Most importantly, I spent a few days with my daughter.

The weather was beautiful and provided a real zing of Spring. Except for a parking ticket and a nail, which punctured a tire in two places, it was a fabulous trip.

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We rented bikes and rode around the Mall and visited the monuments. Capitol Bikeshare has kiosks around the city and you pick up a bike from one location and return it near your destination. Then we picked up different bikes to head home. What a concept! I downloaded the Spotcycle app, which told me where bike stations were and how many bikes were available there.

We were a few days early for the cherry blossoms on the mall but saw a few trees in full bloom in other parts if the city.

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We headed home to the remnants of winter, with snow on the ground and temperatures below freezing once again.

Visiting the Shire Town

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A business trip brought me to Montpelier, VT, the smallest state Capitol in the US. Although it’s only a short trip over a lake, and around some mountains, I am not in Kansas anymore. This is quintessential New England. A shire town means County Seat and is the term used here. Middle Earth.

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There’s a lovely village green on the campus of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where people and canines play frisbee in the snow.

I was very sad to find the New England Culinary Institute closed for break. I was looking forward to dinner there. But I found plenty of alternatives. There is some food I can’t find in the Adirondacks so I try to eat it when when I am out. I found a sweet Thai restaurant, Royal Orchid and had coconut milk soup and potstickers. Yum!

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It’s very hilly and a short walk downtown for a great variety of coffee at Capitol Grounds. Along the way I passed frozen puddles ,

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Colorful hilltop houses

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And a whimsical, mustached bark man.

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When you have lemons

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When you have snow…go skiing. Travel and surgery caused me to miss the past two winters. I downhill skied once 3 years ago, traveled to Australia in 2010 and was on crutches in 2011.

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Yet a beautiful mountain is only 30 minutes away. And we just had 16 inches of fresh snow. And it was midweek. I gave it a try on Wednesday and was reminded how much I enjoy it. Best of all, my ankle worked ( the one that had me on crutches last winter).

What fun, even if my style hasn’t changed in 40 years. I tried out the newfangled skis, shorter than me, had a group lesson, which turned out to be a group of only me, and relished the day. Sweet.

I returned yesterday with DH who immediately wanted to go to the top – he’s a mountain hiker after all. Even though I had been to the summit, three years ago on my one day skiing, I balked.

Some male-female dynamics automatically triggered in my brain and I resisted, initially. Perhaps I have been led astray in the past? Lets just say I had not been to an ER before I met DH and now I have been there twice; first due to broken face in a boating accident; and then due to an ankle injury, which occurred while following him up one of his high peaks. Just sayin’.

So away we went and it was lovely. I’m sold. And I didn’t visit the ER. The view of Lake Placid was stunning.

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I’ll be back today after a half day of work. After all, we have snow.

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Snow incentive

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A winter storm warning is in effect (yeah!) and I have some unfinished business to take care of.

I finished piecing and layering this lovely quilt over the weekend.

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Cool, right? Each block is basically a nine patch but stretched in various ways.

I am considering finishing a bunch of quilts (I’ve acquired several almost finished projects) and then quilt them all at the same time, or serially, to work on technique. That should keep me busy for a while.

My Harmonia Rings möbius cowl is complete. I may have to arm wrestle Shirley for it though.

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Second time is a charm. I almost followed the directions to a tee, except my gauge was smaller and I added a few stitches. I even added beads for the first time. I think that’s why Shirley likes it so much.

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Snow is in the forecast but the birds are unaware

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The temperature is below freezing again but hasn’t stopped the bird migration. It seems every day we hear new songs and see more species at the feeder. This morning a flock of common redpolls stopped by for a frenetic visit. Mourning doves have returned and their song echoes in the woods.

Today a plump, Tufted Titmouse was stopped by and settled in the tree among the spring buds.
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As long as the birds don’t care about our Hazardous Weather Outlook, neither will we.

So blue

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Two projects completed, infinitely more to go. This will be classified as my blue period.

I tried this new technique, which is a woven quilt!

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Both passions in one project. It’s from the book, Simply Stunning Woven Quilts.
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I didn’t have the right fusing material on hand and tried using the zigzag attachment on my little ole’ Singer Featherweight but it was more than it could handle. There are some amazing 3-D patterns in this book.

The technique is simple. Fuse two pieces of fabric onto Thermaheat (double sided iron-on fusible material, which I didn’t have) cut into wavy strips and weave them together. I made it in case I couldn’t weave a few placemats in time for a trip to Washington, DC to visit my darling daughter.

But I did.

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I didn’t use a thick enough yarn for the weft for the first placemat so it became a towel and I was left with an odd number of placemats. I will definitely try this again – but not before my trip.

An afterthought

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It’s funny about mittens. They need thumbs. I am trying a new knitting technique, twined knitting, which creates a dense, thick, elastic fabric. So far I have used it with colorwork and haven’t explored all the textures you can create with it – yet.

I was so wrapped up in my twining and twisting and untwisting, I forgot to include a thumb in the second mitten.

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I didn’t want to rip back and decided to insert an “afterthought” thumb so I searched for the technique on the Internet.

Almost all the results weren’t an afterthought at all. They required you to knit waste/scrap yarn as a placeholder where you wanted the thumb when you passed by the thumb the first time. There was my problem, I never thought about it the first time as I merrily knit and twined past the where it should have been.

I used the same technique, but instead of ripping out waste yarn, I placed the row above and below on needles and carefully snipped, from the center, the thumb stitches in between.

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My main concern was the cut ends might be too short to weave in.

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They were short, but not too short and I used a crochet hook to hide them. I can’t tell the difference.

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Now they are drying by the fireplace before being sent off to a new bird lover’s home.

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