Family dinner

We had a wonderful evening with family in Geneseo and their children and grandchildren gathered from Virginia and Canada.
















Jen and Zac in charge in the kitchen.













Dylan working on one of his toys.
















And giving me some giggles at the dinner table.




















And with his headlamp so he can see when he goes outside.

Fabric Dyeing

With the mild weather we've been having, the room in my basement that has my dyeing supplies and large sink was nice and warm --- good motivation to do some dyeing!

I started with four yards each of three values of turquoise.

I separated the turquoise fabrics so that each of the three buckets had a light, medium and dark fabric.

Then I over-dyed them with three values of black.

I also kept one group of turquoise out so it had no black added, and I dyed one group of black that did not have any turquoise.






Here are the final fabrics.

Jewel Orchid

My Jewel Orchid (ludisia discolor) is sending out lots of blooms again this year, even though it is very overdue for repotting.

I bought it in Florida 15 years ago and am so pleased that it's still going strong. 

I had a report from a friend last week that a cutting I gave her from this plant a year or two ago is producing its first buds.








Each of the "petals" of the bloom produces individual orchid-shaped flowers.

Peeps meeting

Linda hosted our December meeting at her beautiful home. 

Our agenda was mostly about the delicious Xmas lunch and the other sweet goodies for snacking.

Mary showed us her quilt that won a couple of awards including Best of Fiber at the Festival of Trees in Canandaigua.  She made it from a pattern by Nancy Murty.

Otto Tomotto's

We decided to try dinner at Otto Tomotto's on Rt. 96 in Victor. 

Don't you love their sign?

We both ordered pasta entrees which were very good.

Even though I neglected to get a picture of our dinners, I captured the great plates in their wall decoration.

Winter is here

Our area received about 20" of snow over the last couple of days -- plenty enough to provide lots of exercise from shoveling the wet and heavy stuff each day. 

The water in the fish pond stays unfrozen as we have a stock pond heater in it to help keep it open.

Tree Trimming

We have a long list of necessary maintenance requirements for our property.  Some major tree work is part of the plan.















A local company was retained and came today to begin some removal.  They took down whole trees and cleared limbs around electric, telephone, and television transmission lines.














Some good-sized limbs resulted and were hauled away.  A large volunteer cottonwood tree was totally removed.














A powerful stump grinder was part of the extensive equipment they used and quickly removed any residual roots.















Some wonderful extended booms with movement controlled by the operator in the air were used -- no more ladders or scaling trunks and limbs.  Bill indicated he would like this portable model for Christmas!

We have a tree line of 20+ mature blue spruce to be replaced on the list as the next project.

First Friday

Nancy and I went to the Hungerford Building in Rochester for the open studios night.  The Hungerford has four floors of studios, and most all of them were open tonight for the large crowds of visitors.
















We enjoyed visiting Jeanne Beck's studio and chatting with her and her husband, Bob.























More of Jeanne's work.



















Nancy and I both liked the whimsical work done by this artist.













Favorite sign of the night.

Rosemary

When I went to the garden on Thanksgiving to look for herbs for the turkey, everything was snow covered.  The pictures I posted here and on Facebook prompted a friend to ask if the rosemary plants would make it through the winter.

Unfortunately, we've never been able to keep any alive, even with lots of mulching and covering.







Usually, we just harvest all the branches and store them in plastic bags in the freezer, for use throughout the year.

This year's plants that we started with in the spring were quite a bit smaller than those we usually purchase.  While both plants did well and got quite a bit of growth, we decided  they would fit in some existing pots we had on hand.

So into pots they went, and we'll see how they like "wintering over" in a cool part of our lower level. 

Here's hoping they'll stay healthy and be ready to go back out to the garden in the spring....

Thanksgiving Day

We had some snow for Thanksgiving morning which dusted all the gardens.









I walked through the herb garden and found that the sage, rosemary and thyme were still in good shape under their snow covers.  They were tasty additions to the turkey and the stuffing.












Some other views in the gardens:

Meeting Day

The Peeps gathered for their regular monthly meeting.

On the cutting table are some of the kits that Nancy brought in for the Dress A Girl project.














Carol just returned from the West Coast and teaching a silk dyeing class.  These are a few of the silk scarves she made.











The pattern on this scarf is done using a pleater.














 Bev showed us some of the fabrics she made in the Deconstructed Screen Printing class.

Screen printed fabrics

These are some of the fabrics that I made in Kerr's Deconstructed Screen Printing class.
I like some of the results better than others, but it was all interesting to see what textures and patterns made the best prints.

Thanks, Carol!

Carol Boyer, a fiber artist from the Syracuse area who was also in the Screen Printing class, made fun lapel pins for each of us.  This is about 5 inches tall, and just happens to have some turquoise... :-)

Screen Printing class

Kerr gave us a fun exercise during our Deconstructed Screen Printing class. 
She put us in random pairs and gave each person two minutes to introduce herself to her partner.  After hearing our partner's introduction, we were to draw her portrait on two hankies.

Liz drew the horses and cows from my childhood that I talked about, although they're hard to see in the background.  Still very clever, though!

Cover Quilter

I was pleased to receive a phone call from the Marketing Manager at Martelli Enterprises, asking to feature my quilts in the current issue of their Innovations Newsletter.

So you can now see my quilts on the cover and in the Fall issue.