Candace the Therapy Dog and A Bit of Good Fortune

My house looked like this December, a year ago in 2017.  This fairly rare snowfall lasted all day long.  Here in Baton Rouge we have snow about every 6 or 8 years.

The Basset Boyz were totally amazed at the white stuff.








Today the beaver was in my next door neighbor's yard munching down on some acorns.  The tree there is a huge oak.  I odd to have a beaver rambling around here.  We are used to opossums and rabbits and armadillos.





At the hospice today, Rodney's son Chad brought Candace Marie, his Certified Therapy Dog.  Chad and Candy work with Autistic kids.  She is able to calm them.


He brought her here to visit his dad, who is struggling to breathe since he is in what they call Transition.  I didn't read the book they gave Diane, but I imagine they mean between life and death.








I did have about an hour or so this morning to work on The Good Fortune Mystery quilt.  I chose the oranges, and then stripped them.

I made about half of the needed pieces.  Since Bonnie requested about 3 times the amount of orange I used, I am thinking that there will be another use for the color.  

I will spend some time tomorrow at Hospice with Diane and Rodney again.  I am hoping for peace and calm.  We spoke today of letting go.  That is the tough part.

Please Don't Eat the Yellow Snow.....

Camouflage!

....cause that's where the Huskies go!  LOL  McGee has found the joy of yellow snow.

We had snow again last night.  Started out with a light misty rain, then the sleet came.  When the streets were wet enough the temperatures cooperated and plunged to the upper teens.  Then the snow mixed in with the sleet and we had intermittent floating bits of snow and the heavier sleet particles.



This morning we woke to a white blanket of what is more like ice crystals than the fluffy snow of the last snowfall.  I guess people who live in snowy places have names for all the types of snow.  We just are amazed at snow...period!

Keep in mind, we are in South Louisiana!






And all on my BIRTHDAY!  I had big plans for the day, most of which is up in the air as to whether it will happen. 











Frank revealed the final gift of the Birthday Week Celebration.


Cheetos! Literally, my favorite food! 
I shall partake later today.

And of course with the snow and interstate shutdowns, the city has cancelled the huge celebration and parades they were going to hold for my birthday. 

I did play with the scraps in the bag Judy gave me.  I am going to have to come up with a name, or even a nickname for them.

I added leftover solids from Sawyer's quilt so the color distribution will be a bit wider.  However I do not have the yellows from that top right block.  I might have to dig a bit further in my stash to grab some of those sunny colors.  But I think I will wait to see how the other blocks play together to see if I want to dump it, make more or use it as a focus block somewhere in the quilt.

I am glad that you want a turquoise added in the La Virgencita.  She has a turquoise blue dress that I toyed with pulling out.  But the colors looked so warm I decided not to throw a cool blast in there.  I will do that today and retake the photo. 




At night I am sleeping under an additional quilt.  The colorful one is from my mates of SSOBB during the flood.  It was quilted by Valerie Purple Boots in Nova Scotia.  And the leaf quilt is appropriately named The Forest of Frozen Sorrows.

I had it packed to finish it at a February Retreat a few years ago when the temps dropped so low that the pipes at the Retreat House broke and flooded the place.  We had to cancel the Retreat of course.

Hence Frozen Sorrows.  It is one of my visual favorites. 

Birthday Eve

Birthday Eve!  And it is appropriately cold and freezing for a January birthday.  Today he brought me a card and a bunch of bright colored flowers.  Yesterday he brought me an ugly bracelet.  The many cannot pick out jewelry.  Although he did OK with the silver bracelet I directed him to look for the day before.  And Sunday he gave me a coat hanger thingy with circles on which to hang scarves and belts. Tomorrow is the culmination of the Birthday Week Festivities.  So sad to see it end!

So this is Tuesday, the holiday yesterday really messed me up.  I need to get my driver's license renewed and all the state offices were shut down.  And today they THINK it MIGHT snow again, so the city and state are shut down as well.  I wonder if they will give me two extra days to get my renewal?  Probably not.

I also needed a CAAWS document notarized and there was not an attorney in the city working.  I ended up at the accountant's office and he had one of their lawyers notarize my document for free, so I made money on the deal anyway.  I used to be a notary years ago, it probably would be a good idea to re-certify, although I have no desire to take the classes again, or the test.

