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besides being a fabric junkie, a piecing nut and all a-round gal...me and my sweetie are train brains. i am a bit picky and prefer live steam locomotives but anything that runs on the tracks makes mark smile. i admit, i love trains of all kinds too but LOVE steam. anywho...i found this kool site today that is giving away an awesome quilt. her name is camille and like she didnt have enough to do raising two young boys, she decided to start her own little pattern company. after her first year of success she is giving away this beautiful little gem called "blossom". go to her site to enter and if you add her url to your blog you get three more entries. kool huh?!! so here it is:
web.mac.com/cjroskelley
i love the hard wood trees here. i have never lived where it was mostly hardwoods...mostly conifers. now wait a minute...koa is a hard wood and so is milo and primavera...have to amend that statement. hardwoods like maple and that kind of stuff. our neighbor, paulie, tapped his maples and made syrup which he gave us some and we put on our french toast on sunday. it was soooooooooo good, had a very slight smokey flavor but not enough to distract you from the shere maple bliss. the trees are getting leaflets...from a distance the forest is evergreen green with patches of grey...i thought the new leaf growth would be green but i guess that is how it is. i hope the snow of the last few days hasnt damaged them. my fuchsias are anxious to get outside but i am going to be darn sure no more FROST before i put those babies out. already had one blossom and the other has three buds. they are straining for the window, let us outside they cry...silly plants, they will go out as soon as it is warm enough and then the humingbirds will have fresh nector (plus the feeders). good luck on the quilt drawing...........
i hope the snow doesnt kill my daffodils...those bits of yellow are the blooms. there are other bulbs coming up but i dont know what they are yet. the birds seem a little stuned by the snow but they are on the feeders big time. i guess i will diffenately be sewing tomarrow. until then...i am going to crawl into my nice warm bed and watch some tv and hope it is all gone by morning and the sun is out....
i know, i know...you are probably tired of seeing my snow pictures but that is SNOW and it is the 26th of april. it is supposed to snow all night and possibly through monday or tuesday. its been snowing all afternoon but it is starting to stick now...and mark wanted to rake the rest of the leaves tomarrow...we will have to see what day light brings us
i think these may be tupils, the leaves are sort of ruffled...they look like the tulips i see in pots at the store. this is a pie shaped area that gets lots and lots of sun. he wants to plants onions in here. i am going to commendere the back edge and plant lots of holly hocks in all sorts of colors. they can lean against the house when they get real tall and wont fall over. i am so stoked that spring just appeared so suddenly...what a difference a week makes! :-)
these i dont know what these are but there are quite a few of them...guess will just have to wait and see. they are also among the roses and found under the leaves. growing stuff here vs kauai is so different but i am slowly learning.
these are more daffodils among some wild roses in another week they should
look and be bigger. this is part of the yard mark racked. i cut the roses way back and this will hopefully make them better. i used to whack the heck out of my tea and florabundas...which i hope to get some planted this year...the ones with "own root" so after the freeze they wont revert to just root stock. i do miss my lovely roses.......
i know, i know this does not look like much but i racked and racked
tons of
leaves to expose this odd shaped patch. i planted gladdiolias here and they seem to have multiplied and there is other stuff coming up to...in a week i will rephotograph and hopefully you will see much better. i am going to put up a fence around this planting cause those jerkhead deer seem to love this patch!
these were here and in bloom when we arrived last may. they did something under the snow and now there a just lots and lots of them. my friend, sue, said this fall i have to did them up, separate and replant...okie dokie. there is just a tiny bit of snow left...that is all in our yard but there is still lots in the woods and along the roads and stuff. but i was wearing shorts!!! while i did some raking in the front yard...obviously not here :-)
hard to believe but last sunday, mark was snow blowing and today he was raking leaves. that other guy is paulie our neighbor who lent a hand, a rake and another wheel barrow. ..and between them quite a few beers :-) i even got a sunburn watching them work. it got up to about 62 and i was estatic! i know, you guys from hawaii are laughing...that is our winter...but after -30...62 above is down right tropical!i did pretty good at the quilt show, sold about a third of my fabric and one shop is interested in carrying my fabric. in a week or so me and mark will drive to marinette, which is in wisconcin. i am pretty stoked!the sump pump is running about every five minutes, we figure it is pumping about 70-80 gallons of water per hour out of the basement. there are three little rivers that run into the well of the pump. from the frozen ground. hopefully it wont rain too much before the thaw is done.i will go outside and take pictures of all the stuff that is coming up. i cannot believe all this was under two feet of snow just seven days ago. the grass is green in most places...my daffodils did something under the dirt and snow and there are zillions of them. my friend told me that this fall i will have to did them all up, seperate them and then replant them...okaywe are going to modify our fence so that it touches the house on two sides so that out back yard will be completely fenced to keep the deer OUT! then i can plant flowers and more veggies and stuff. I HATE DEER!!!!! i dont even think they are cute...they are either eating every neat thing in your yard...flinging themselves into the path of your car...or carrying lyme desease infected ticks.........bambi they are not!hey! on the up side...there is a black wolf that runs around here. only seen him twice, the neighbor has seen him a couple of times and so have a few other people in the neighborhood. now that is a kool animal!well, it is late so i am off to z land but am excited at what tomarrow will bring.........
