Beauty All Around

One of the things that I love about our place here is that we have an almost 360 degree view of the horizon. The only area we don't have that spacious view is where the greenhouses are, south of the house and driveway. So we have a wonderful view of sunrises and sunsets. I took this photo this morning just before the sun came up. It's looking east and a little north. The level line is the railroad, on a slight embankment at the back of our property. The sky was actually a deeper fuschia than shows on this snap.

We've enjoyed a lot of blooms indoors the last several weeks, amaryllis, tulips, daffodils. But this past week Jim brought in our first bouquet of the season: pussy willows, with a few dried cranberries, from the high bush cranberries out front, spiked up with a few daffodil blooms. A wonderful breath of springindoors.

The outdoor weather hasn't been too bad lately either, but the forecast for the coming weekend is for cold temperatures and some snow. I really hope this doesn't happen, because Saturday and Sunday we will be giving performances of the Faure Requiem. Some of our players will be coming from Calgary, so we hope for good road conditions.

After my last post I got quite carried away

with that scrap bag wall-hanging. After cutting up all the teal, I found I could make 27 1/2 squares. Since that would be difficult to arrange in good balance, I opted to do 25, and then add borders. This makes it approximately 45" x 45". I had hoped to get enough to make a lap quilt. After I had the borders added (with some bought material) I came across another strip of the original teal, and would have been able to make a lap quilt after all. But by that time I was quite enamoured with the idea of it being a wall hanging. It's a bit brighter colours than show in the photo, and I quite love it. Thanks, Linda, for the sweet compliment on it!

Last Thursday a friend gave me two boxes full of material pieces, some as large as a half yard. The fabric on the table in front of the wall hanging is just a bit of what was given. I sorted it all, set aside a whole whack to bring to the quilting group, and saved out lots for myself this time. I washed it all (four loads!) and just finished at least five hours over the last three days, pressing it all. Quite the job, but now it's all ready to go for whatever I can dream up.