I was early to the meeting so I walked around his building twice for a total of just over a mile. 



So what's a girl to do?  SEW!  And I did.

I was able to get the last two sections of  birds together and the whole thing somewhat squared.

I  declared it finished just about the time I decided it needed to have four white border strips added for when I quilted it.  I can trim down to whatever size I want, but I  will have the extra fabric as much as I want showing. 

Of course there were a number of plaes where the abutting fabrics were not square.  In other words MOST of the places required figuring out how to sew the darned things. And it was not always easy to get the fabric to sit flat.

In fact, I am somewhat of a genius in getting it flat at all.  Lynne must be a super genius ......  or maybe she is a better quilter in the block stage, making sure they are of equal or compatible sizes when she makes them.

But I got it worked out.

Took me a whole day.

Better Idea:  Next time I will just send the birds to Lynne to put together.

 
 It has been so very cold in Southern Louisiana.  Here is my fish pond with icicles!  LOL.......lordy, lordy!

Dd you see me and my brother in the last post?  Do we look alike?  He looks like my dad and I look like my Aunt Edie, dad's sister.

I will have to ask cousin Karen for a picture of the three of them.  They are the children of my father's brother, who we never thought looked like the other two.  As he got older he did, though.

But boy did Uncle Angelo's kids look like the Graci side!   The Graci Men in two generations have one face between them!


I am finished quilting the Zig Zag quilt and I added the binding.  It still needs to be hand sewn down.  I am very optimistic that this OMG finish will be a success!


So I need to look to the future projects.  I have so many of them.  And they all shifted places in the last few weeks since I found Kathy Doughty and Material Obsession's books Mixing Quilt Elements and Adding Layers.  I have two quilts I want to work on first.

What do you think of these colors together?  The background is a golden, although it is not solid.  I thought it was solid but when I got it down it had a swirl pattern.  I can use it on the back side but and you will see a faint pattern up close.  It won't really matter either side.

Do I need to mix it up more?  Do I needa different fabric in place on one?  This is the scary part for me. 

The rust color palate will be fan blades radiating out from the center (which will be a melon shaped center).  The two blacks will be cornerstones.

These will be large.  So there will be 4 of them on the quilt which will be 88 x 88.  Like I said, large.

You know, I wanted to make some sofa pillows.  I might as well make those first.  they should be quick (she says as it takes 10 days to make two pillows.....) LOL. You know that is going to happen.

I also have the pieces that Judy gave me at the last Fiber meeting.  I really want to play with that one!   Not Judy's thing, but definitely MY thing.

And I have another one with trees and dancing ladies and wild things hanging in the trees.   Also from Kathy Doughty/Material Obsession.

Of course, there are about 257 UFOs I can pick from as well............but that wouldn't be any fun, would it?

Sneaux Day Part Deux

The Cox Cable Guy was scheduled to come today.  With everything closed, we figured he was going to sleep in.  To my surprise he showed up and is working on figuring out why 3 of my remotes don't work.

Keep in mind, we are in Baton Rouge, LA - the Deep South!  And the entire city is shut down!  We get snow about every 10 years or so, last one was 2008 when we had 4 inches.  Generally it doesn't stay long, maybe a few hours or so, before it turns to rain.  This year it seems to be sticking!

Dogs seemed to enjoy the white yard.

 My father made this sundial as a replica of the one in front of the Mississippi Rest Center along I-10.

My azaleas are blooming, in the snow.

The view into the back behind our houses is beautiful, like a post card.

The snow is coming down pretty heavily.  This is Dale and Barb's house next door.

The front of my house at about 7 am this morning, love the illumination  on that flag.

The view down my driveway, crape myrtles make a green tunnel in the summer time.

I am standing on my porch looking down Hollow Tree Ridge.  Such a beautiful sight!

They say it will snow all afternoon too.  Unprecedented!

Go Sneaux!

SNEAUX

Yes, that is snow in Cajun Country!

This is what we look like this morning at 6:30 AM.

Ohhhh!  Sorry.  That is the mendenhall glacier in Alaska........it is hard to tell us apart.



Here is Baton Rouge Sneaux!

As it is getting lighter the flakes are getting larger.  They are predicting abour 4 inches this morning.