Here are two views of the same fabrics....three greens; three oranges; gold/blue/orange; violet to blue; scarlet/burgandy/magenta; and gold/magenta/purple. Next I need to press and cut and tag....think I will set ironing board up in front of tv so I dont go out of my mind. I think I am going to make an aloha shirt for myself out of the cotton and then dye purple to wear to show this weekend. Better get back to work.
Here is what 18 yards of fabric dyeing look like...low emersion dyeing...no salt used at all. I did six tubes yesterday and these are the ones I am working on today. I also need to change my name from Kauai Kolors to Krystal Kolors I suppose since i no longer live on Kauai and now live in Crystal Falls. There are three fuchsias; three reds; three turquoise; three blues; fuchsia/christmas red/orange and gold/burgandy/magenta. These I will rinse out and wash later this evening.
Charlie Daniels was amazing, hard to believe he is 72 years young!!!!!! the other photo was when he brough members from Shooter Jennings and 38 Special onto the stage for the finale...was pretty good. I could of listened to ol' Charlie for an hour or two more thou. We spent the night at the casino...I gambeled...my first time with free money from the casino...cashed out with $9 ( i started with 20). It was great not having to drive home after the gig since it was snowing and blowing like crazy and remember this was April 11th!!!!!Mark was sick the next day so I drove home. When we approached the house, he said to just floor it into the drive way...thought the momentum would get us in...NOT!!! he spent a good part of this morning digging the darn thing out! Then the rest of the a.m. snow blowing so I could get to all the bird feeders. It is melting...it is 30 with the promise of the upper 40s tomarrow and then into the 50s the rest of the week...and supposeidly no more snow.I made up dye concentrates and 3 gallons of soda ash water. I am hoping to cut the fabric tonight after dinner. If I have everything prepped, hopefully the dyeing will go easier tomarrow. I will probably rinse out and wash on Tuesday, press and fold on Wednesday and tag on Thursday. I dont know why I wait until the last minute to do these things. It will actually be the first fabric to be dyed by me in da UP.I will post some photos of the dyeing experience and maybe late in the week, washed fabric on the clothes line.
another front, bigger than the one on april fools day. the birds arrived in droves yesterday and are quite freaked with all the snow. luckily we have three seed feeders, plus another flat pan i put on ground plus a suet feeder. when i got home yesterday afternoon i could hear the birds singing as i got out of my car. even thou it was pretty nippy, i sat out on my back porch for a couple hours watching and listening to the birds sing...it is so amazing...the feeder shown here is right outside my computer. even thru the double pane galss i can hear hem sing.we are off the escanaba in these scarry conditions to see that concert. at least we will be driving in the daylight. should be quite the adventure. i will take photos along the way and during...see ya tomarrow night.
okay, okay, i know this sort of looks like more of the same but...the bottom picture was taken on Sunday...see how the snow has melted. the middle one was taken from same spot this a.m. and also the one looking out door. i am trying to be very patient about this whole snow thing but i really want to start planting some flowers and see the miracle of spring here. it is very pretty, covered up all the ugly dirty snow but now we have to go thru the remelt again. i still love it here no matter what! will post some quilty photos a bit later.
when we were in clearlake, iowa this past february for the buddy holly fest we cracked up when we saw this. we wanted to eat here to check it out but never got the chance. i had this friend whose mom was mexican and her dad was german and he always said they were "beaner-schnitzels" which always made me laugh.
wow! the sun is out, it is 42!!!! and i am going to go sit on the back porch for a little bit...then i will go back upstairs and sew. but it is so beautiful outside with the sun.........
well, i've been told you can get 4' of snow in the spring but, well, i was kinda thinking it was over. the snow was melting, very slowly, but it was melting and all the walk ways were clear and huge areas of grass under the trees. the photo below was taken around 2 p.m. on monday and the photo above was taken this a.m. the porch is at least three feet above the walkway. poor mark, had to go out in this about 6:30 a.m. and it was really snowing hard and the road has about a foot of snow (or more) which makes for very poor traction going uphill...but he made it cause he isnt here now! :-) i guess the daffodils will NOT be blooming the first week of may like last year. now it is upstairs to sew some more. our guild quilt show is the 19th so i have so much to do. sometime this week i need to dye a whole lot of fabric.....
besides being a fabric junkie, a piecing nut and all a-round gal...me and my sweetie are train brains. i am a bit picky and prefer live steam locomotives but anything that runs on the tracks makes mark smile. i admit, i love trains of all kinds too but LOVE steam. anywho...i found this kool site today that is giving away an awesome quilt. her name is camille and like she didnt have enough to do raising two young boys, she decided to start her own little pattern company. after her first year of success she is giving away this beautiful little gem called "blossom". go to her site to enter and if you add her url to your blog you get three more entries. kool huh?!! so here it is:
