Wild Weather

Those of you who live in the really cold parts of the world are going to laugh at the temperatures I'm about to give you. Trust me. We here in the Portland-metro area of Western Oregon think that 27°F. with a windchill of 21°F. is fricking cold. Smitty went out the sliding glass door long enough this morning to run approximately ten yards to the kitty door and come right back in. No frozen mousies for this cat. No siree.

He and Gracie have been camped out next to the fireplace during this weather. It's a gas fireplace, and so having it on means paying for the gas. Do Mike and I turn it on especially for the kitties? Yes. Yes, we do. They are spoiled cats. When I die, I would like to be reincarnated as my cat.

We're expecting some really crazy weather over the next couple of days. Mike read the forecast this morning and, while there was a weather alert, it was nothing to write in the blog about. That all changed this afternoon with this article in our local newspaper and this paragraph:

"Forecasters say their confidence is growing that a significant snow storm could dump up to a half-foot of snow in the Portland metropolitan area starting early Thursday morning and lasting well into the evening."

And again, really-cold-country people, a half foot of snow in the Portland metropolitan area will bring everything to a screeching halt. In fact, I can usually hear the screeching all the way up on our hill...screeching and crashing. I have a feeling the auto body folks must get together and have a party when something like this happens in our fair city. Anyway...

After I dried my tears about the wild weather, I resigned myself to spending the day inside sewing. Yes, you might need a hankie too.

The new machine is great, but I'm still giving it sort of a wide berth. It's a little intimidating to be doing what I'm doing, and I find myself with lots of ideas and only a little skill at putting them into practice. It's a little hard to know what to do with these sections that are comprised of a series of 1-inch x 3-inch patches. In this one, I tried quilting some grass and flower buds.

Sorry I can't do better with the photography than that. I tried messing with the lighting and contrast, but it still isn't easy to see. In that image above, the patches are lined up in a horizontal row. Below, they're stacked vertically. In this area, I just did a wiggle-waggle thingy...yes, I'm making up the names as I go along.

In this next embroidery motif, I quilted some grass where she's kneeling, and some branches into the rose bush on the right...and some loop-de-loops in that other bush. Not sure what those are, but that's how I quilted it. As I'm looking at this image, I'm thinking I'll quilt some cross-hatching onto her basket and onto her hat.

I've said before that I'm not fond of feathers. It's just personal preference, but I think they're overdone. If you love feathers, more power to you. Feather away, and don't let my comments hold you back. In any case, I try making more modern versions of them, and I started to do that in the border around this embroidered piece, only to realize that I'd not done it at all. There is no spine.

Oh well. You wouldn't know if I hadn't told you, right? So I did a better rendering of what I was attempting in this one below.

Only...I realized I hadn't gone all the way to the top when I was already back at the bottom again. Oops. Enter a stylized leaf to fill in that space. Just put a check mark in the "oh well" category for that.

And then I had this space...about 3 inches x 10 inches, which seemed like a veritable acreage. I quilted a tree there. Again, I'm sorry I can't improve the contrast, but I'm hoping you can see it okay.

Also today, I did a little housework and tackled Mt. Laundry. I'm going to try to get a little more quilting done on this before Mike comes home.

I asked Mike to pick up a couple of items for Ham Bone Soup on his way home. I have food for a couple of days. At the beginning of the season, I always pick up three ham bones at Honeybaked just for these odd winter storms that sometimes blow through and mess up the roads. If I have to, I can always make a big pot of soup to feed us if we get snowed in for a couple of days.

How's the weather where you're living? If you're in the Northern USA, I'm betting you're even colder than we are...and that your snow is deeper. I salute you.