Of course, the entire city shuts down.  Yesterday they cancelled school and government offices at the suggestion we would have snow.

The last time they thought we would have snow was last year when I was living in the Camper From Hell.



 The last time we actually had snow was 2008 when we had 4.5 inches.  It was Christmas Eve.

We had gone to Carrie's for present opening and were walking the dogs around the block.  I had my two beautiful Swissys, Bonnie Doon and Dutch, and Chloe.

Dutch was not impressed with the snow, even though he came from a long line of alpine dogs who were bred to herd and draft in the Alps with the nomadic shepherds.

Bonnie Doon on the other hand, loved to be cold.  She is buried n the far corner of my back yard, and loving the snow.  My most favorite picture of Bonnie Doon is of her standing back there while the snow is all over her strong black back.

MGee seems totally unimpressed with the weather, which he considers to be an extension of rain.  He doesn't get his feet wet.  DiNozzo went out, slipped on the icy stepping stones, and sniffed the white stuff. 

Deep South SNOW?

On a roll after the Sawyer Bird, I thought I would make a DiNozzo Bird.   DiNozzo is basically brown with white points.  That means he has white feets.  This bird has white dots.

I searched for a set of McGee fabrics.  But I wasn't happy with whatever I was coming up with. 

DiNozzo is a basset hound, so this bird has really short legs.  Here he is next to Long Tall Sally.









I decided to make a second bird because I didn't know that I would have time to do one today.  This
baby was green.  I don't know what he was patterned after, I just liked the scrap of batik leaves I found in the scrap bin.

See his knobby knees!  And he is a left facing bird.....wait, right facing bird.  LOL.

You have no idea how difficult it is to do something sdrawkcab.   That is backwards if you hadn't figured that out.

So I guess he is a Drawkcab Bird......

In my bag from the Modern Guild Show And Tell Lotto winnings there was this tiny stack of fabrics.  See the name on the package?

I spent a bit of time last night making half square triangles for the blank areas in the bird blocks.

I have to show you that photo tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it is going to snow tomorrow.  Here.  In Baton Rouge.  Last snowfall was 4.5 inches in 2008.  The whole city is shut down and we are acting like this is the end of the world.

And I hit upon something for my doorway piece.  Remember that for tomorrow.

A Day of Freezing Rain and a near Quilt Finish

Frank actually had to meet a client in Geismar, about an hour east toward New Orleans.  He made it there using the old back roads.  I stayed home, had butternut apple soup I made a few days ago and a square of Ghiradelli chocolate.


Chloe was very upset because late in the afternoon one of the fire alarms started that beeping that tells you the battery needs changing.  She was so scared of the sound all she wanted to do was go sit outside in the 22 degree weather!  We got the batteries changed but the sound continued.  How many sit coms have you seen lately where the characters ended up taking ALL the alarms down and stomping them to bits!  We almost had a Basset doing that today!

All day long, the frozen rain fell on the city.  It never got above 26-28 degrees.  It did accumulate a bit, but the most interesting thing was the icicles that formed on everything, the bird feeder, the eaves, the car.

So I spent a day quilting the Low Volume Baby Quilt for Carrie to give her friend.  Carrie designs buildings but she cannot see the architecture of a quilt and the quilting yet.  It is what we take for granted.  Or, maybe, what some of us struggle with as well.  I had this fabulous panto of an elephant and she loves elephants.  I would have thought she would love the combination.  But no!

 She wanted a single echo inside each block.  I even tried to talk her into a couple of echo lines in the blocks,
but she was having none of it.

I used a paperpiecing add a quarter ruler to use against the hopping foot to give me a straight edge.  It worked in about 95% of the time!  Which is good for a first time makeshift ruler work.

So it is done and needs a binding.  I will go to the quilt shop tomorrow and see if I can get a pale grey or yellow to finish it off.

We DID Get Snow!

So to speak.  I know y'all are gonna laugh, but the city is shut down, the Mississippi River Bridge is closed, the one on the Interstate 10 -a major East/West artery.  The schools are closed; people are not going to work. 

Actually it is more freezing rain, we can hear it quitely hitting the ground.   Frank is home, cozy in his office making phone calls. 

And Charlene should talk!  She got way more snow than we have!  And we think that is no fair!

Here is our city-shutting-down-snowfall: