And . . . It's Still Winter!

Yes, indeedy, it's still all white and cold out there.  And it's even officially Spring Break at all the area schools!  I notice many people have headed for warmer climes for the week.  Our neighbor, sporting a deep suntan, brought over a box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts yesterday to thank Dan for plowing their driveway numerous times while they vacationed in sunny Hawaii. I'm proud to say I wasn't even jealous!  Oh, and did I mention that it's snowed all day?  Yup, still coming down.  

Dan and I spent several days in Coeur d'Alene last week while he attended meetings and I lounged in luxury in our room overlooking the lake at the Coeur d'Alene Resort.  Several people asked me if I planned to shop and the answer was, "No."  I went to relax and read and snooze, and I did all three.  It was a great time!  We did it last year for the same meetings, and plan to do it again next year.  Yay!!

Cameron is settling into his new life is Rwanda.  It was a huge culture shock and it turns out that while they usually have some trainees from Europe and America, this time he is the only one.  All the rest come from various countries in Africa and though they all speak a little English, most don't speak it well.  It's a nine-hour time difference from here (it was ten before daylight savings time), so connecting takes some work.  So thankful for email and smart phones!

Cam and the other trainees

And speaking of daylight savings time, let me just say that I HATE it!  Please, can we not just pick one time and stick with it?  As far as I can tell, no one is a fan of this continual change.  I read a good op ed while in Coeur d'Alene that said those who tout it by saying the farmers are for it are lying deluded.  Farmers hate it! Just makes for longer days as they wait for crops to dry out, and cows and other animals are not fooled and follow their usual routine.  My theory?  Those who want to golf after work are behind the whole thing.  Oh yeah--and the supposed energy savings?  Not exactly true.  Studies show it a dead even or maybe even uses a little more.  I grew up without daylight savings time and seemed to live quite well that way, as did everyone else I knew.  

And that's my soapbox for the week!  ♥

March or January??

We have snow.  Oh, do we have snow!  And cold.  Is it really March?  Or did the calendar go backwards and we're back to January.  Dan has plowed our driveway so many times that there's nowhere else to pile the snow. He shoveled the roof day before yesterday.  The highs are in the twenties and the lows are single digits.  Baby, it's cold outside!!  But it's beautiful!  

Not much else has been going on here. Our grandson Cameron left yesterday for six months in Kigali, Rwanda, with Youth With A Mission and that's kinda occupied my mind for the last week or so.  He should have landed this morning (seven in the evening their time) after a twenty-two hour journey.  Needless to say this grammy was traveling right along in her mind. 

Oh, wait! I have been working on getting all my files transferred from my old computer to my new one.  It's taking a while because I'm looking through all my folders to see what's actually in them and deleting stuff I know I'll never need or use.  It's turning out to be quite time-consuming, but I think it'll be worth it.  

It's sunny out today and I'm thinking I need to go stitch a seam or two sometime today.  I got a new doll pattern book recently and while I'd love to get started on a dress or two, I'm one of those crazy people who only has one project going at a time and I need to work on the Snowy Day quilt first.  I saw this little picture on line today and it fits my day, I think.

Here's to a beautiful, sunny winter day in my sewing room--hopefully! ♥

Progress is Made!

If I had realized that the Snowy Day quilt involved making templates for many of the pieces, I'm not sure I would have allowed myself to like it quite so much.  After I pulled the fabrics from my stash, I began to read the directions and lo and behold, read the dreaded words, "Make templates for shapes A through E".  Say what?!? Hmmm...  So needless to say, I had to ponder for a few days.  

Finally, I said to myself, "Be brave! Do it!" I hunted around in my quilting drawer and found template plastic I probably bought over twenty-five years ago.  Maybe more!  I carefully traced the shapes and cut them out and began cutting the fabric.  As you can imagine, all of this took some time, a little done here, a little done there.  I began with the trees and the background fabric.  

Background fabrics and some of the templates

When I had all the pieces for the tree blocks, I began stitching.  

A batch of flying geese.

Then I began assembling the actual trees.

Just before dinner tonight I finished all the tree blocks. Now it's time to use more templates to cut pieces for the house blocks.  Thankfully most of the house pieces will be simple to cut rectangles and I can use my rulers and rotary cutter.  I'll never win any prizes for fast piecing, but I'm having fun! ♥

A New Computer

I'm typing this little post on my new computer on the dining room table.  The light from the chandelier above is bright and I feel like I'm under a spotlight.  Both literally and figuratively.  Getting a new computer up and running is fraught with peril!  My old one was having trouble connecting to the internet and making me crazy. Would it work or wouldn't it?  Ah, that was the question! I conferred with Eric, my amazing son-in-law and computer tech, and he said it was probably a hardware problem and that I should be looking for a new computer.  Arghhh!!!

I vacillated and probably would have put the whole process off until too late, but Ann called yesterday noon and said they were heading to Costco and would I like to come along and look at computers.  The thought of being able to actually look at computers with Eric by my side was too good to resist so Dan and I agreed to go. And bought.  And here I am, typing away on my new Dell Inspiron.  So far (20 minutes in), I'm liking it. The keypads are spaced further apart like my old Toshiba and I'm so glad.  The ones on the HP I'm replacing were close together and drove me crazy.  (Notice how often that computer made me crazy?  It really was time for it to go.)

There is much work ahead of me to get email, printers, etc., up and running from this computer, and I'm sure Eric will have to come to my rescue, but at least I figured out how to get to my blog!! ♥

It Snowed, I Sewed

And the snow came down!! And down!!  We got up to another four inches yesterday morning and it continued to snow throughout the morning adding another couple. This was the lacy view out our bedroom window:

So what's a girl to do when she's caught up on her housework (miracle!!) and has leftovers for dinner? Why she sews, of course.  My longtime pal, Kathy, and I have been in conversation about our dolls this past week and she tipped me off to a free pattern on the internet for my 10" Tonner Ann Estelle doll.  I made a test run of it on Tuesday and it turned out to be a good fit.  It's a sleeveless dress so here's Ann Estelle modeling it with her white sweater turned back into a cardigan:

I learned a few things as I made the blue dress, so yesterday I headed straight down to my sewing room (see paragraph above) and decided to make another.  I rooted around in my stash of doll fabrics and came up with a odd shaped scrap someone gave me years ago. Would it be enough?  Yes! By making the skirt a little less full and shorter, I decided I could squeeze out a dress that would be perfect for the 4th of July.  And here's AE modeling it for you all.  I think she'll need red sandals to really set it off.

This pattern has many possibilities and I'm looking forward to trying out some more ideas.  Meanwhile, I'm perusing adorable shoes in AE's size (which, unfortunately are not cheap!) because cute dresses need cute shoes.  

I have yet to get started cutting and stitching on the Snowy Day quilt, but maybe today?  ♥

Apparently the Groundhog Lied

We've had winter, winter, winter for over a week, so I guess the groundhog's prediction of an early spring doesn't hold true, at least here.  The super cold has given way to temperatures in the twenties, and much snow.  It's coming down as I type.

Here's a picture I captured this morning between snow storms as the sun was trying to burst through.  

Bruder Bear said it looked so peaceful, and it was.  So very beautiful!  

And now I can hear the snowplows on the highway below us.  Busy night for them I'm sure.  ♥

February! And Knitting for Dolls!

Whoosh! The first days of February have whizzed by. Basketball games, an impending visit by a niece (which was cancelled just today because of weather), and the usual cooking, cleaning, laundry, and all those other fun necessities of life.  So here we are, on the fifth already.  

We have snow and cold.  And the cold, below freezing, is predicted to last for at least the next two weeks.  The insert in our basement fireplace is blazing!  The dolls are happy, too, because that's the room they live in.  Which is a nice segue into today's topic:  knitting for dolls.

I recently posted picture of a sweater I made for my American Girl doll.  She began as Samantha, circa 1910, but just lately I decided to change her era to that of my own childhood:  the 1950s.  She has my dark hair and eyes, and even her hairstyle is one I had in upper grade school. It's been fun to remember outfits I had during that time and try to figure out how to recreate them in miniature.  So I have begun.  I had a sweater similar in style to the one I knit; however (if I remember correctly) it was green.  I couldn't find any green yarn after I made my test sweater, so I settled on purple.

Here she is wearing it, grateful that it's wool and snugly on this cold, cold day.

As I dressed her I was reminded of sweaters I had knit years ago for Ann Estelle and Betsy McCall so I dug around and redressed them for the winter weather.  

Ann Estelle is wearing hers backwards so it looks like a pullover when actually it's a cardigan.  These little sweaters are so much fun to knit!  The one for Betsy is from a free pattern I got through a Tonner doll list I was on "back in the day", and Ann Estelle's was taken from an old Petite Doll Knitting Book written for Barbie dolls that my cousin Diane bought for me when she worked in Billings, Montana, in the early '60s.  I took the cardigan pattern in it, used larger needles, and voila! It worked! Now I just need to find a source of fingering weight yarn in colors other than baby pastels so I can knit more and expand their wardrobes.  

Oh!!!  And I almost forgot a very important find.  Poor Ann Estelle has had legs that wobbled almost since the day I got her.  As I dressed her this time I found that she had totally lost the ability to stand and I was forced to seat her.  This made me very unhappy because she's wearing some very cute red boots that needed to be seen!  

I made an internet search and found the answer.  It seemed so strange that I didn't believe it would work, but as you can see, work it did.  Here's the link to the blog that explains what to do.  I didn't have the small rubber bands she shows so I took a larger one and just looped into three rounds. I could see that it was working, so I took another and did the same thing. Perfection.  Each leg took two bands, equal to six of the size she shows. I'm one happy doll mama!!  ♥